196 The First and Great Commandment
is confirmed when we turn to our certain faith in God.
Then, in the consciousness of the self, in the certainty that
there is an ego or soul, in the reality of persisting personal
identity, in the memory which makes the being the same
being through life—it becomes indubitable that we have a
personality which is not a mere series of thoughts; not a
product of nor identical with the brain mechanism. The
created and finite “I” within the human being stands apart
from the physical particles and movements of the brain—
self-identifying as a cause which creates volitions and can
start into activity the brain instrument. The substantial
spiritual self is mysteriously connected with its present ma-
terial instrument; but is no more to be explained away at
one end as a mere phase of perishable matter than it is
to be explained at the other end, in pantheistic error, as an
impersonal part of a universal and impersonal thought
process.
Mr. Tyndall said: “The passage from the physics of the
brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthink-
able.” To like effect Mr. Huxley is also to be quoted:
“I cannot conceive,” says he, “how the phenomena of con-
sciousness as such, and apart from the physical forces by
which they are called into existence, are to be brought
within the bounds of physical science.”
On one side the soul, the spiritual self, is not to be
merged into the material brain; nor, on the other side, is
the separate and independent personality of the human
being to be merged in the universe, or a universe untruly
asserted to be identical with God. The pantheism which
would deny the personality both of the Creator and the
human creature is refuted not only by its conflict with rea-
son, but by the facts of man’s moral nature; the facts of
free will, obligation and responsibility. Long ago it was