were gifted with
consciousness, it could not preserve its personal identity, but
merely its phenomenal identity, for any two successive moments,
since its whole being would consist of an untied succession of
states.

Traversing the body from its extreme tissues to the gray vesicular
substance composing the spinal cord and covering the surface and
convolutions of the brain, are two sets of white, fibrous nerves.
One set, the afferents, bring in sensation, all kinds of tidings,
from the out world of matter. The other set, the efferents, carry
out volition, all kinds of decrees, from the in world of mind.
Without an afferent nerve no influence of the world can reach the
mind; and without an efferent nerve no conclusion of the mind can
reach the world. As we are now constituted, this machinery is
necessary for the intercommunication of the mind and the material
universe. But if there be something in the case besides live
machinery and crossing telegrams, if there be a monarch mind
inaccessible to the vulgar crowd of things and only conversing
with them through the internuncial nerves, that spirit entity may
itself be capable of existing forever in an ideal universe and of
communing there face to face with its own kingly lineage and
brood. And we maintain that the account of the phenomena is
grossly defective, and that the phenomena themselves are palpably
inexplicable, except upon the supposition of such an entity, which
uses the organism but is not the organism itself nor a function of
it. "Ideas," one materialist teaches, "are transformed
sensations." Yes; but that does not supersede a transforming mind.
There must be a force to produce the transformations. "The
phenomena of mind," says another, "consist in a succession of
states of consciousness." Yes; but what is it that presides over,
takes up, and preserves this succession? The phenomena of the mind
are not the mind itself. "The actions of the mind are the
functions of the cerebrum," adds a third. Yes; but the inquiry is,
what is the mind itself? not, what are its acts? The admission of
the gray nerve cells of the brain, as the material substratum
through which sensations are received and volitions returned, does
not exclude the necessity of a dynamical cause for the
metamorphosing phenomenon. That cause must be free and
intelligent, because the products of its action, as well as its
accompanying consciousness, are marked by freedom and intelligence.
For example,