signified byNo. 3150.

JANUARY 12, 1884.

PHYSIOLOGY VERSUS METAPHYSICSIN RELATION TO MIND.

BY WALTER HAYLE WALSHE, M.D.

(Continued from page 3.)

(2) OF theological speculation concerning the nature ofmind and soul it may, for more than one reason, be perhapsadvisable to say but little. And theology, in truth, regardedas a branch of general philosophy, seems to possess no specialor distinctive standpoint of its own in such an inquiry. Its

teachings must be a compound of fragments of ecclesiasticaldogma and the current metaphysics of the day, all objectivescientific data being systematically rejected by theologiansas either insignificant or heretical. No special or distinctivestandpoint, we say; for neither theosophist nor serious

theologian of any school professes, or has professed, as faras is commonly known, that a direct revelation of the nature(as distinguished from the existence) of the soul has everbeen vouchsafed to man. And that, wanting this form ofguidance, mere theological erudition may lead astray evenan earnest Anglican divine in inextricable mazes of untenableparadox, the celebrated disquisition of Bishop Warburton’concerning the immortality of the soul will, it has beenconceded even by ecclesiastics, for ever remain an unq ues-tionable proof.

Still, the claim of theological speculation to a hearing inthis matter cannot be gainsaid. And it must be humblyadmitted that a layman is very imperfectly qualified tojudge with impartiality concerning the logical justness ofecclesiastical teaching, inasmuch as ex professo Churchmenfrequently start from premisses more or less completely atvariance with those accepted by the mass of the outsideworld. With extreme diffidence, then, the following outlineof ecclesiastical opinion is set forth.The early fathers of the Christian Church all, without

exception, believed in the existence of soul as somethingsuperadded to body. Many of their number held that thesoul must be a corporeal substance, not on any supposedsubjective or objective evidence, but because to maintainthe contrary would clash with the doctrine of future rewardsand punishments, inasmuch as "only matter could be sus-ceptible of physical pain and pleasure." 2 Other classes ofChurchmen, on the contrary, believe the soul to be " purelyspiritual, but liable to be disturbed by its material ten-

dencies"; while another sect maintains that the soul is"spiritual in itself, but enclosed in matter because of sin."For Tertullian, apparently the most thoroughly materialisticof his compeers, "What is not body is nothing"; "thesoul is corporeal and has the human form, the same

as its body," while its component material is "delicate,clear, and ethereal." These latter attributes are in all pro-bability ascribed to the soul in order to evade the difficultyof imagining a corporeal substance intangible and invisible;though there were not wanting in Tertullian’s time personswho stoutly maintained that they had actually seen the soulin its flight from the body at the moment of somatic death.For Origen, who seems to have acted the part of a transition-

thinker between the early materialist and the later spiritualistfathers, the nature of the soul was confessedly a profoundpuzzle; but he seems in the end to satisfy his doubts byassigning it a middle place between ordinary matter andspiritual essence. One theologian of about this periodknows the nature of the soul so thoroughly that he hasactually ascertained it to be "composed of air"; whileanother ventures no further than to divine that its com.ponent matter differs from the matter of ordinary bodies.According to Augustine, the soul is non-extended, and

therefore not material, and, as having existence and notbeing material, is spirit,-is wholly present in the entiremass, and also in every particle of the body, yet acts on thisbody, not directly, but through some corporeal substance

1 The Divine Legation of Moses. Five volumes. London, 1766.2 Bain, op. cit., p. 158. See the whole chapter for a lucid and full

survey of the history of theological opinion on the subject: much of it, asis signified by the writer, originally furnished by the erudite Ueberweg.No 3150

[materialistic ideas therefore even yet not wholly discarded]intervening between itself and the actual body, the nature ofwhich intervening substance students of his works are, asmight be anticipated, unfortunately left in the main to workout for themselves, the suggestion (ignotum per ignotius) byits inventor that it consists of "light and air," being hardlycalculated to satisfy even the most simple of mortals.Bain considers that Gregory of Nyssa, in maintaining the

thinking power does not belong to matter, otherwise mattergenerally would exhibit it, made "a happy hit."3 Whyhappy ? Does it not rather seem the learned father madean unfortunate slip ? As well might he have taught thatthe bile-secreting power does not belong to matter, or mattergenerally would form bile.Mamertus, a French priest of the fifth century, one of the

pioneers of the non-material school, had odd notions of hisown: that the soul, unlimited by space, not movable withthe body, was possessed of quality but not of quantity, con-tained the body, &c.For Aquinas, one of the intellectual lights of the

thirteenth century, the soul, not body, but the actualityof body, "pure form without matter," is the instrumentof nutritive, sentient, volitional and intellectual action,and is unconnected with the body, in which latter characterthe human soul differs from that of the lower animals.In the enigmatical phraseology of Calvin the soul becomes

a " creation out of nothing, not an emanation ; it is essencewithout motion, not motion without essence." Accordingto the unfortunate Servetus (1509-1553), at once meta-physician, physiologist, and (alas ! to his own sorrow)theologian, "it was truly into the heart of Adam that Godbreathed the breath of life or the soul," this as yet inchoatesoul becoming the "rational soul," when the blood carryingit reached the base of the brain, whence it is borne "to thecapillaries of the choroid plexus, which contain, or are theseat of, the soul itself."4 With Swedenborg the "soul wasthe real man, because the inmost man. "5So that, while acknowledging with reverent gratitude the

efforts of these pious men, the lay world cannot blind itselfto the fact that the spiritualised, ascetic mode of life hashelped its votaries no better than the comparatively sensuousways of ordinary philosophers in reaching an acceptablesolution of the solemn problem of the nature of soul, and byinference in eliminating any of the ditficulties met with inworking out the mechanism of mind. By whatever mannerof man handled-by saint and sinner alike-pure introspec-tion proves a practical failure.And we can now tender an explanation of the apparent

paradox stated at the commencement of these remarks. Wecan understand why metaphysicians, with very few excep-tions, and theologians have been, and are, allowed to specu-late with impunity on the nature of mind and soul. Theformer have discovered, and can probably in the future dis-cover, nothing,-they have as a class offended no religioussect by successfully penetrating mysteries, which its chiefshave determined should either be left in their primevalobscurity or solely interpreted after the dogmatic fashionauthorised by themselves.6 The latter have simply playedinto and strengthened the hands of sacerdotalism by ima-gining a soul whose nature is in strict harmony with thespecial tenets of their own special form of religious faith.

(3) However, it is not to be supposed that spiritualism,whether of the purely metaphysical or mixed theologicaltype, held undivided sway from the earliest investigation ofmental phenomena till the advent of the existing physio-

logical school. Omitting the atomism of Democritus andthe allied speculations of Epicurus, Lucretius, and otherearly Greek and Roman philosophers, we find that subse- -quently to the revival of learning views more or less broadlymaterialistic every now and then contested the field withthe exclusively psychic theory of mind. Nor must it beforgotten that the early fathers of the Church, as we haveseen, taught materialistic doctrine, not fortuitously, but

3 Op. cit., p 165.4 Servetus and Calvin, pp. 206-209, by R. Willis, M.D., one of the

most deeply engrossing books ever produced on that subject of inex-haustible and undying interest, the early history of the Reformation.

5 The True Christian Religion, No. 697, Loud., 1858.6 The Romish hierarchy has always been pitiless to the slightest

aberration from the narrow path in which its own creed moves. Kant’sworks, branded as heterodox, figure side by side in the Papal Index withthe most brazen handbooks of vulgar atheism. Besides, it is matter ofhistory that, when at the height of his powers and of his fame, theGerman philosopher was forbidden by an Order in Council, obtainedthrough priestly influence, from expounding his views either by lecturingor writing,—from illuminating mankind by voice or pen.

52

with well-considered purpose, their materialism being asdownright as any of the present day, differing therefromonly in this sense, that while the original form was

imaginary, the existing type is professedly demonstrable.And spiritualistic dogma had a very lukewarm supporterat a much later date in Locke. Locke, in point of fact,steered widely of a total rejection of materialistic views; hein truth suggested, if he did not downright maintain, thatthe faculty of thinking might quite as easily be directlyaffiliated to matter as to a given non-material entity (soul),which entity should in turn be itself affiliated to matter.

This mode of escaping a grave difficulty, however, wastentative, timid, a kind of craven tertium quid. In adoptingit Locke rather admits a leaning towards than franklyadopts the creed, that cerebral tissue plays any actual partin the genesis of thought. The English philosopher, indeed,seems to have been somewhat wavering and unstable in histeachings, whatever the firmness of his convictions may havebeen, on this fundamental question of mental philosophy.Thus we find him saying "our idea of our soul, as an

immaterial spirit, is of a substance that thinks and has apower of exciting motion in body by will and thought."

"

Elsewhere he maintains it is "no harder to conceive howthinking should exist without matter, than how mattershould think." Further on he admits God might, if He

pleased, "superadd to matter a faculty of thinking." " Yet

again he holds that in man (as distinguished from thelower animals) it is in the highest degree probable, thatthe "thinking substance" is "immaterial." Did the dreadof priestly denunciation or of social ostracism in an ageof bigotry prevent him from freely outspeaking his realconvictions ? or was he in very fact as unsettled as he seems?It is well worthy of note as matter of literary history thatLocke spoke out in the utterances he has actually venturedupon more boldly than Voltaire, who simply affirmed thepower of the Omnipotent to make matter think if He sowilled it; far from an irreverence even, nevertheless atheological heresy for which the recluse of Ferney enduredendless persecution. His exact words were :-" Dire queDieu ne peut rendre la matiere pensante, c’est dire la chosela plus insolemment absurde, que jamais on ait ose proférerdans les ecoles ptivilégiées de la démence."8Hume, in turn, metaphysician though he was, decries

much of metaphysics as non-scientific and the outcome ofvanity and superstition, and would attach but little valueto the bulk of its conclusions. And herein appears oneinstance, among many, illustrating the Scotch philosopher’sremarkable gift of anticipating the verdicts of posterity.The declining influence of metaphysics as a guide to thehighest attainable truth had indeed become a patent factlong before Comte and the Positivists made their attemptat wholly ostracising transcendentalism from the realms ofknowledge, as "idle and mischievous." Despite the criticalgroundwork so acutely laid by Kant, the more finished struc-tures (as they are held to be) raised by some of his disciplesand followers, and the somewhat novel departure of Schopen-hauer, Hartmann, and others, the death-knell of pure meta-physical speculation has in some sort been rung by advancingscience. Whether the effort of Lewes10 to " transform meta-physics by reduction to the method of science" is destined,as he fondly imagined, to reawaken life in effete trans-cendentalism and furnish solutions to all metaphysicalproblems that can " rationally be stated," time alone canshow. Meanwhile, by proposing to " discard all inquirieswhich transcend the ascertained or ascertainable data ofexperience," he seems to me to alter the scope and natureof metaphysical inquiry ab imo. The verdict of the futurein spite of this scheme of rehabilitation will probably continueto be: " Metaphysical questions are either insoluble andshould not be raised, or unreal and fantastical, and need not7 Fowler, Life of Locke, Morley Series, p. 139, 1880.8 Dictionnaire Philosophique, art. Ame. Perhaps no more striking

human testimony to the reality of the Godhead is to be found in litera-ture than in the following lines of the man whom it has been the fashion,with either egregious ignorance or dishonesty, to denounce as an

atheist :—" Ce système sublime [d’un Dieu] à l’homme est nécessaire.C’est le sacre lien de la sociétéLe premier fondement de la sainte équité,Le frein du scélérat l’espérance du juste.Si les cieux dépouillés de leur empreinte augustePouvaient cesser jamais de le manifester,Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer."

9 It must be remembered that Kant’s opus maximum, the Critique ofPure Reason, professed rather to unfold the method by which a systemof philosophy may be reached than to expound one already achieved.

10 Problems of Life and Mind, 1874.

be."11 Nevertheless, the special quality of certain varietiesof intellect will always find its fittest pabulum in specula.tion of the a priori transcendental kind. That as long as.

mind lasts there will be metaphysicians is certain, but theirinfluence on human thought and on philosophy in generalmust, ex nature rerum, grow less and less as positive know.ledge advances. And this, despite the knight-errantry ofLewes, and the somewhat arrogant boast of Schopenhauer,that he had "lifted the veil of truth higher than any pre.vious mortal " by the use of the instrument, whereof, astubborn and unbelieving generation maintains, the funeralrequiem may be sung.But to return to Hume. Divesting himself of the trammels

of metaphysical thought, this pioneer in positive philosophy,with a perspicuity and cogency of argument, astonishing inview of the infant condition of cerebral physiology in hisday, concludes that varying states of consciousness, thought,and perception depend on molecular motions of the brain ;while he regards the name "soul" as the synonym of the"sum of phenomena which constitute our mental existence,"and holds there is nothing beyond these phenomena,-theidea of their appertaining to an intervening substratum of"substance" (or soul) being a mere fiction of the ima.gination." 12

Priestley, specially qualified by his physico - chemicalstudies as, so to speak, an advocate of the rights of matter,argues from its unquestionable activity of other kinds (attrac-tion, repulsion, and the whole ground of molecular dynamics),that, especially as sensation and perception are unknownexcept as attributes of organised substance, matter must beheld capable of effecting the process, thought.

Cabanis (1757-1808), throwing the material doctrine intothe most uncompromising form, maintained that the brain-substance, assuming a state of activity under the influenceof impressions received from without, elaborated throughthis activity the product, thought-just as a gland undernerve-stimulation pours forth its special fluid productThought became in his hands simply a brain-secretion, nointermediate help on the part of a soul, or other tertium quid,either dependent or independent, being appealed to. Thematerialist gauntlet could not have been more aggressivelythrown down. That a doctrine clashing so sharply withtheological and Cartesian spiritual teaching should startlethe lay, and be received with a shriek of horror by thesacerdotal, world was to be expected. It did more. Itproved profoundly distasteful aesthetically. That man’snoblest inheritance, the power of thinking (a power supposedby the mass of mankind to be their own solely, to theexclusion of all other animals), should be in any fashionassimilable to the ignoble functions of producing bile, gastric.

juice, and saliva, revolted his pride of species. The insultingdogma was rejected ignominiously, but apparently ratherin obedience to the impulses of emotion and sentiment thanas the result of victorious argumentation. The work of thescientist of to-day is calmly to inquire what, if anything, oftruth, what of fallacy, subsequent investigation may haveshown to underlie this formula of thought-secretion.14

In form less repellent, and with philosophy more cautious,Lawrence, at a somewhat later period, wrote the memorablewords, " Who knows the capabilities of matter so perfectlyas to be able to say that it can see, hear, smell, taste, andfeel, but cannot possibly reflect, imagine, judge 2" 1-1Our brief historical survey would scarcely be complete,

even in its incompleteness, if the creed of agnosticism werewholly forgotten. This form of negative faith finds anunflinching advocate in Huxley, who, while proclaiming inno doubting tone our actual ignorance of the nature of mind,offers but feeble encouragement to any enthusiast disposedto enter on the too probably thankless task of its investiga-tion. " We know nothing; more of the mind than that it isa series of perceptions. Whether there is something in themind that lies beyond the reach of observation, or whetherperceptions themselves are the products of something whichcan be observed, and which is not mind, are questions whichcan in no wise be settled by direct observation." -16

11 Graham, Creed of Science, p. 220. 12 Huxley, Life of Hume, p.17113 Rapports du Physique et du Morale, p. 122. Ed. Cérise. Paris’

1883.14 Emotionalism plays a larger part in establishing philosophic and

religious creed than is commonly dreamed of. Robert Hall " buried hismaterialism in his father’s grave" (Bain, op. cit., p. 189); Figuier’s con-victions underwent an absolute reversal through the death of a belovedson (Le Lendemain de la Mort, 4ème ed., préface. Paris, 1872). Of the

great unknown how many are similarly influenced, who shall tell ?15 Lectures on Man, 1819. 16 Life of Hume, p. 63.

53

The Positivists, again, eschewing both spiritualism andmaterialism in this field, decline even to investigate themystery of mind, as lying beyond the pale of possible com-prehension, while they scout with withering scorn theassumption of the metaphysicians that they have settledthe problem of miod by calling it spirit-a word which isfor Comte and his followers vox et prceterea nihil.Such being in the main the acquisitions in the past, what

is the rea ouable prospect in the future ? Are the natureand genesis of mind and the nature of the soul problemswhich it is likely will ever be solved ? The negative appears,unfortunately, far more probable than the affirmative. Boththese arcana of to-day seem only too likely to maintain theirplaces in the category of the for ever unknowable. Theimpotence of pure metaphysics is beyond dispute. Athousand years of introspective dissection of self-conscious-ness and of the play with bewildering farragos of wordsmore or less equivocal, and of phrases more or less conven-tional, have ignominiously failed to reveal the essentialnature of one or the other. The resources of theology havein turn merely begotten a series of quasi-metaphysicalhypotheses, tempered-nay, distorted-in such fashion bydogma that, however satisfactory they may seem to thesacerdotal mind, they prove, when weighed in the balanceof lay reason, contradictory, mutually destructive, anduntenable. And, next, Positivism, the latest outcome ofcritical philosophy, rejects even the consideration of the pro-blems altogether. So that, on the one hand, if contrar,y toprobabilitie3, the function of thinking is ever to be followedstep by step from the determination of the mode of actionof the exciting cause to the analysis of the evolved product;if we are ever to possess in its entirety the natural historyof an idea, the totality of the dynamic and statical pheno-mena of its parentage, birth, existence, substance, correla-tives, decline, cessation, and reliquiae if we are ever toreach a satisfactory definition of the word "mind,"-thesesuccessful issues are to be looked for essentially in the dataof biology. And, on the other hand (inasmuch as directrevelation has neither come nor has been promised concern-ing the nature of the soul or the method of its acts), if that Inature and that method are ever destined to be made matcerof demonstration, thea out of these same data alone can suchidentification be expected to spring. And this will holdtrue whether the soul be really a something superaddedto and intervening between brain and thought, or merelyan ideal abstract equivalent of the sum total of concretemanifestations of cerebral activity. Biology seems to be,in truth, the working instrument of possible indirect revela-tion granted to man in respect of this special enigma by theAlmighty First Cuuse. Metaphysical inquiry cannot beexpected to achieve any such results, for it has so far failedto make even a substantial commencement, and it is hope-lessly stxtionary. Biology may conceivably make vastadvances towards accomplishing the task, for it has alreadydone much and it is eminently progressive. But what

precise task? We may (somewhat to anticipate our finalconclusions) frankly concede that biological science, even ifthe ranks of its votaries be now and then swelled by theaccession of men endowed with genius of the exaltedoriginality of Darwin, cannot be positively assumed to becapable of revealing more than material phenomena, theirnature localisation, effects, and accidents, their mode ofassociation and sequence and their governing laws,-theintimacy and precision of knowledge of these furnishing themeasures of the activity of special research, the advance oftime, and the amount of storage of inherited data. The sciencewill continue to demonstrate how vast is the part played byconditions and agencies, material in essence, in the evolutionof thought; and will in all probability supply evidence thatthat part is closer, more comprehensive, and more variedthan has yet been even approximately proved. It willgradually conduct us to the possible limits of objectivity,-show us the boundary line where demonstration ceases to beattainable, and where introspective guesswork must take itsplace. But scarcely can we in our most ardent moments 01scientific enthusiasm hope through physiology to fathom thfmysterytoitalowestdepth—tograspthetruenAture of the fùrC{that sets to work the dynamic and statical activities evolvingmental phenomena out of brain-to identify the potentialitythat vivifies cerebral pulp into an emotional, volitional, ancintellectual agent, or seize the link that unites thinkingsubstance and thought. No ! even if argurnenti gratiâ thhypothesis of Hooke, that ideas themselves aie actuallymaterial substances, be accepted, there will remain a some

thing behind, giving to the brain-matter power to throw oftthat kind of substance, the nature of which something willelude our gragp. But are we more enlightened concerningthe intimate nature of the special potentiality attached toany structure in the body ? What do we really know of theforce that evolves motion from muscle ? Will any conceivableamount of succes in working out the histology and chemistryof liver-tissue give us the veriest glimmering of a notionwhy hepatic cells should produce bile and not saliva ? And

just as in regard of the wider phenomena of life, of whichmental activity is but a part, though a large prt, so sciencewill in all surety continue long, long (though possibly not forever) forced to accept agnosticism as the only attainablecreed in the sphere of ideation-the ultima Thule of loftiestphysiology.ERRATUM.-Page 2, col. 2, line 7 from bottom, instead of

" groping," read " for peering."

LectureON THE

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EFFUSION IN THERIGHT AND LEFT SIDES OF THE

CHEST.BY W. MOXON, M.D., F.R.C.P.,

PHYSICIAN TO, AND LECTURER ON THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AT,GUY’S HOSPITAL.

GENTLEMEN,-I hope to be able to show you to-day thatit is not a matter of indifference into which side of the chestan effusion of liquid occurs, and that we ought not to passover certain consequences of pressure on the right or leftside of the mediastinum respectively, which have hithertobeen, so far as I am aware, unnoticed by observers. The signsof effusion in the chest are wall known to you ; indeed, I amconstantly gratified by the almost unfailing certainty withwhich those of you who hold offices in the wards discover

pleuritic effusion, or hydrothorax. You are so surely rightin your diagnosis as to show that the means of recognitionare capable of certain, I will not say of easy, application.Excuse me if this seems to detract from the credit due to

you individually; but, in fact, I may as well say that innearly all cases it would be rather a discredit for a man tomake a mistake about the presence of water in the chest;and we may, indeed, be glad to b3 able to assure ourselvesof the fact when water is thus present, because this is oneof the meeting-grounds of medicine and surgery. Happily,by means of a simple and comparatively p:t1nless operationthe liquid may be removed from the thorax. Perhaps, if youestimated the value of a surgical operation by the proportionof relief to suffering, there is none of higher worth than this

, of thoracentesis; and the physician is here proud to guide. and enlighten the surgeon. Medicine here touches surgery,i and so enters into regions of more immediate sensibility,i and the general inadequacy it is apt to show in its higherEranges does not appear so far-reaching nor so oppressive., This side of medicine, which is hand in hand with surgery,7is, indeed, always the most satisfactory. Nay, sometimesiit seems to me as if the medical mind describes the kind oft curve which is called an hyperbola, and that the finite1 visible and measurable part of this curve is in the region1 which medicine shares with surgery ; whilst the other side- of the hyperbolic curve, that wbicl110ses itself in the infinite,3 affords scope for a range of greatness more proper to medicine,s allowing play for electro-doctors and room for mastership inf dyspepsia, and range for skill in the number of minutes teae shoutd be brewed, and for precise propriety in porridge ande potatoes, with other details which, but for infinitude of

range, might seem trivial to anyone wanting in faith. But’I’ with faith nothing seems trivial. Is not faith the only1 faculty that can follow hyperbolic curves through the infiniteg side of their course ? A bishop once told me that faith is note a faculty, but he did not tell me what I ought to call it.y Now, surgery is not easily induced to follow medicine in!- the infinite side of the hyperbola. Surgery has the advantage