These are the “psychic cells” in whose microscopic laboratory is worked the magic of mind, transforming waves of impact, some into sweet music, others into colour and light and all the glory of the landscape; changing sights and sounds into emotions of joy or dread; transmitting them into passions or lusts; assorting the gathered stores of comparison, and from them building ideas base or noble, and awakening the Will to direct the use of all.
The Question of Soul.—But, it will be exclaimed, in this discussion of Mind, is nothing to be said of a Soul? Has man not an immortal element which removes him infinitely from the brute which perishes, and which guarantees his personal existence after death?
The answer of modern science is that between “mind” and “soul” no distinction can be drawn; and that this very quality of “ideation” is not a sudden acquisition, some free gift of the gods, bestowed full-blown and perfected, but the development of a very slow process, traceable in its beginnings in some beasts, faint in the lowest men, strictly conditioned on the growth of articulate expression, far from complete in the ripest intellects. It neither excludes nor assumes persistence after corporeal death. We may use the word “soul,” therefore, because it is rich in associations; but use it as a synonym of “mind.”
The soul is not some transcendental substance outside of the individual, but exists by virtue of the connection of his psychic processes with each other. This does not lessen the reality of his personal existence, but explains it.
As for the relation which mind or soul in general bears to the material external world, most thinkers are of opinion now that the contrast formerly supposed to exist is one merely of view-point; that natural science considers all our experiences as external, while mental science studies them as wholly internal.
Are the Mental Faculties the Same in Man Everywhere?—The lines thus clearly drawn between the human and the brute mind, we ask, do they hold good for the whole human species, of all races and degrees of culture? And has man in the past always possessed these faculties which have been thus attributed to him alone of all organised beings?
To these inquiries I shall address myself.
It is true, as I shall have many occasions to show hereafter, that in mental endowment tribes and races widely differ; but so do individuals of the same race, even of the same family; and in regard to many of these differences we can so accurately put our finger on what brings it about that we have but to alter conditions in order to alter endowments.
The Fuegian savage is one of the worst specimens of the genus; but put him when young in an English school, and he will grow up an intelligent member of civilised society. However low man is, he can be instructed, improved, redeemed; and it is this most cheering fact which should encourage us in incessant labour for the degraded and the despised of humanity.
There is another proof, strong, convincing, of the substantial sameness of the human mind throughout the species. This is Language, articulate speech. No tribe has ever been known in history or ethnography but had a language ample for its needs. The speechless man, Homo alalus, is a fiction of a philosopher. He never lived.