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CHAPTER V.

THE MIND IS NOT THE RESULT OF SENSATION.

MIND-ACTS as well as mind-sensations, having direct relation to bodily condition as affecting nerve and muscle, cannot be understood in the slightest degree without studying anatomy and physiology. Still physiology and mental philosophy are two vastly different things. In respect to physiology, or the action of organisation, the whole range of vital manifestation from molluscs to man is as one connected chain; but each class of living creatures has an individuality of its own, and there is no sign that possibly one class can be derived from another, either by addition or by development. We learn physiology by comparing animal with animal. Mental philosophy, however, is altogether the result of man's study of his own consciousness. One man cannot demonstrate the existence of his own faculties and affections to another; but we can and do appeal from our own consciousness to that of others, and thus we discover that we possess a mutual understanding as to our feelings and ideas; so that all mankind recognise their unity in mind and motive, affection and faculty, as respects kind, whatever be the degree of difference in power and manifestation. This difference is doubtless due in part to the differences in organisation, but in part also to experience and the teaching which one human being necessarily receives by contact with another. This capacity in man to learn, and to acquire moral and intellectual motive or reason for conduct, and the government and

ence.

direction of will, distinguishes man from all other creatures on earth. In short, man can desire and design with a view to an ulterior and immortal state of existTherefore, whatever his bodily relation as to the means of earthly accommodation may be, he does not and cannot class himself with any animal, and he unavoidably regards himself as an especial personal being, subject, according to bodily conditions, to ideation, emotion, passion, but substantially something utterly dif ferent in essence from the body which causes all the variations in his experience. In short, he distinguishes himself, the man, alike from all other kinds of being, and from his own brain and body. The fact that he does so is fact enough to warrant his belief in his own permanent self-hood to the exclusion of all theories that would make his physical organs one with himself, or classify him with other living beings only as a higher development of the same material, or another order of the same force.

There is a disposition to exercise the senses, from the enjoyment afforded by the act; but this disposition of course resides not in the organs, but in the soul that uses them, being the result of our mental constitution, in connection with nerves through which we discover suitable objects. The soul is excited by whatever is appropriate to it, and the senses are stimulated in sympathy with the soul, because they are its organs, the means of earthly action and enjoyment. Whatever pleases the soul, it seeks through the senses: through the eye, light; the ear, modulated sound; the smell, fragrance; the taste, flavour; the touch, degrees of pressure; and the muscles possess an agreeable sense of their own, arising probably from their power of adjusting the body for the accommodation of the will, in the exercise of the senses generally.

Sir Charles Bell has beautifully demonstrated that

every organ of sense is supplied with a muscular apparatus, constructed in such a manner that it may be moved in any direction in which the soul may have to search for its object; and in every muscle two nerves are distributed, one to contract and direct it, and the other to enable us to obtain the sensation which accompanies its action. Here, then, we plainly see a provision made in the apparatus for the operation of a being capable of cognition, both from matter and from thought; that is, the adjustment of parts is intended for the use of that something which we call soul, which is conscious both of sensation and volition, being actuated by desires excited alike from within and without, by ideas and by objects.

What is meant by this adjustment will appear when we reflect on the machinery which is consentaneously set in motion in the act of using either of the senses, but more especially perhaps sight and touch. It is not enough that the sensation of a visible object be present in the eye; in order to look so as to examine an object, it is also necessary that the will be exerted. The first sensation of an object only serves as a stimulus to the appetite of the soul, to rouse its attention, and excite the will; which, acting on the muscles, prepares the eye for further scrutiny, and at the same time places all the body in keeping with the state and desire of the mind, so that we can generally see from the attitude of a person how his eye is engaged.

The muscular consent between the eye and the rest of the body, particularly the hand, is well shown in fencing, where every movement is guided not by looking to see how the weapon should be directed, but by fixing your eye on the eye of your antagonist; his intention there expressed, and acting as it were through your own eye on your nervous system, causes an instantaneous and instinctive adjustment of your body to the movements of

his. The same thing is exhibited also in the precision with which the savage hunter learns to direct his arrow, and the politer sportsman to point his gun.

In exercising our muscles while in the erect position we find that the harmony of action is so perfect, that the movement of one set of muscles affects all, because the balance is preserved by the consent of every part. Thus it happened, that when Laura Bridgman, the blind mute, held a person's hand, the other hand of that person could scarcely be passed in any direction without her perceiving the action.

Do the senses harmonise themselves? Does the eye or the ear arouse the limbs, and does feeling cause volition? No, even an automaton with its arbitrary mechanism must be moved by some power superadded, and the harmony of its action must result from an adjustment produced to express the will of its maker; but in our bodies resides a power willing to act according to the demands upon it, and, more wonderful still, sometimes acknowledging the Might that made it!

Here let us inquire-does organisation produce the consciousness of self? No; for we feel organisation to be distinct from ourselves. The child just beginning to use its senses never confounds the objects of sense with itself, and its own body is but one of these objects. The individual soul, which, by experience and suitable organs, manifests intellect, not only perceives the sensations and interprets them according to past experience, but exerts an influence in modifying their impressions, and intensifying their effects, according to certain laws which regulate its connection with the senses.

Mind, or soul in conscious action, has the power of distinguishing sensation, and of causing one sense to be employed in preference to another, and, to a certain extent, of correcting the impressions made on them all. The brain, connecting the senses together, enables the

soul to employ them in relation to each other and to all the sensible properties of matter, and to compare sensation with sensation as regards time, space, direction, and degree of force; so that whatever interrupts or disturbs the regular function of this connecting medium of all sense, the brain, necessarily causes the soul to perceive and to compare in a disordered manner. And if the brain become so diseased that it altogether ceases to convey impressions from without, the soul may, for aught we know, proceed in its activity with the consciousness of past ideas, and continue to combine them according to the laws of its own being, perhaps quite irrespective of physical association. Thus we know the soul works on in sleep, though we are quite unconscious of the fact on waking, and yet waking itself proves it. In the passage from one state of the soul to the other, the connecting chain called memory appears to be broken, but, in fact, the play of ideas in the one state is for the time obliterated from our view by the ideas excited in the other state, namely, that of attention to objects.

However necessary the intelligence derived from the senses may be to the development of mental capacity in this state of existence, it is yet evident that mind is not the result of sensation, nor, as to the origin of its peculiar faculties, at all dependent on the power of the senses; for in order to use them aright, and to obtain correct impressions through them, there must exist, inherently and antecedently, an ability in the thinking principle to attend and to compare. What is experience but the amount of impressions received by the mind? It contributes nothing to the mental improvement but as the mind possesses the power of judging; a power which no experience can itself confer, any more than the objects presented can produce the will that chooses between them.