be neither spiritualistic nor materialistic, for those at least who care for the preciseness of the terms they employ.1

But not to dwell upon a problem which cannot be incidentally discussed, we will endeavour to deduce a conclusion from all that has been said, which shall be based, so far as possible, on experience. It appears that all contemporary schools, when we eliminate that which appertains to the exclusive point of view of each, tend more and more to consider physical and moral phenomena as identical. This conclusion seems perfectly natural, especially to those who take the ground of experience; so that we may say—at least, so far as current language will enable us to express ideas which are opposed to current opinions-that the physical is the moral looked

1 We may cite, in confirmation of what we have said, some remarkable reflections of the great English physicist, Tyndall. 'Granted,' says he, 'that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, "How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness? The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we love that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that the motion is in the other; but the "why" would remain as unanswerable as before.

'In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the position of the "materialist" is stated, as far as that position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I do not think, in the present condition of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this position. I do not think he is entitled to say that his molecular groupings, and his molecular motions, explain everything. In reality they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the prescientific ages.' Fragments of Science, vi.

at from without, and that the moral is the physical looked at from within. The difference between physical and moral is subjective, not objective; it pertains not to their own nature, but to our way of viewing them. Physics has demonstrated that heat, light, and sound appear to us as different, only because each of them is addressed to a different sense, so that all the difference comes from ourselves. The psychologist ought to see that the physical and the moral appear different to us, only because the one is cognized by the external senses and under the condition of time and space, and the other by the inner sense, under the condition of time; so that all the difference comes from ourselves. Thus the absolute, under its unconditioned form, would be entirely beyond our reach, and the conditioned forms in which it is manifested to us in experience would be opposites only by an illusion of our thought.

Perhaps we might proceed further, and draw an important deduction. If we admit the identity of physical and moral phenomena; if we observe that all that is in the living being forms a continuous series from perfect unconsciousness, if there be such a thing, to perfect consciousness;-if, again, there be such a thing; if it be borne in mind that the unconscious is the abyss into which everything enters and from which everything proceeds, the very root of all our mental life, and that our personality is like a wandering light on a vast and sombre lake, where it appears as though swallowed up each moment, then, perhaps, we shall be inclined to admit that the physical order and the moral order, which in our consciousness appear to be different things, are identical in the unconscious; that conscious duality is derived from an unconscious unity, so that in the unconscious, matter and thought, object and subject, external and internal, are one. This special reconciliation of the physical and moral in man would thus lead to the reconciliation of the object in general with the subject in general, of the universe with thought.

This, it is true, is a metaphysical hypothesis, but then it is neither possible nor desirable to give up metaphysics and hypothesis. This hypothesis has been put forward by men who are as sturdy upholders of experience as are to be found, and who have treated psychology as a natural science. If we admit,' says Wundt, 'the identity of physical and psychical facts, then the former will

come under the laws of mechanics, and the latter to those of logic, and it can be shown that these two kinds of laws are identical, and that the inner experience apprehends as a logical necessity what the outer experience perceives as a mechanical necessity.' 'This,' says he, in another place, 'is what the analysis of the process of sensation comes to, viz. that logical necessity and mechanical necessity differ not in their essence, but simply according to our way of regarding them. That which is given to us by psychological analysis as a continuity of logical operations (Schlüsse), is given us also by physiological analysis as a continuity of mechanical effects (Kraftwirkungen). .. Logic and mechanism are identical; they are both only the form of essentially the same contents (gleichartigen Inhalt).1

CHAPTER II.

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND THE MORAL.

A PARTICULAR CASE.

We have just seen how the question of the general relations of the physical and the moral presents itself in our day. We would now pass from the theory to the facts, to consider a particular case, to resolve a single question, one, however, of capital importance for the matter in hand. The question is this :—

Must it be admitted that every psychological state, of whatever kind, has always a physiological state for its antecedent ?

The correlation of the physical and the moral is universally admitted, but this belief, when examined, is very vague and very inexact. The general view, and, what is more serious still, many philosophical treatises, seem to admit that this correlation holds good only in the gross, so to speak, and that frequently the body and the soul live each for itself. A few striking cases on either side are considered, all the rest being cast in the shade and forgotten. But, in fact, the thing is quite otherwise. Facts tend to

1 Menschen und Thierseele, 12th Lecture, p. 200, and 57th Lecture, p. 437.

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show more and more conclusively that this correlation is as complete as possible; that it is constant; that it is to be seen even in the most insignificant cases, and that it admits of no exception. It is of great importance for us to establish this truth here: for if we could succeed in showing it to be highly probable-as yet we cannot hope for certainty-that every psychological state supposes a physiological antecedent, a considerable advance would have been made in our inquiry into the causes. In the order of phenomena, all our science consists in demonstrating permanent coexistences and permanent successions. Suppose this permanent co-existence of a physiological and a psychological state established, we can then go further, and draw the deduction that in every individual an habitual mental state must answer to an habitual nervous state. The mental constitution of a poet and that of a mathematician imply each a physiological organization differing from the other in certain points. We can go further, and extend to the species what has just been said of the individual. The permanence of a certain turn of mind in a family during several generations supposes the permanence of certain corresponding physiological characters during the same number of generations. This leads us in the direction of the required answer, for to resolve a problem is to translate a proposition which implicitly contains a truth into another which gives a glimpse of it, and this in turn into another which exhibits it clearly.

For the present, let it suffice to establish our premisses. Evidently experience only can decide whether every psychological state is connected with a physiological state; this is a question of fact rather than of theory. Still, we cannot enumerate all possible cases; we cannot take all the states of consciousness in succession and show that they correspond, each with a particular nervous state. Such a demonstration would be endless, and it would, moreover, be in many cases impossible. We must, then, in accordance with Bacon's precept, confine ourselves to a few selected, striking, decisive facts, to experimenta lucifera which may serve as a basis for a sound induction. We will, then, show from examples that sentiments and ideas are referable to certain states of the organs, though at first sight they would seem to be entirely independent of them.

I.

At the lowest grade of psychological life, we meet with that infinite number of faint perceptions, scarcely conscious, of which the aggregate constitutes for every one that general feeling of existence, that Gemeingefühl, which is the ground on which our clear perceptions and our ideas are incessantly projected. This confused feeling, which is the resultant of a crowd of infinitesimal sensations, as the roar of the sea is the resultant of the noise of each wave, is so well described by L. Peisse, in his Notes on Cabanis, that we cannot do better than transcribe the passage.

'Is it quite certain that we have absolutely no consciousness of the exercise of the organic functions? If we mean a clear, distinct, and locally determinable consciousness, like that of external impressions, it is plain that we do not possess it'; but we may have an obscure, dim, and, so to speak, latent consciousness of them, analogous to our consciousness of the sensations which call forth and accompany the respiratory movements, sensations which, although incessantly repeated, pass as though they were not perceived. May we not, indeed, regard as a distant, feeble, and confused echo of the universal vital labour that remarkable feeling which, without cessation or remission, certifies us of the actual existence and presence of our own bodies? This feeling is nearly always, though improperly, confounded with those accidental and local impressions which, while we are awake, stimulate and keep up the play of sensibility. These sensations, though they are incessant, make but fugitive and transient appearances on the stage of consciousness, while the feeling of which we speak endures and persists beneath those shifting scenes. Condillac well named it. the fundamental sentiment of existence, and Maine de Birau the feeling of sensitive existence. In virtue of it, the body is ever present to the ego as its own, and the mental subject feels and perceives that it exists in some sort locally within the limited extent of the organism. It is a perpetual and unfailing monitor, making the state of the body ever present to the consciousness, and it manifests in an unmistakable way the indissoluble connection of psychical with physiological life. In the ordinary state of equilibrium which constitutes perfect health, this feeling is, as