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that all the phenomena of life are calculated to lead. one to suppose that this rather than any waste ensues. I think it is hardly going too far to say that if the vital power be regarded as neither electricity nor as a nervous fluid discharged by shocks, neither generated by a battery nor secreted by nerves, but as a simple imponderable power given to the germ at the moment life begins, existing throughout life in the same form and vigour and taking wing at death, itself the soul and principle of life, appearing as the mind in the operations of the brain, as the organizing or vegetative power in constructing the frame, when repairing waste and executing the functions of life, never quitting the frame during life, admitting of no increase and suffering no decay, we shall at any rate get rid of a host of puzzling complications; we reduce the subject to its simplest form.

The reader will naturally ask what vestige of a proof there is of any such unity, or that the soul is in any way identical with the vital power. Not much perhaps, but at any rate such as is well worth looking into, and were there none I would suggest that this view might advantageously be adopted and all forces comprehended under the term vital force, in order that we might have one fixed algebraic term with a definite meaning instead of the confusing multiplicity of

names.

We know that we possess a soul capable of regulating our actions, for otherwise how could it be made responsible for the acts of a hand and head it had no control over? We know that the soul influences the acts just as the vital power influences the functions. But the soul is the mind. "The soul," says Mr.

Locke, "is agreed on all hands to be that in us which thinks." The arguments of Cicero, who also showed the soul to be immortal and eternal, not in nature like the body, have never been overthrown. With characteristic candour both this great man and Locke have admitted that however we approach the subject it is hedged in with doubts and uncertainties.

But on the question of whether the soul and the vital power are one and the same force, or whether they are purely independent powers in the same domain, the opinions of philosophers are so discordant that one might well shrink from any attempt to reconcile them. Some like Stahl have answered the question in the affirmative; they consider the soul the same as the organizing principle or what I have called the vital power or force. Other writers are as directly opposed to this view; Müller says it is going too far to place the acts of the soul on a level with the organizing principle which creates the structures of the frame while it is obeying a blind law. Further on Professor Müller quotes Cuvier's opinion that animals acting by instinct are in a dream, and that what excites this dream can only be the organizing principle, a view he supports by saying that the presence of this organic principle in the germ and the apparent absence of any special organ for it in the adult, together with the fact that it is seen in plants, show that it cannot be compared with the mind which has its special seat in the brain.

At the first glance these views seem well grounded, they are put forward with an array of facts, authentic dates, and names, which with the high prestige of this justly celebrated teacher's name are well calculated to

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deter one from entering the lists against him. But I see nothing which overthrows the view that there is but one power or force in the system, and that that power is simply the vital force or soul, the different manifestations of which are due to differences in the organ it resides in; which digests and absorbs in the lymphatic and capillary, thinks in the brain and sees with the eye, hears in the ear and moves in the arm and hand. As to the mind having its seat in the brain, I can only think that it would be simpler to consider the mind as the result of the action of the soul or vital power on the brain, instead of a separate independent force, for without a certain amount of brain and without proper avenues from the brain to the outer world there is no mind as we understand the term; the soul cannot think without a brain any more than it can see the material world without eyes. Amongst the many proofs in support of this I may mention the case spoken of by Mr. Gilbert of a young lady who being born blind soon after became deaf, and who, though she lived to be seventeen, never gave a proof of possessing anything that could properly be called a mind.

Supposing that the vital power, call it what you will, enters the germ before the nerves or blood are present, which I suppose will be admitted as it seems certain enough that life begins before these substances are formed; then it forms them, for there is no other power to do so, and what it can do once it may continue to do. Again, if the connection of any part with the rest of the frame be interrupted by mechanical means, such as tying a ligature tightly round a part, the most vital fluid, blood, or a highly vitalized

tissue, like nerve perishes; then if they have an independent life of their own there is still in the frame a power far above theirs, and that power if only for convenience sake I would call the vital power.

We know that when the vital power enters the germ life begins; throughout life we see no evidence of such a fact being repeated. If the actions of the vital power are so perverted as to interfere with the natural growth of the brain, the child is born without a mind and cannot be considered a responsible being.* Then arresting the progress of the vital power to a part has the same result naturally and artificially performednamely, interference with the function. Mr. Lawrence sneers at the idea of mind existing in the very young creature, and asks if the little man shown by Sir Everard Home when eight days old had a mind. Certainly not a responsible matured mind, but the power which might one day have thought in the brain of this mannikin was there as much as at the age of eighty.

The very same stimuli applied to different parts will produce different sensations. Thus for example an irritant applied to a muscle produces motion, to a nerve of sensation pain. The electric shock which makes the muscles start and the heart beat, produces in the nerve of the eye the sensation of light, in that of the ear the sense of sound, in that of the nostril the sense of smell. Then one simple force may produce different effects in different organs according to their structure and functions. But the brain and stomach

"The brain is only one condition out of many upon which intellectual manifestations depend; the other being chiefly the organs of the senses, &c."-Huxley.

are different organs, and therefore a simple power like the vital power may produce their natural actions according to their structure, and thus think in the brain and digest in the stomach.

It seems to be quite taken for granted that because we cannot prove any particular view taken up with regard to the soul as we can prove that we have extracted a square or cube root, the subject must be too obscure to debate about. Pope's lines

"Could he whose rules the rapid comet bind,
Describe or fix one movement of his mind?
Who saw its fires here rise and there descend,
Explain his own beginning or his end?"

are I suppose quite familiar to the reader. They are very well adapted to round a period, but they don't set the case in a fair light, or rather those who apply them don't. Newton would have been just as much puzzled to explain the nature of the power of gravitation. The fact is that physiology is not so far behind the other natural sciences as might be supposed; the properties of the vital power are nearly as well known as those of caloric, light, and electricity; and if men would rest content with proven facts they might acquire as accurate opinions about the laws of life as of physics. "By putting together," says Mr. Locke, "the ideas of thinking, perceiving, liberty, and power of moving themselves and other things, we have as clear a perception and notion of immaterial substances as we have of material."

In many respects a perfectly healthy frame consists so purely of an assemblage of negative qualities that unless we could trace the results of disturbance of

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