Indissoluble, one calls it, and yet nothing
is more patent than the fact that it is a union which is invariably
and inevitably dissolved in death; while on the other hand, one
sees in certain physical catastrophes, such as paralysis, brain-
concussion, senile decay, insanity, the soul apparently reduced to
the condition of a sleeping partner, or so far deranged as to be
unable to express anything but some one dominant emotion; or, more
bewildering still, one sees the moral sense seemingly suspended by
a physical disorder. And yet for all that, the doctrine may be
essentially and substantially true; the vitality of the soul may be
bound up with its power of expressing itself in material terms. It
may be that the soul-stuff, which we call life, has an existence
apart from its material manifestation, and that individuality, as
we see it, may be a mere phenomenon of the passage of a force, like
the visibility of electricity under certain conditions; indeed it
seems more probable that matter is a function of thought rather
than thought a function of matter. It is likely enough that animals
have no conscious sense of any division of aims, any antagonism
between physical and mental desires; but as the human race
develops, the imagination, the sense of the opposition between the
reason and the appetite, begins to emerge. Man becomes aware that
his will and his wish may not coincide; and thus develops the
medieval theory of asceticism, the belief that the body is
essentially vile, and suggests base desires to the mind, which the
mind has the power of controlling.
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