studied as the continuation of the physical. In the original act of knowledge they are separated by a gulf which cannot be passed. There is no doubt a psychological value in physiofogical research; but such research can never blossom into psychology. If it were possible to observe all that passes in the body, and gaze to the center of the brain, we should get no mental facts. We should see motion, not sensation; vibration, not thought. Motion in the spinning of brain molecules, or the passage of nervous currents, would be all that the sharpest eye could detect; nor would there be anything in this to suggest the world of thought beyond. This can be reached only through self-consciousness. Indeed all fact is known 'only through self-consciousness. Mental science is independent of physical; but not conversely. Physiology may boast as it will about the light it has thrown on mental problems; psychology has thrown vastly more light on physiological problems. The mind is implicitly given in all knowledge; but is so unobtrusive, that men fall into the folly of supposing, that physical science, which mental science alone makes possible, is able to displace the latter. In every act of knowledge two things are always given, the knower, and the known; and these are given as distinct from each other. restrict our attention to the subject, and the result will be mental science; or we may give it to the object, and the result will be physical science. But in every act of knowing, both are given ; and no discredit can be cast on one without also destroying the other. Hence physical and mental science are twins; and Siamese twins at that. The very nature of the cognitive act renders it impossible to arrange them in linear order. Whatever may be possible in fact, the human science, which attempts such arrangement, must commit both logical and psychological suicide. The discredit cast on the subjective does, and must, destroy the objective; they appear or disappear together. We submit, then, that the linear arrangement of the sciences, which the "New Philosophy" contemplates, is psychologically impossible. But, if either element is to be discarded, it must be the objective; and not the subjective. If a linear order is to be adopted, it must be referred to the mental and not the physical axis of knowledge. In the last analysis, materialistic science is a contradiction.

We may

Psychology has yet another word to offer to the "New Philosophy." It demands the authority for the belief in force at all. It summons the evolutionist to tell where he discovered this force with which he conjures so mightily. And just here every system of mechanical atheism is speechless. For it is admitted now by all, that force is not a phenomenon, but a mental datum. Hume did philosophy a good service in showing that Nature presents nothing but succession; and this is rigidly true. The keenest eye looking upon the armies of phenomena, which march to and fro in the physical world, can detect nothing but sequence. It is only as agents that we believe in action. It is only as there is causality within that we can reach causality without; and the knowledge of internal causality is born only of our conscious and self-determined effort. Self-determination, volition, is the essence of the only causation that we know directly; this is the sum total of our knowledge of power. Internal changes we refer to our will; external changes, what shall we say of them? We must refer them to external will or to nothing. We must either make them the results of volition, or leave them as mere sequences, without dynamic connection. The uncultured mind in all ages has persisted in referring external phenomena to external wills. Was there a storm, Neptune was angry or Eolus had let slip the winds. Was there a pestilence, some malignant demon had discovered the fountain of life, and charged it with deadly poison. Every order of fact had its god, to whose agency it was referred; in short, nature was alive. Absurd as were many of the beliefs begot of this tendency, it was far truer to psychology than is the prevailing scientific conception of an impersonal force. This doctrine has no warrant whatever within, nor the shadow of support without. For the mental law, which warrants the belief in external power, also warrants the interpretation of that power into volition. Will-power, or none, is the alternative offered by an inexorable logic. Besides, the conception of an impersonal force in matter, is really opposed to the law of inertia. That law assumes absolute deadness in matter; and this doctrine attributes to it all kinds of activity. One doctrine is, that matter cannot move itself: the other is, that matter can move itself. It is for the scientists to determine

which dogma they will give up. Comte, in a passage we have never seen quoted, admits the justice of this reasoning. He says:

"If we insist upon penetrating the insoluble mystery of the essential cause of phenomena, there is no hypothesis more satisfactory than that they proceed from wills, dwelling in them, or outside of them; an hypothesis which assimilates them to the effect produced by the desires which exist within ourselves. Were it not for the pride induced by metaphysical and scientific studies, it would be inconceivable that any atheist, ancient or modern, should have believed that his vague hypotheses on such a subject were preferable to this direct mode of explanation. And it was the only mode which really satisfied the reason, until men began to see the utter inanity and inutility of all absolute research. The order of nature is doubtless very imperfect in every respect; but its production is far more compatible with the hypothesis of an intelligent will than with that of a blind mechanism. Persistent atheists then would seem to be the most illogical of theologians; for they occupy themselves with the same questions, yet reject the only appropriate method of handling them."-(L' Ensemble du Positivisme, p. 46).

That is, it is nonsense to ask for the cause of the present order; but if you are not yet ripe enough to see the folly of such inquiry, then the only rational answer is that the order of nature is the result of a superintending mind. Mr. Comte was not, in strictness, an atheist; he was more; he was a Positivist.

Mr. Spencer too admits the cogency of the reasoning which reduces external force to a resultant of Divine Will; but escapes the conclusion by logical sleight of hand. He says:

"On lifting a chair, the force exerted we regard as equal to that antagonistic force called the weight of the chair: and we cannot think of these as equal without thinking of them as like in kind; since equality is conceivable only between things that are connatural. The axiom that action and reaction are equal, and in opposite directions, commonly exemplified by this very instance of muscular force versus weight, cannot be mentally realized on any other condition. Yet contrariwise, it is incredible that the force as existing in the chair, really resem

bles the force as present to our minds. It scarcely needs to point out that the weight of the chair produces in us various feelings according as we support it by a single finger, or the whole hand, or the leg; and hence to argue, that as it cannot be like all these sensations, there is no reason to believe it like any. It suffices to remark that since the force as known to us is an affection of consciousness, we cannot conceive the force existing in the chair under the same form without endowing the chair with consciousness. So that it is absurd to think of force like our sensation of it and yet necessary so to think of it, if we realize it in consciousness at all" (p. 58).

It suffices to remark that the force of this argument lies in the assumption that force is identical with muscular tension and sensation. There is no absurdity in supposing that the great, coördinating force of matter, whereby not only this chair and the earth, but all things, are bound together, is a manifestation of the Divine Will. In such case when our wills measure themselves against it there is really a common measure. But as for the tension we feel, it is not the force we put forth, but its effects. Sensation is not power, but result. Our knowledge of power is based upon our self-determination, not upon our muscular feelings; and all these might be removed without affecting our belief in force. There is, to be sure, an absurdity in the paragraph; but it is the absurdity of identifying cause and effect; and belongs entirely to Mr. Spencer.

In a recent essay upon Mr. Martineau, Mr. Spencer makes some further criticisms upon this doctrine that Mind is first and rules forever. He says:

"If then I have to conceive evolution as caused by an 'originating Mind,' I must conceive this mind as having attributes akin to those of the only mind I know, and without which I cannot conceive mind at all. I will not dwell on the many incongruities hence resulting by asking how the 'originating Mind' is to be thought of as having states produced by things objec tive to it; as discriminating among these states, and classing them as like and unlike, and as preferring one objective result to another. I will simply ask what happens, if we ascribe to the 'originating Mind' the character absolutely essential to the conception of mind, that it consists of a series of states of con

sciousness? Put a series of states of consciousness as cause and the evolving universe as effect; and then endeavor to see the last as flowing from the first. It is possible to imagine in some dim kind of way a series of states of consciousness serving as antecedent to any one of the movements I see going on; for my own states of consciousness are often indirectly the antecedents to such movements. But how if I attempt to think of such a series as antecedent to all actions throughout the universe, to the motions of the multitudinous stars through space, to the revolutions of all their planets round them, to the gyrations of all these planets on their axes, to the infinitelymultiplied physical processes going on in each of these suns and planets? I cannot even think of a series of states of consciousness as causing the relatively small group of actions going on over the earth's surface; I cannot even think of it as antecedent to all the various winds and dissolving clouds they bear, to the currents of all the rivers, and the guiding action of all the glaciers, still less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from tropical palms down to polar lichens, and in all the animals that roam among them, and the insects that buzz about them. Even to a single small set of these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot conceive as antecedent a series of states of consciousness-cannot, for instance, think of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at this instant curling over the shores of England. How then is it possible for me to conceive an 'originating Mind,' which I must represent to myself as a series of states of consciousness, being antecedent to the infinity of changes simultaneously going on in worlds too numerous to count, dispersed throughout a space that baffles imagination ?*

If the doctrine of an "originating Mind" prove to be one half as absurd as the doctrines here taught, we shall hasten to give it up. Mind is a "series of states of consciousness." We verily believe with Mr. Spencer that such a mind could not originate the universe; but what shall we say of the mind that can originate such a definition? A state must be the state of something. Consciousness implies a being who is conscious.

*Pop. Science Monthly, July.