question at issue; and it really does not matter two pins for practical purposes whether the mind is extended and inert (in the scientific sense), or unextended and devoid of inertia. One has only to substitute clear conceptions for vague terms, and the whole controversy is reduced to absurdity. Whichever side wins in the academic battle about the nature of mind, it remains as true as ever that the cultivation of mind is one of the most important aims that men can set up. Why on earth should we be less disposed to cultivate the mind of the race if some sudden turn of scientific advance were to prove it “a function of the brain” ? It remains true that our race owes the position it occupies entirely to mind: that our civilisation owes its ascendancy over barbarism to mind: and that we rely entirely on the further cultivation of mind—of intelligence, will, and emotion—to destroy those shams which impede our progress and curtail our prosperity and happiness. It is ludicrous to say that we cannot thus cultivate mind unless we believe it to be an indivisible and incomprehensible and indefinable something. It would, in fact, be less absurd to say that we should have more confidence in our power to cultivate mind if we regarded it as an organic function, subject to definite treatment.
As to the lapse of a belief in personal immortality, it is not less absurd to say that this would paralyse our efforts. As Ruskin says on the point: “The shortness of life is not, to any rational person,
