Los Angeles herald., 1891-09-27
WHERE'S YOUR EGO?
A Criticism on Rev. Savage's
Assertion.
An Attempt to Locate Self
Consciousness.
The Boston Thinker Claims That 1t
Exists Throughout the Body.
That Proposition COntrOverted = Easy
Experiments Which Show That
the Brain is the Home
of the Ego.

Or. J. Minot Savage in his brilliant lee
ture at the Los Angeles theater Satur-
day night in answering the question,
Where does the consciousness in man,
the ego, the l, reside, asserted that it
was omnipresent throughout his organ
ism, or throughout his entire body.
That this proposition is altogether
erroneous is, think, susceptible of veri-
fication in various ways, by any person
of average intelligence. The easiest
and simplest way is by what should
call the negative method i. e., in what
part of ones body does his conscious
ness not reside? Moreover, in answer
ing this very important question, the
consciousness itself should or ought to
be the sole judge of the evidence.
Thus is my hand or my foot con-
scious? That is to say, (for want OF
better speech,) does the eye of that
within me which is conscious, which
knows, my "mind's eye"look out of
my hand or OF my foot or of my breast?
know that it does not and l can verify
this knowledge by an infinite variety OF
experiments; and, others by different
but equally satisfactory experiments
can easily duplicate and thus corrob-
crate my experience.
The nervous system of the human or
ganism is like the telegraphic system
which radiates from central telegraph
Office. 1t is always in connection (when
in normal condition), and reports i'm
pressions automatically and instantane-
ously to the central Office in the crani-
um or brain where the consciousness re-
sides and whittier all the telegraphic
ganglia converge or concenter. Because
the sensitive nerves at their outward ex-
tremities are susceptible to impressions,
and because those same nerves are capa-
BILE of conveying those impressions to
the central intelligence, it does not by
any means follow that they (the nerves.
possess intelligence any more than that
because telegraph wires are capable
OF transmitting chemical or other
impressions, they therefore them
selves must possess intelligence.
If close my eyes and all my senses ex
cept the sense of touch to the outer
world, can satisfy myself by the ire
fragable testimony OF consciousness it.
self, that if | touch say the right side of
my head, my minds eye must look to
the right to locate the sensation pro-
duced, as well as the direction of the
same from my real self, or to the left to
locate similar sensation on the left or
upward when I touch the top of my
head: or downward when | touch any
other part of my body. And thus am
gradually able to demonstrate, as every
person may, that our consciousness must
be located within the Uranium, and
nowhere else. Although all organized
matter is more or less susceptible to i'm
pressions from without, it is not neces-
sarily conscious. Vegetable organisms
respond to the influence of warmth,
moisture, etc; flowers open to the sun,
and close at night; but we do not sup
pose that any of these things ever at
tains consciousness.
Although that subtle eff1orescence of
organized matter which we call spirit
call it what we will, it is that within us
which we recognize as our real self and
which distinguishes man from an au-
tomaton-may have its genesis in sensi-
tive membranes; and although it is
connected with the material world
through the medium of the senses;
though its seat or home is in the gray
matter of the brain, none of these things
not one of them all-possesses intelli-
gence.
But this is too large question to dis
cuss adequately within the limits of
necessarily brief newspaper article. The
palpable error Of DIR. Savage in assuming
that mans consciousness resides in every
part of his body, and his momentous de-
duction therefrom that God is immanent
and not transcendent in the universe,
that he resides in matter and not outside
of it, are my excuse for referring to the
subject even in this hurried and unsat-
isfactory manner.
/ believe there is material constitu
ton of things and a spiritual constitu-
ton of things, as very acute classic
writer of antiquity by the name of Paul
thought; and if SO, it would seem slight
ly presumptuous for DR.. Savage or any
other finite mortal to insist with too
much confidence, that the great Supreme
Intelligence of the universe may not
possibly have central headquarters
somewhere in His spiritual realms
which, in the very nature of things,
are not and never can be appreciable
other order of beings, for, though mat
ter and spirit co-exist, the former does
not comprehend the latter; but that the
latter does comprehend the former is
truth that is taught us by the unchal-
lengeable evidence of our own conscious
ness. b.
Los Angeles, September "a, 1891.
viii Be Given Away.
All of our leading druggists are givil &