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CREATION.
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psychologist of note says, a feeling necessarily implies a being who feels. Cognitions and emotions cannot inhere in nothing, nor can volition be the function of a pure non-entity. Hence, they must be the states of a something which exists, consequently, of a substance.
As regards the simplicity of the soul, it is sufficient to point out that it cannot be a compound, since otherwise it would be incapable of discharging the functions which it does.
“Every one's experience," says Maher, “teaches him that he is capable of forming various abstract ideas, such as those of Being, Unity, Truth, Virtue and the like, which are of their nature simple, indivisible acts. Now, acts of this sort cannot flow from an extended * or composite substance, such as, for instance, the brain. This will be seen by a little reflexion. In order that the indivisible idea of, say, truth, be the result of the activity of this extended substance, either different parts of the idea must belong to different parts of the brain, or each part of the brain must be subject of an entire idea, or the whole idea must pertain to a single part of the brain. Now, the first alternative is absurd. The act by which the intellect apprehends truth, being, and the like, is an indivisible thought. It is directly incompatible with its nature to be allotted or distributed over an aggregate of separate atoms. But the second alternative is equally impossible. If different parts of the composite substance were each the basis of a complete idea, we should
* Mr. Maher's idea of inextension will become clear to the reader by a perusal of the following foot-note to page 444 of his . Psychology:
* The schoolmen expressed the former attribute-absence of extension or composition of integrant parts-by the term quantitative simplicity. The fact that the soul is not the result of a plurality of principles coalesciug to form a single nature (as, e.g., in their view the formal and material principles of all corporeal objects) they signified by asserting that it is essentially simple---simplex quoad essentiam,"
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