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in order to prevent misconceptions as to my own position, that I do not regard the explanation of life by mechanical and chemical causes as absurd or impossible, or as involving any difficulties nearly so great as those which consciousness or mind presents to materialism.

NOTE XVIII., page 173.

MATERIALISM AND MIND.

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My chief reason for passing so briefly over the materialistic attempts to account for mental phenomena is the manifest inadequacy of these attempts. When materialism comes to deal with mind it simply breaks down. has not as yet been able to bring forward any fact which proves more than that the mind is intimately connected with, and largely dependent on, the body-a conclusion which affords no support to materialism.

It may be of use to note some of the more prominent respects in which materialism fails when it undertakes to account for mind.

I. It leaves unexplained the fact that physical and mental phenomena are distinguished by differences far greater than any of those which distinguish other phenomena. Materialists represent the contrasts between matter and mind as similar to the distinctions between different states of matter. This only shows that they do not realise what the facts of the case are. The unlikeness between any physical and any mental phenomenon is incomparably greater than the unlikeness between any two physical phenomena. It is an entirely peculiar un

likeness. What is called matter may pass through many stages, may assume many phases, and may perform many functions; but in all its transformations, even the most surprising, it never ceases to be an object of sense, a something external, extended, bounded, divisible, movable, &c.; while no phenomenon of mind-no thought, volition, or feeling-ever has any of these properties, but has a number of other properties never found in matter. The perception of this truth early led men to believe that the phenomena called mental could not be resolved into, or accounted for by, those called material; and the most recent materialism has not succeeded in showing that any other belief can be reasonably entertained.

Prof. Bain, in his volume on 'Mind and Body,' while explicitly admitting that mental and bodily states are "utterly contrasted" and "cannot be compared," maintains that the physical and the mental are "the two sides of a double-faced unity." But he has not shown that utterly contrasted qualities can coinhere in a single substance, nor that what is unextended can either be a side of anything or have a side of its own. Further, as Prof. Tyndall remarks in his Birmingham lecture, "It is no explanation to say that the objective and subjective effects are two sides of one and the same phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon have two sides? This is the very core of the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it forms into frost-ferns upon a window-pane? If not, why should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked to this mysterious companion-consciousness?"

II. Materialism fails to show that molecular changes in the nerves or brain ever pass into mental states. This

is the argument employed by Tyndall in the quotation given in the lecture. Striking statements to the same effect will be found in Du Bois-Reymond's 'Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens,' pp. 20, 21, and in Dr Ferrier's Functions of the Brain,' pp. 255, 256. Says the former: "I will now prove conclusively, as I believe, that not only is consciousness unexplained by material conditions in the present state of our science (which all will admit), but that, in the very nature of things, it never can be explained by these conditions. The most exalted mental activity is no more incomprehensible in its material conditions than is the first grade of consciousness-namely, sensation. With the first awakening of pleasure and pain experienced upon earth by some creature of the simplest structure appeared an impassable gulf, and the world became doubly incomprehensible." Says the latter: "We may succeed in determining the exact nature of the molecular changes which occur in the brain when a sensation is experienced, but this will not bring us one whit nearer the explanation of the nature of that which constitutes the sensation. The one is objective and the other subjective, and neither can be expressed in terms of the other."

ness.

III. Materialism fails to explain the unity of consciousThis is an old because an obvious argument, but the ablest thinkers in Europe still regard it as valid and invincible. It has been presented with masterly skill by Lotze both in his 'Medical Psychology' and in his 'Mikrokosmos.' A careful statement of it, with reference to recent theories, will also be found in an article by Prof. Bowen in the 'Princeton Review' for March 1878"Dualism, Materialism, or Idealism?"

IV. The consciousness of personal identity is also a

fact with which materialism has not yet succeeded in showing that it can be reconciled. There is no doubt as to the fact. Thought, memory, and the sense of responsibility, amply attest it. Have materialists shown how it can be harmonised with the hypothesis that man is merely body, and the certainty that all the elements and atoms of the body are in perpetual change and circulation? The answer must be in the negative. This seems to me to be very convincingly proved in M. Janet's Materialism of the Present Day,' ch. vii.

V. Another mental fact with which materialism has not yet shown itself to be reconcilable is self-consciousness. In self-consciousness the mind distinguishes itself from all material objects, including all the organs of its own body. It appears to itself to know and feel itself to be distinct from the external world, distinct from its body, distinct from its brain. It may, of course, be mistaken: this apparent opposition of body and soul which is essentially inherent in self-consciousness may be an illusion altogether, or there may be some way of transcending it which will allow us to assign to it a certain value, and yet to identify soul and body; but materialism has certainly hitherto failed to show it to be mistaken, and has never even dealt seriously with the problem which the fact referred to presents. The problem is not one likely to be solved by merely calling body "object-consciousness," and the soul a "side," or by any similar verbal perversities.

VI. Materialism does not account for the internal spontaneity or the self-activity which is characteristic of mind. It has not yet proved either that we are moved wholly from without, or that we are mere automata. It claims to have done so, but the claim has for

tunately not been made good. On this point see Meyer's Philosophische Zeitfragen,' k. viii.; the paper of Prof. Huxley in the 'Fortnightly Review' for Nov. 1874, on the question "Are animals automata?" the articles of Dr Carpenter, Prof. Mivart, and the Duke of Argyll in the Contemporary Review' during 1875, suggested by it; and Dr Elam's 'Automatism and Evolution.'

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VII. Materialism is irreconcilable with the moral feelings of human nature.

NOTE XIX., page 174.

MATERIALISM AND MORALITY.

M. Tissot has endeavoured to show, in his 'Principes du droit public' (liv. ii. ch. i.), that materialism does not necessarily preclude belief in God, free-will, moral law, and a future life. His argument is skilfully presented, but it is not conclusive; indeed, it will be found when strictly examined to amount merely to the plea that since materialism is essentially inconsistent, we have no right to demand that it shall be consistent, or to censure its special inconsistencies. He contends that because materialism ascribes force to matter, it may with equal reason ascribe to it life; that if it may hold matter to be capable of life, it may likewise hold it to be capable of thought; that when it acknowledges matter may think, nothing forbids it also to admit, on the testimony of consciousness, that matter may be, in certain circumstances, possessed of free-will; and that to whatever it assigns free-will it may assign true morality. Now what

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