Really, Mr. Ward, the
writer who cannot sufficiently befuddle himself and his readers in
fifty pages is not very skilful.

Nevertheless the Ward theory is one of the best that has ever been
gotten up by the champions of nescience, and is worthy of a statement
in the Journal as quite an improvement on the common expression of
materialistic stolidity. He claims that he does not deny immortality,
but he recognizes no immortality of man--no human soul. He recognizes
only the immortality of the world, such as it is, which nobody denies.
The future life of man he considers nothing but an illusion, though
there is an immortality of intelligence _here_ in successive forms.

The doctrine, is that spirit, intelligence, or consciousness is a part
of matter--that every atom has its own little share, which practically
amounts to nothing in its infinite subdivision, but when matter comes
into organized forms the spiritual powers thus aggregated and
organized become an efficient spiritual energy; and the higher the
organism the grander the power that is developed, man being the most
perfect organization evolves the grandest spiritual power, as a
superior violin evolves finer music than a tambourine. But the
intelligence and will of man are only phenomena, like the music, and
have no existence beyond that of the organism that produces them. This
is substantially the theory of materialists generally, and of the old
school medical colleges which consider human life a mere product of
human tissues in combination--a doctrine conclusively refuted in
"Therapeutic Sarcognomy."

The special merit of the Ward theory lies in the supposition that mind
and matter are elements everywhere inseparably united, and that human
intelligence is developed by the aggregation and organization of the
mind powers that reside in the atoms of matter,--an explanation which
does not often occur to the exponents of materialism,--and has the
merit of ingenuity. The theory would do very well if it were not
demonstrable that life exists only from influx, and that human life
and personality survive the body, and become known to every highly
organized sensitive, who knows how to investigate such matters.

The Ward theory demolishes the Deity with the greatest ease, and
places man, fleeting or evanescent as he is, at the summit of the
universe! As he expresses it, "The only intelligence in the universe
worthy of the name is the intelligence of the organized beings wh