physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and
feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our
DIS-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth,
for every one of them without exception flows from the state of
its possessor's body at the time.

It is needless to say that medical materialism draws in point of
fact no such sweeping skeptical conclusion. It is sure, just as
every simple man is sure, that some states of mind are inwardly
superior to others, and reveal to us more truth, and in this it
simply makes use of an ordinary spiritual judgment. It has no
physiological theory of the production of these its favorite
states, by which it may accredit them; and its attempt to
discredit the states which it dislikes, by vaguely associating
them with nerves and liver, and connecting them with names
connoting bodily affliction, is altogether illogical and
inconsistent.

Let us play fair in this whole matter, and be quite candid with
ourselves and with the facts. When we think certain states of
mind superior to others, is it ever because of what we know
concerning their organic antecedents? No! it is always for two
entirely different reasons. It is either because we take an
immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them
to bring us good consequential fruits for life. When we speak
disparagingly of "feverish fancies," surely the fever-process as
such is not the ground of our disesteem--for aught we know to the
contrary, 103 degrees or 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be a much
more favorable temperature for truths to germinate and sprout in,
than the more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees. It is