[Footnote 3: The following anecdote has no conceivable right to be introduced on the present occasion; but I had it on the same authority, and it is a pity it should be lost. As our fleet was bearing down upon the enemies’ line at Trafalgar, Nelson paced the quarter-deck of the Victory with Sir Thomas Hardy. After a short silence, touching his left thigh with his remaining hand, Nelson said, “I’d give that, Hardy, to come out of this.”] I am not sure that my new principle will be a general favourite. It will be said that the cases, in which I suppose it manifested, are of too trivial a nature to justify so novel a hypothesis. My answer is, the cases are few and trivial only because the subject has not been attended to. For how many centuries were the laws of electricity preindicated by the single fact that a piece of amber, when rubbed, would attract light bodies! Again, the school of physiological materialists will of course be opposed to it. They hold that the mind is but a function or product of the brain, and cannot therefore consistently admit its separate action. But their fundamental tenet is unsound, even upon considering the analogies of matter alone. What is meant by a product?—in what does production consist? Let us look for instances: a metal is produced from an ore; alcohol is produced from saccharine matter; the bones and sinews of an animal are produced from its food. Production, in the common signification of the word, means the conversion of one substance into another, weight for weight, agreeably with, or under, mechanical, chemical, and vital laws. I speak, of course, of material production. But the case of thought is parallel. The products of the poet’s brain are but recombinations of former ideas. Production, with him, is but a rearrangement of the elements of thought. His food may turn into or produce new brain; but it is the mental impressions he has stored which turn into new imagery. To say that the brain turns into thought, is to assert that consciousness and the brain are one and the same thing, which would be an idle abuse of language.