Finally,[171]
At our death there disappears only the individual form in which the nerve-substance was fashioned, and the personal "soul" which represented the work performed by this. The complicated chemical combinations of that nervous mass pass over into other combinations—by decomposition, and the kinetic energy produced by them is transformed into other forms of nature.[{131}]
| Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, |
| Might stop a hole to keep the wind away, etc.— |
* * * * *
which lines others besides Haeckel are fond of quoting on this subject as if they had any possible connexion with it. It would be more to the point, and far more interesting, were some indication afforded of the chemical equivalent of the qualities which made Cæsar imperial, or those which distinguished the author of the above lines from the bards of our Music Halls. That, when a man is no more, his material part may serve various material purposes, is no more than was known to the first savage who made a drum with his enemy's skin, or used his skull for a drinking-cup.
As has been said, the Monistic philosophy claims to be above all things scientific, and upon this ground are we bidden to accept it. But what is the meaning of this claim? The one argument, apart from mere assertion, brought to show that spirit is not distinct from matter, is drawn from the part undoubtedly played by the brain in the process of thought, though we see far less in this, as in other connexions, than the assertions made by unscientific writers might lead us to imagine. But when all this is most fully acknowledged can it be said that the state of the question is changed from what it was? To listen to Monists, it might be supposed that the intimate connexion[{132}] between soul and body is a new discovery, undreamt of in former ages,—and that we have now arrived at a demonstration that it is our material part that actually does our thinking. But, as a matter of fact, like other fundamental questions, this is exactly as it has ever been, and so far as Science is concerned, we are just as much in the dark respecting it as men ever were. Though the philosophers of former days were unaware of all the departmental details of brain activity, they understood as well as we do the essential point, that in our composite nature soul and body form one being, whose every operation is of mixed character like itself. The soul alone is the intelligent principle, yet all objects of knowledge must come to it through sense, and in the senses it can be reached only by the mechanical media of light, or sound, or touch. So firm was their grip of this principle that the Schoolmen styled the soul the "substantial form" of the body, and in their mouth this term expressed a union more essential and intimate than modern philosophers can perhaps imagine.
And, on the other hand, have all the results of modern research brought anything to light which tends to show that matter can by any possibility think? We are assured on the contrary, upon unimpeachable authority, that however we may succeed in tracing the mechanical processes of sensation to their furthest limit, it remains absolutely inconceivable to us how the gulf is crossed[{133}] that lies between this and rational perception. So Professor Tyndall tells us:[172]
The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiments of an organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded 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 and electrical 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 remains still intellectually impassable.
With these views Professor Huxley[173] expresses his agreement, and although he contrives to confuse the issue very considerably, as is not unusual when he undertakes to philosophize, he lays down in the clearest possible terms that nothing whatever is known as to the connexion of mechanical processes with thought, whence it follows that on this point Science has nothing to tell us.[{134}]
"I really know nothing whatever [he writes] and never hope to know anything, of the steps by which the passage from molecular movement to states of consciousness is effected."