Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/298

268 as these, it might be well to ask who stands sponsor for the theory that man is a soul with a power of "picking up plastic material," and by what series of observations it is claimed that the theory has been proved. To such an inquiry we hardly think any very satisfactory answer could be returned. The theory is certainly not entertained by another writer who contributes an article on The Brain in the Light of Science to the same magazine in which we find the article now commented on. and who pointedly rejects the idea that there is "something called 'intelligence' inhabiting the brain, but apart and entirely distinct from its structure."

That such views are fraught with practical danger is evident on further examination. The writer to whom we are referring will not allow that a draught can cause one to take cold. It can only be the occasion of taking cold; the real cause is the individual's "susceptibility." Continuing, he says: "A dozen persons are equally exposed to a contagion or malaria. Only half of them take it. Subjective conditions made the-wide difference between opposite results." Again we are disposed to ask for the authority for such a statement. It is very positively made, but that it admits of any kind of proof we doubt. What we do know is that physical conditions affect the result in such a case. The various forms of inoculation that are constantly being practiced afford proof that, independently of all subjective conditions, diseases can, with a large measure of certainty, be either communicated to, or warded off from, a given individual by the infusion of some suitable preparation into the blood. That subjective conditions have no more to do with the case than "the flowers that bloom in the spring" is shown by the fact that the most precise results can be obtained from operations on inferior animals such as rabbits and mice. Diphtheria is being controlled in the most remarkable manner by the antitoxine treatment; and it has lately been shown that a transfusion of serum from an individual who has shown a lack of susceptibility to a given disease will tend to produce immunity to that disease in another. The writer we have quoted states in an offhand manner that susceptibility is a matter of "subjective conditions," but these experiments prove that it is a matter of physical constitution; for it will hardly be contended that "subjective conditions" are transferred from one individual to another with a little serum.

The writer, it is true, does not advise people to sit in a draught and "resolve not to take cold." He says that "temporary surface thinking, though good, if in the right direction, can hardly transform one to a perceptible degree; that radical invigoration can only come from a sustained and focalized attitude of mind, which is attained through the firm holding of positive ideals." Then, if we firmly hold positive ideals, and so get a sustained and focalized attitude of mind, we can sit in as many draughts as we choose with perfect impunity. This or nothing is the teaching of these sentences. But how are we to know whether our mental attitude is sufficiently sustained and focalized to justify us in sitting in draughts? Is there not danger lest experiments should be prematurely made? An old Scotchman in the last century, when hard drinking was the rule, said that he had never known f any man dying of drink, but that he had known a good many who had died in training for it. So it might be in this matter of training for sitting in draughts. The supreme adepts might be immune, but those whose minds were not yet adequately focalized