Note (return) — Chapter XIII
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he will not permit any mental phenomena to suggest to him the idea of an incorporeal spiritual substance. Matter, under any form known to Epicurus, is confessedly insufficient to explain sensation and thought; a "nameless something" must be supposed. But may not "that principle which lies entirely hid, and remains in secret" 819--and about which even Epicurus does not know any thing--be a spiritual, an immaterial principle? For aught that he knows it may as properly be called "spirit" as matter. May not sensation and cognition be the result of the union of matter and spirit; and if so, may not their mutual affections, their common sympathies, be the necessary conditions of sensation and cognition in the present life? A reciprocal relation between body and mind appears in all mental phenomena. A certain proportion in this relation is called mental health. A deviation from it is termed disease. This proportion is by no means an equilibrium, but the perfect adaptation of the body, without injury to its integrity, to the purposes of the mind. And if this be so, all the arguments of materialism fall to the ground.