Cerebral physiology and materialism, with the result of the application of animal magnetism to the cerebral organs, an address... / by W.C. Engledue ; with a letter from Dr. Elliotson, on mesmeric phrenology and materialism.

  • Engledue, W. C. (William Collins), 1814-1859.
Date:
1842
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cerebral physiology and materialism, with the result of the application of animal magnetism to the cerebral organs, an address... / by W.C. Engledue ; with a letter from Dr. Elliotson, on mesmeric phrenology and materialism. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Permit me to say one word upon Materialism—a sound which generally excites certain feelings blindly, without any participation of the intellect. No fact in nature is more evident than that in certain conditions matter thinks. Every animal is matter : every indisputable animal has a portion of itself peculiarly compounded and organized, and termed nervous, which exe¬ cutes the functions of feeling and consciousness, desire and will. In pro¬ portion as the composition and organization of this are more exquisite, and its developments more considerable, the faculties are more numerous and powerful. The organ is subject to every influence and every change to which all other organs are subject; and every change in it changes the mental functions, as much as changes in other organs change their functions. The brain and its functions are subject to precisely the same laws as the other portions of the body and their functions. To ascribe the properties of the brain to a spirit, or something distinct from matter, is as childish as it would be to ascribe the property of gravitation, the phenomena of light, heat, electricity, or the properties of plants, to something distinct from mat¬ ter. To call matter gross, and say it is incapable of the highest and most exquisite properties, is untrue. Its particles are indefinitely minute: its properties are most exquisite, as seen in the phenomena of light, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, gravitation, all acting with astounding rapidity through the immensity of space, and in the phenomena of vegetable life, where beauty of all kinds, and properties of affecting particular animals and particular parts of animals in endless surprising manners, are the results of its peculiar composition and organization. Grant this, say some; but still you would not be so stupid, nay so impious, as to assert that matter can think and will, and have a consciousness of per¬ sonality? Yes, I do assert it; for this is the fact. There it is; there it has been ; and there it will be. All animals will and think, and have a conscious¬ ness of personality :—the whale and each of the animalcules which are not larger than the three or four hundredth part of an inch. If a spirit is required for thinkiug and willing, and for the sense of personality, every one of these microscopic creatures must have a spirit or a soul. Away with such nonsense. “All the difficulties that are raised against the thinking of matter,” says Locke, “ from our ignorance or narrow conceptions, stand not in the way of the power of God, if he pleases to ordain it so.” “ The faculties of brutes prove either that God can and doth give to some parcels of matter, a power of conception and thinking ; or that all animals have immaterial, and conse¬ quently immortal, souls as well as men : and to say that fleas, and mites, &c. have immortal souls as well as men, will possibly be looked on as going a great way to secure an hypothesis.” Second Reply to the Bishop of Wor¬ cester, p.466, 8vo. ed. “A particle,” says Paley, “does no less than fix whether that which is about to be produced, shall be a vegetable, a merely sentient, or a rational being—an oak, a frog, or a philosopher.” Natural Theology, conclusion, p. 591. The Christian should think it impious to hold