, than of _thinking_; and yet men are
allowed to say that the body thinks, without being regarded as
candidates for a lunatic asylum. We see the seed shoot up into stem and
leaf and throw out flowers; we observe it fulfilling processes of
chemistry more subtle than were ever executed in Liebig's laboratory,
and producing structures more cunning than man can imitate. The bird
builds her nest, the spider shapes out its delicate web, and stretches
it in the path of his prey; directed not by calculating thought, as we
conceive ourselves to be, but by some motive influence, our ignorance of
the nature of which we disguise from ourselves, and call it instinct,
but which we believe at least to be some property residing in the
organisation. We are not to suppose that the human body, the most
complex of all material structures, has slighter powers in it than the
bodies of a seed, a bird, or an insect. Let us listen to Spinoza
himself:--

There can be no doubt (he says) that this hypothesis is true; but
unless I can prove it from experience, men will not, I fear, be
induced even to reflect upon it calmly, so persuaded are they that
it is by the mind only that their bodies are set in motion. And yet
what body can or cannot do no one has yet determined; body, _i.e._,
by the law of its own nature, and without assistance from mind. No
one has so probed the human frame as to have detected all its
functions and exhausted the list of them; there are powers exhibited
by animals far exceeding human sagacity; and, again, feats are
performed by somnambulists on which in the waking state the same
persons would never venture--itself a proof that body is able to
accomplish what mind can only admire. Men _say_ that mind moves
body, but how it moves it they cannot tell, or what degree of motion
it can impart to it; so that, in fact, they do not know what they
say, and are only confessing their own ignorance in specious
language. They will answer me, that whether or not they understand
how it can be, yet that they are assured by plain experience that
unless mind could perceive, body would be altogether inactive; they
know that it depends on the mind whether the tongue speaks or is
silent. But do they not equally experience that if their bodies are
paralysed their minds cannot think?--that if their bodies are asleep
their minds are without power?--that their mi