Physiology proves Materialism to be true, and the following testimony to that fact by eminent scientific men is only a small part of what might be quoted of similar tenor:
Bain tells us: The most careful and studied observations of physiologists have shown beyond question, that the brain as a whole is indispensible to thought, feeling, and volition.
Dr. Ferrier says: The brain is the organ of mind, and that mental operations are possible only in and through it. This fact is so well established that we may start from it as we should from any ultimate fact.
Prof. Virchow, of Berlin, says: Every one must admit that without a brain, nay, more, without a good and well developed brain, the human mind has no existence.—Man has a mind and rational will only in as much and in so far as he possesses a brain.
Huxley says: What we call the operations of the mind are functions of the brain, and the materials of consciousness are products of cerebral activity. Sensations are products of the inherent properties of the thinking organ.
Tyndall says: We believe that every thought and every feeling has its definite mechanical correlative in the nervous system; that it is accompanied by a certain separation and remarshalling of the atoms of the brain.
Dr. Maudsley says: I do not go beyond what facts warrant, when I say that, when a thought occurs in the mind, there necessarily occurs a correlative change in the gray matter of the brain. Without it, the thought could not arise; with it, it can not fail to rise.
What is matter! I take a handful of earth in my hands, and into that dust I put seeds, and arrows from the eternal quiver of the sun smite it, and the seeds grow and bud and blossom, and fill the air with perfume in my sight. Do you understand that? Do you understand how this dust and these seeds and that light and this moisture produced that bud and that flower and that perfume? Do you understand that any better than you do the production of thought? Do you understand that any better than you do a dream? Do you understand that any better than you do the thoughts of love that you see in the eyes of the one you adore? Can you explain it? Can you tell what matter is? Have you the slightest conception? Yet you talk about matter as though you were acquainted with its origin; as though you had compelled, with clenched hands, the very rocks to give up the secret of existence. Do you know what force is? Can you account for molecular action? Are you familiar with chemistry? Can you account for the loves and hatreds of the atoms? Is there not something in matter that forever eludes you? Can you tell what matter really is? Before you cry Materialism, you had better find what matter is. Can you tell of anything without a material basis? Is it possible to imagine the annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible for you to conceive of the creation of a single atom? Can you have a thought that is not suggested to you by what you call matter? Did any man or woman or child ever have a solitary thought, dream or conception, that was not suggested to them by something they had seen in nature?—Ingersoll.