_"Quand on nous dit que l'organisme des êtres vivants n'est qu'un laboratoire où tout se passe en combinaisons et en compositions des éléments matériels primitifs, on oublie que ce laboratoire est habité par un hôte intime, le principe vital qui ne fait qu'un avec les éléments en fusion. Ici la combinaison chimique ne se fait pas toute seule; elle s'opère sous l'action d'une cause qui en transforme les éléments de façon à en faire un produit d ordre nouveau qui s'appelle la vie."--"La Vie et la Matière," par E. Vacherot, Revue des Deux Mondes,"_ 1878. [32] In an original and very remarkable essay, entitled "The Brain not the Sole Organ of the Mind," Dr. Hammond, of New York, says, "There is no exception to the law that mental development is in direct proportion to the amount of grey matter entering into the composition of the nervous system of any animal of any kind whatever; and that in estimating mental power, we should be influenced by the absolute and relative quantity of _grey nerve tissue_, in which respect we shall find man stands pre-eminent, although, as we have already seen, his brain, _as a whole_, is relatively much smaller than that of many other animals; and it is to this preponderance of grey matter that Man owes the great mental development which places him so far above all other living beings. As this grey tissue is not confined to the brain, but a large proportion of it is found in the ganglia of the sympathetic and some other nerves, and as an amount second only to that of the brain in quantity--and, indeed, in some animals larger--is present as an integral constituent of the spinal cord, Dr. Hammond infers, and he cites numerous experiments in support of this inference, that mental power must be conceded to the spinal cord, and that the brain can no longer be considered as the sole organ of the mind." [33] "The Physical Basis of Mind." Page 441. [34] The late Bishop of Carlisle illustrates the independence of the Ego, by an allusion to moral feelings. "A murderer," he says, "is convicted twenty years after the offence had been committed, or he gives himself up after so many years, because his memory and his conscience make his life miserable. He has no doubt as to the fact that the person who did the deed of darkness years ago, is the same person as he who feels the pangs of remorse to-day. Every material particle in his body may have changed since then, but there is a continuity in his spiritual being out of which he cannot be argued, even if any ingenious sophist should attempt the task."--_Nineteenth Century_, March, 1880, p. 510. [35] To those who may wish to pursue this subject further, I recommend a perusal of an essay on "Materialistic Physiology," in the _Journal of Psychological Medicine_ for April, 1877. In this article, the writer, Dr. Winn, seems to share my views as to the paramount importance of boldly facing this matter, when he says--