Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/260

232PROP. VIII.———— ensue? They are fulfilled when matter takes that form which we term a human organisation, and intellect is put forth accordingly. Mind, or the ego, is thus made a result contingent on certain material combinations. It is subordinated to the body; it holds its place by a very precarious tenure, and has no absolutely independent status.

8. Is there any weapon in the armoury of spiritualism by which this disagreeable conclusion can be effectually rebutted? There is not one, as spiritualism is at present provided. In vain does the spiritualist found an argument for the existence of a separate immaterial substance on the alleged incompatibility of the intellectual and the physical phenomena to coin here in the same substratum. Materiality may very well stand the brunt of that unshotted broadside. This mild artifice can scarcely expect to be treated as a serious observation. Such an hypothesis cannot be meant in earnest. Who is to dictate to nature—what phenomena or qualities can inhere in what substances—what effects may result from what causes? Why should not thought be a property or result of matter, just as well as extension, or hardness, or weight, or digestion, or electricity? The psychologist must show that this cannot be the case,