is above itself and beyond itself; therefore, if it be our rule to follow always the course of thought, we must now go forward at this suggestion, and it leads us directly to the conception, however vague, of AN AUTHORITY to which we are related. This conception, under all imaginable distortions, has accompanied human nature-invariably it is the instinctive belief of man.

212. The idea of an authority beyond and above us conjoins itself with the conception of a POWER, and of a purpose too, to vindicate itself, whether immediately or at some time future. It is this set of notions which gives coherence to the moral sense. Without them no aspect of fitness presents itself on this side of hu

man nature.

213. The idea of AUTHORITY, or of a relationship between two beings, each endowed with intelligence and moral feeling, supposes that the will of the one who is the more powerful of the two has been in some way declared. It also demands an independence of some kind in the other nature intervening between the one will and the other will. Where the relationship of law, not as a physical principle, but as a rule and motive, is brought in, then there we must find a break, an interval, and a reciprocal counteraction.

214. A scheme of government taking its bearing upon the moral sense is not a chain along which sequences follow in a constant order, but it is a standing on one side and a standing on the other side, with a clear distance interposed. If we take fewer elements than these as the ground of moral government, the entire vocabulary of morals, popular and scientific, loses its significance.

215. In the material world law is latent, and it makes itself known in the effect only; but in the moral world, while there is also a law that is latent, there is a law that is declaratory, and which (in whatever manner) must proclaim itself anteriorly to the effect, and irrespectively of it.

216. On this ground, then, the course of thought leads us to postulate for MIND an independence which is peculiar to itself, and without which the moral sense would be a faculty without a function.

217. From this point we must advance to the belief of an INDEPENDENT POWER superior to ourselves, and to which we stand related. At the moment when we reach this point, and when we bring our conceptions of fitness and order to a centre upon that ONE TRUTH which is the basis of abstract theology, it is then, and never, if not thus, that the human Mind attains to an assured intellectual resting-place.

218. We sum up what has been advanced in relation to metaphysical speculation in this way:

219. Analytic thought or pure abstraction, pursued to its rudiments, can never yield an assurance of truth.

220. Assurance of truth must be the product of concretive or synthetic thought when it issues in bringing before us a system of fitness and order.

221. A system of government has no completeness or reason-it exhibits no fitness or order, until we recognize its source in the SOVEREIGN RECTITUDE—the DIVINE PERSONAL WISDOM and GOODNESS. On this path metaphysical speculation leads to certainty; on no other path has it ever done so.

VIII.

SCIENCE OF MIND-PHYSICAL.

THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY AND THE SCIENCE OF MIND.

222. WITH the world of Mind before us as our subject, nothing is more important than to ascertain, and to do so in the clearest manner, the ground of that distinction which we assume to be real between what belongs to Animal Physiology and that which is proper to Mental Philosophy. A misapprehension on this ground brings with it a train of errors, and leads the way toward fruitless speculations.

223. In the preceding sections it has been attempted to set off from our general subject the results of the abstractive faculty over which the mind has, or may have, an entire control, being, as they are, its own products. The region of metaphysical speculation may thus be so fenced about as that there shall be no interference on this side with what is properly physical in Mental Philosophy.

*

224. But the partition which we have now before us is of a kind that is not so easily effected. At our

* The term Physical Science is here and elsewhere employed in its more usual and restricted sense as relating to the phenomena and laws of the material world. But in this book it is also employed in its more extended sense, as embracing Mental Science; and, as thus used, Physical Mental Philosophy is opposed to that which is Metaphysical.

starting it was said that we have no direct knowledge of Mind otherwise than as it is conjoined with animal organization. The mode or the medium of this combination is utterly unknown, and (we must think so) it is quite inscrutable. This is certain, however, that the reciprocal influences of the animal organization, and of the Mind lodged therein, are most intimate and constant, so that we are seldom able to take up any set of phenomena or any class of facts as belonging to either mind or body with a perfect certainty that they are wholly exempt from influences derived from the other.

225. Or the ground of perplexity may be thus stated: While there is much in the animal organization and its functions which we may believe to be only remotely, if at all, affected by MIND, and, on the other hand, while there is much in the operations of MIND which can be only remotely, if at all, affected by the animal functions, there is still more, on both sides, in relation to which an intimate interaction of the two is a fact unquestionable. Nevertheless, a rule must be found which shall enable us to deal with ambiguous instances of this sort in such a way as may keep us exempt from confusion and error. This rule is, therefore, now to be sought for, and it is such as resolves itself into two or three postulates, as thus:

226. (a) A professedly scientific generalization, if it be brought forward for the purpose of throwing light upon any phenomena that may be in question, must show that it has an INTELLIGIBLE CONGRUITY with the subject to which it is applied.

227. (6) When facts or phenomena of any kind ap

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pear to combine influences, affinities, forces, of different kinds—as, for instance, some that are mechanical and some that are chemical—the methods of reasoning proper to each of these principles must be carried out only to the extent within which they are unquestionably applicable thereto, and not a step further.

228. (c) That partition of subjects which we should endeavor to establish in relation to animal organization and MIND is not of the nature of a prohibition, which is set up on the one side for the purpose of limiting the advances of inquiry on the other side, but its intention is this: to maintain the distinction between the two-a distinction admitted to be founded upon the nature of things, and to forget which is to fall into

error.

229. Two or three instances will suffice for showing that this rule, as thus set forth, is reasonable, and that it is in accordance with the established usages of modern science.

230. The first of these postulates (a) has been disregarded in innumerable instances. Every department of science (science it was not) had been vitiated by the neglect of it in the times anterior to the rise of our modern philosophy. The anatomist and the physiologist, believing that they could explain the functions of animal life on the principles of mechanics, talked of the weight and pressure of fluids, and of the elastic forces of the "animal spirits ;" and especially by the help of "vibrations," of which the pulpy substances of the body were affirmed to be susceptible, it was supposed that sensation and volition were rendered intelligible; for if only we will admit the hypothesis