The incontestable, although inexplicable, deliverance of consciousness is, that there are two great movements which take place within the mind—the one spontaneous, and the other reflex; the one movement prompted only by the native activity of the mind itself, and the other the movement of the will. Now, those who push their phrenology into materialism, having discovered that the tendencies to peculiar modes of thought and peculiar modes of action are to some extent dependent upon bodily organization, are not slow to tell us that their characters are formed for them, not by them. But this reasoning completely overlooks the fact that they have got a rational will, armed with complete power to control and regulate these tendencies; therefore it is altogether illogical. Even were we to admit that the mental spontaneity is directly influenced by the bodily organization, the asserted consequence would by no means follow. For just as the farmer can plough and sow and harrow, and thus subordinate the spontaneity of nature, and direct that power into the useful channel of producing food, instead of the useless channel of producing briers and thorns, so you can modify, control, and regulate the spontaneity of the mind. Experience teaches you that you can break the threads of the web of thought, arrest the procession of the grand and beautiful, and throw discord into harmony: and where power exists, there exists responsibility.
We say, then, that in the concession we have made of a spontaneity directly influenced by material organization, there is no proof whatever that you are not accountable both for your belief and your actions; because consciousness teaches you that above and beyond every such influence there presides reason, and there exists a will. This important subject is most admirably discussed in a small pamphlet by Professor Martin, of Aberdeen, entitled, “Creed and Circumstance.” To adopt the well-chosen words of the professor: “May the day soon come when it shall be deemed of as great importance to the wellbeing of society that the laws of that chemistry, of which the human mind is the laboratory, shall be the subject of instruction, as the laws of that other chemistry whose laboratory is the world. Enough, however, is it for us at present, that in the domain, both of the material and the mental, there is ample scope for the highest energies and the most enlightened reason.”