[26] The imagination of certain psychologists seems to have gone rampant upon this subject; one writer, M. Moreau, of Tours, maintained that genius was a nervous disease—"le génie est une névrose"; and in order that there may be no mistake about his meaning, he adds that "the constitution of many men of genius is in reality the same as that of idiots!" M. Moreau's doctrine may thus be summarised in his own words:—"Les dispositions d'esprit qui font qu'un homme se distingue des autres hommes par l'originalité de ses pensées et de ses conceptions, par son excentricité on l'énergie de ses facultés affectives, par la transcendance de ses facultés intellectuelles, prennent leur source dans les mêmes conditions organiques que les divers troubles moraux, dont la folie et l'idiotie sont l'expression la plus complète."
[27] Le Cerveau et la Pensée, par Paul Janet Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1867, p. 58. This learned treatise contains an immense deal of information in reference to the mysterious connection between matter and mind, and I have found it of great service to me in my psychological researches.
[28] "Nineteenth Century," March, 1880, p. 509.
[29] "Darwinism Tested by Language," Rivington, 1877; "Aphasia or Loss of Speech, and the Localisation of the Faculty of Language," 2nd edition, Churchills, 1890. The reader is referred to these treatises, and especially to his work on Darwinism, for a fuller exposition of the author's views, here only incidentally sketched; and also for a more complete knowledge of the scientific facts and different authorities quoted in support of the position here taken in reference to the connection between Matter and Mind.
[30] "Das Leben ist nur ein besonderer, und zwar der complicirteste Act der Mechanik; ein Theil der Gesammtmaterie tritt von Zeit zu Zeit aus dem gewöhnlichen Gange ihrer Bewegungen heraus in besondre organisch-chemische Verbindungen, und nachdem er eine Zeit lang darin verharrt hat, kehrt er weider zu den allgemeinen Bewegungsverhältnissen zurück."—
Gesammte Abhandlungen zu wissenschaftlicher Medicin s. 25.
[31] One of the leaders of scientific thought in this country tells us that "Life is composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated," and it has been gravely stated that the production of man in the chemist's retort may be recorded as one of the future discoveries of the age!
A clever French writer, commenting on these purely hypothetical statements of the "mechanistic school," makes the following appropriate remarks:—
"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."