this the most flagrant sophistry? As well say that the sound of a piano is not understood, or thoroughly appreciated and perceived, because the listener is not acquainted with the complex mechanism on which the sound depends.

We would ask Dr. Maudsley whether his feelings, emotions, and perceptions differ in the least from those of other men because he is a physiologist? Evidently not; and yet all the feeling, emotion, or perception he knows only through consciousness. Dr. Maudsley speaks somewhere of a "psychology that violently separates itself from nature;" of a psychology which maintains "an unnatural divorce" from well-established facts. That such a separation should appear unnatural to Dr. Maudsley's heated mind is quite natural; but the impartial and unimpassioned observer will be more inclined to call unnatural an attempted union for which facts supply no basis. The confusion in Dr. Maudsley's language and ideas comes of his endeavor to make psychology and physiology one and the same science, whereas they are entirely distinct, following distinct methods and bringing to light completely different results. Indeed he assumes the identity of the two sciences, and it is only this assumption which gives the color of probability to his speculations.

He supposes mind to consist entirely in nerve-change, because he perceives nerve-change to accompany mental activity. This is the very essence of his position and mistake. He finds, in the adaptation of certain portions of the nerve-tissue to the production of specific functions a reason for referring the production of every class of mental phenomena to the nervous system as their cause, not suspecting that the peculiar adaptation in question may be a mere condition modifying in its manifestations the power of the substance which is the source and cause of the phenomena. He assumes the manifesting medium of thought, when in a state of action, to be nothing more or less than thought itself, and proceeds throughout on this assumption.

He is not the first reasoner who has been guilty of the fallacy of confounding condition with cause, and of assigning to the modifying influence of the former the character and operation of the latter. "On grounds," he says, "which will not be easily shaken, it is now, indeed, admitted that with every display of mental activity there is a correlative change or waste of nervous element; and on the condition of the material substratum must depend the degree and character of the manifested energy or the mental phenomenon." This we readily grant; and it is one of the triumphs of physiology that it has been able to ascertain, even though it be only to a limited extent, the conditions and changes that accompany different mental operations. But what follows? Surely

not that on this account we must admit that brain secretes thought, just as the liver does bile, for so another celebrated materialist (Vogt) has inferred.

Dr. Maudsley complains that " the received system of psychology gives no attention to those manifold variations of feeling in the same individual which are due to temporary modifications of the bodily state, and by which the ideas of the relations to self and to one another are so greatly affected." Naturally it does not, for its province is to busy itself with those variations of feelings, and not with the conditions upon which they depend. To be acquainted with bodily conditions and to understand their relation to mental states is a most excellent thing, but that is the office of the physologist, and such a knowledge can in no manner affect the results of psychical research. The condition which modifies mental action is objective; the action itself is subjective, and revealed by consciousness. When Dr. Maudsley says that "feeling is not always objectively caused, but may be entirely due to a particular bodily condition," he shows clearly that he does not attach the proper meaning to the terms objective and subjective. A bodily condition is as thoroughly objective, as respects the mind, as any set of circumstances wholly external to it; and when the psychologist considers a feeling or state of consciousness, and endeavors to analyze it, it is as little his business to consider the bodily condition on which the character of that conscious state depends as it is to study the meteorological condition on which the "blues" depend when he is endeavoring to analyze the nature of that doleful state of mind. It would, no doubt, be interesting to trace out the connection between the weather and states of the mind, but any information acquired in that direction will never throw fresh light on a given mental condition. In like manner bodily conditions do, no doubt, influence mental condition to a greater extent than the majority of people suspect, and more marked cerebral changes accompany mental action than we may imagine; but neither of Dr. Maudsley's conclusions follows from these facts. It neither follows that these bodily conditions and cerebral changes are the cause of mental action, nor that a knowledge of them, however useful and desirable, can increase our knowledge of that action.

Just as Dr. Maudsley confounds the objective with the subjective, so does he mistake the accidental for the essential. The accidental is what pertains to the individual as such; the essential what pertains to him as representative of his species. This distinction is simple enough, and laid down in almost every handbook on mental science, yet Dr. Maudsley entirely overlooks it. His own language will best set forth his purblindness. He says:

VOL. V.-28

"So far as the present psychology is concerned the individual might have no existence in nature; he is an inconvenience to a system which, in neglecting the individual character or temperament, ignores another large collection of valuable instances. . . . . He who would realize how vague, uncertain, speculative, how far from the position of a true science psychology is, should endeavor to grasp some one of its so-called principles, and to apply it deductively, in order to predicate something of the character of a particular person; let him do that and he cannot fail to perceive how much he has been mocked with the semblance of knowledge, and must needs agree with Bacon as to the necessity of a scientific and accurate dissection of minds and characters and the secret dispositions of particular men.''

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Now, the individual is the fountain-head of all knowledge of the species to which he belongs; first it is through a study of the individual that we obtain a direct general conception; but let it be understood such general conception embodies only what the individual possesses in common with all others of his class, and shuts from view the traits and qualities which belong to him as such. Suppose human physiology wishes to establish a general principle as the result of observation made on many individuals, would the fact that different individuals exhibit different peculiarities invalidate such a principle or stand in the way of its application to all? Yet this is precisely what Dr. Maudsley would have. It is no more an objection against a principle of psychology that it does not enable us to predicate something of the character of a particular person," than is an objection against any principle of physiology that it does not enable us to determine the size of an individual or tell the color of his hair. Science deals only with universals because they represent essences, and we acquire our knowledge of universals through individuals, and this is what is conveyed by the words of Bacon as quoted by Dr. Maudsley, and not the absurd meaning Dr. Maudsley attaches to them. "A scientific and accurate dissection of minds and characters and the secret dispositions. of particular men" is the study of the individual, which leads by a reflex universal conception to a knowledge of mankind; but not, and Bacon never dreamed of such a thing, to a knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of each separate individual.

With the view of lending additional force to his argument against consciousness, he brings forward that interesting array of facts which give color to the theories of unconscious cerebration and the registration of impressions.

While not disposed to deny a single fact tending to establish what is meant by "unconscious cerebration," we decidedly object to the term as eminently misleading and adapted to cover an assumption. Men have always connected the word conscious with mind in the strictly psychological sense; and not only that, but they have been accustomed to measure mind by consciousness, for thereby alone do they know it. Now, the term unconscious, as

applied to cerebral action, is deftly employed for the purpose of insinuating, before any process of reasoning, that mind is altogether an effect of cerebration. Why should the term "unconscious cerebration" be used any more than unconscious digestion and circulation? It is evident that in the latter case the advocates of materialism would accomplish nothing by using the expression. Moreover, unconscious cerebration implies conscious cerebration; and if consciousness does not attest to us the fact that we have a brain, how can it inform us of its function? The truth is, all cerebration is unconscious, and necessarily so, for mind reveals to itself nothing but mind, and in this revelation all consciousness consists. Cerebration is the condition of mental function, and, as all conditions profoundly modify the operation of cause, is it to be wondered at that even a substantive soul should be hampered by the medium through which it acts? Dr. Maudsley is ingenious, but he is the victim of what may be called unconscious duplicity. He produces his microscope, his rule, and his retort; he examines a piece of violet glass; he subjects it to countless experiments, and announces to the world that he has discovered the reason why it is adapted. to the transmission of its proper ray; he does the same for red, blue, and yellow glass; and then he constructs elaborate theories in explanation of each, not now transmission, but emission. He learnedly informs us that certain molecular changes in the violetcolored glass occur in such a manner that they necessarily emit a violet light; and so with regard to red, yellow, and blue. Does he imagine for a moment that he may be confounding condition with cause? that he may be setting down as the cause of the ray the cause merely of the color of the ray? The cause of the color of the ray is surely not the cause of the ray, but simply a condition of its manifestation. The sun is the source of light, the glass the condition of its color. In like manner all he has said and written of "unconscious cerebration," registered impression, and associated mental action, may be reduced to the following: Mental functions differ, and physiology has discovered that these different functions are connected with different portions of the nervous structure, and that the different changes occurring in the latter invariably correspond to separate and determinate functions. Therefore distinct portions of nervous substance are the sole source, root, and origin of the functions connected with them. The reasoning is specious and misleading, for may not structural conditions of the brain so modify the actions of the mind that with certain portions thereof volition may be connected, with others memory, and with others again intellection, while the soul is behind all, possessing its own substantive entity, just as the sun which bathes the universe in light shoots a few of its scattered rays through a cathe

dral window, and flecks chancel, nave, and pillar with violet, purple and gold, according to the character of the transmitting medium? We have no more than turned over the first leaves of Dr. Maudsley's interesting treatise on the Physiology of Mind; but so suggestive of reflection have these proved that we find ourselves brought to the limits of an article sooner than we expected.

I

POSITIONS OF THE INTELLECTUAL WORLD AS REGARDS RELIGION.

NVESTIGATIONS into the true relations subsisting between science and religion are the passion of the age in which we live. Discussions arising out of these investigations, one would think, should necessarily be confined to the respective schools— that is, to men of science on the one side and to those who have chosen their vocation in the religious order on the other. But so far from this being the case, the controversy is largely conducted by persons who have no position in either school. Philosophers, statesmen, men of letters, have taken part in it to an unprecedented extent, and thrown the light of their varied intelligence upon it, or not unfrequently increased the existing confusion of thought.

Even a slight survey of the field of contemporary literature is sufficient to assure us that at no time in the history of the world has a greater array of ability ever been engaged in the consideration of any one subject. Nor is this remarkable. The deepest questions, and the most important, that can occupy the human mind are comprised within the sphere of religion, and, hence, it is easy to understand the paramount interest which the intellectual world accords so freely in our days to the discussion of these questions. Then, again, modern science undertakes to answer them, and attempts to elucidate the problems they involve; and so wonderful has been the success which has crowned its advance in almost every other department, that many minds have been led to believe, and perhaps do still believe, that it is able to solve them. Without expressing an opinion in regard to the possibility or rather impossibility of this, the present fact that science has undertaken to instruct humanity on points heretofore considered the exclusive realm of faith, has led into the field of controversy the volunteers already alluded to, and accounts partly for the other fact, viz., that the questions at issue have been treated from every possible and im