The Accordance of Religion with Nature

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. That our Minds are not necessarily connected with our present Bodies. DISPUTES have been carried on from the most ancient times as to the nature of Mind; some asserting it to be a separate and distinct Substance; others holding it to be a Power or Property belonging to certain systems of organized matter, or a Result of Organization.! It does not appear to me, that any arguments have hitherto been advanced sufficient to decide this question. Those most confidently urged have not been positive arguments on either side, but have taken the form of objections against the opposite doctrine; tending, therefore, rather to show the difficulties besetting either view, than determining the point at issue. Against the doctrine of Mind being a separate Substance it is argued, that, in thus assuming the existence of an unknown substance to account for the manifestation of mind, we infringe an acknowledged rule of philosophizing--that of not admitting more causes than are necessary for the production of phenomena; but that the phenomena in question are sufficiently accounted for by considering Mind as a property of the brain: that, since Mind is universally found wherever there is a brain, but never without one, the inference is legitimate, that it is a property of that substance: just as Newton's inference was legitimate with respect to Gravity being a property of matter. f The opinion, that Mind is matter itself, deserves no consideration, as it can be so called only by confounding the common acceptations of the words Matter and Mind. The man who asserts that Mind is Matter, must mean, if he means anything, that Mind is something which is extended and resists compression: for such is everything included in the word Matter--evidently a gratuitous ass...