THE SOUL AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION: by Henry Travers

THE majority of people are not very original and independent in their thinking, and consequently prefer to await the sanction of some recognized authority before accepting a doctrine. For this reason it is scarcely just to lay all the blame on the institutions, ecclesiastical and otherwise, which supply this demand. For this reason, too, it will be a matter of considerable moment that a professor at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science should have brought forward arguments which, according to the report of his address, "help the belief that man has a soul."

The arguments brought forward are as old as man himself, it is true; but doctrines are judged largely according to their immediate source. Thus a new color, an additional weight, is given to the idea that the eye has been made by "some external agency cognizant of all the properties of light," and to the idea that the brain is an instrument played upon by some power that is not material. We have heard this from the pulpit, perhaps; now we hear it from the lecture table; so we can believe it a little more strongly than we did before.

The lecturer's cautious remarks, as gathered from a brief report, seem to indicate a belief on his part that there may be a soul after all. The report is headed, "Eye and Brain Show a Soul Possibly Independent of Life." His view is said to be regarded by physiologists as offering a great stimulus to research, and "it provides for the general public a new exposition of the theory of belief in a divinity." The eye and the brain are such wonderful instruments that they surely must have been made by some intelligent power. That is the argument, and it surely must have occurred to many people before. "The brain's workings and the will-power suggested," he said, "that the brain was mysteriously affected by invisible and untraceable harmonies." The following is of interest to Darwinists:

It was natural to suppose, he declared, the existence of some external agent over and above natural selection, which [latter] would have done no more than assist in the process.

Natural selection is in fact no more than a phrase descriptive of the process itself; it can neither help nor hinder, any more than the theory of the law of gravitation can pull down a stone or the calculus of probabilities affect the destiny of a soul.

One feels as if the ancient faiths of humanity, after being confirmed and appealed against times without number, had been laid before a final court of appeal, which, after many painstaking and protracted labors, had at last begun to hand down opinions, slowly and carefully. The existence of the soul has at last been established beyond all possible cavil. It has passed all the courts, there is no further appeal, it is law. The most irrational rationalist, the most credulous sceptic, the most visionary materialist, may now believe in the soul. There really is one. At least "there was some loophole for the view that mind was not directly associated with life or living matter, but only indirectly with certain dispositions of dynamic state that were sometimes present within certain parts of it." (Times report.) At present, then, we may believe in a soul—cautiously. One wonders if the British Association will ever get so far as to say that we must believe in a soul.

But why should there be only one soul? Why not separate souls for the eye, the brain, the heart, the liver—all equally wonderful? The fact is that such problems as this have been debated from time immemorial, and one can but refer the curious to the world's literature. While our learned men are cautiously speculating about "a soul," the literature of Hindûstân (to take a single instance), thousands of years old, summarizes the tenets of many different schools of philosophy on the subject of the various souls in man, the faculties of these souls, the nature of the mind, its numerous powers and functions, the inner senses and their external organs, and so forth. And back of all lies the inscrutable Self of man, the Master and possessor of all these powers. Verily we have much yet to learn—the road we are going. It looks like a snail verifying the tracks of a bird. It looks as if these physiologists had just arrived at the edge of the sea, near enough to get their feet wet so as to know there is a sea. And now they are talking about a promising field of investigation.

Of course these physiologists are souls, the same as the rest of us, and they have minds and other faculties which they use all the time. But what they are doing is to bring a little of this actual practical knowledge down to the plane of formal theory. An extraordinary duality of the mind, truly! To be a soul, to act as a soul, and yet to live half in and half out of a mental state wherein conditions are entirely different! One sometimes wonders what bearing these speculations have upon actual life at all. The achievements of science lie mainly in the region of applied mechanics and chemistry. Physiology brings us closer into contact with vital questions that cannot be ignored and that yet lie without the prescribed domain.

The zoological professor also indulged in a little flight of the imagination; for in lecturing on "The Greater Problems of Biology," he made "Wonderment" a part of his theme. He pointed out that the problems of consciousness and the mystery of the reasoning soul were not for the biologist but the psychologist.

Beyond and remote from physical causation lay the End, the Final Cause of the philosopher, the reason why, in the which were hidden the problems of organic harmony and autonomy and the mysteries of apparent purpose, adaptation, fitness, and design. Here, in the region of teleology, the plain rationalism that guided them through the physical facts and causes began to disappoint them, and Intuition, which was of close kin to Faith [capitals not ours], began to make herself heard.

This is enough to make Tyndall turn in his grave, thereby causing an earthquake in Scotland. He was so very satisfied with the plain rationalism, and died before it began to disappoint. What would he have said of Intuition, if not that it is a secretion of one of our glands? It seems to have taken a long time to realize that purpose, design, etc., are qualities of mind and not of matter. It is absolutely essential that physiologists should study mind and soul, even though their immediate object be the body. What geologist could adequately study the earth if he ignored the existence of the air and the sea?