Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 QU^RO 
 
 [SOME QUESTIONS IN MATTER, ENERGY, 
 INTELLIGENCE, AND EVOLUTION.] 
 
 BY 
 JAMES H. KEELING, M.D. 
 
 ("BACILLUS") 
 AUTHOR OF " SONG OF A SQUIRT," ETC., 
 
 LATE LECTURER ON GYNECOLOGY IN THE 
 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SHEFFIELD. 
 
 "With. ^Diagrams. 
 
 HOMINIS EST PROPRIA VERI INQUISITIO. 
 
 FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND FRANCIS, RED LION C'OUltT, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1898.
 
 FLAMMAM. 
 
 PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND FRANCIS, 
 EED LION COURT, FLEET STKEET.
 
 i f/i €/ie 
 
 <Uk
 
 3D 
 581 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following pages are taken from an un- 
 published essay. Separated from their context 
 they are somewhat fragmentary, but this is of 
 no moment if they remain readable. The first 
 two chapters were contributed to a Volume 
 issued last year, by professors and teachers in 
 the University College of Sheffield, in com- 
 memoration of the recent incorporation of that 
 Institution. The third and fourth chapters 
 have not appeared before. 
 
 In his admirable " Foundations of Belief," 
 Mr. Balfour includes, under the term 
 " Naturalism," all those forms of thought, 
 philosophic or scientific, which are usually 
 held to be antagonistic to religion. Of these, 

 
 IV PBEFACE. 
 
 Materialism is perhaps the oldest. Its sig- 
 nificance has varied, in different ages, with 
 the varying conceptions of Nature ; but it has 
 proved very tenacious of life and, in a modern 
 form, is still widely extant. 
 
 Owing to intrinsic excellence, and as the 
 work of an eminent and busy statesman, 
 Mr. Balfour's book at once arrested attention, 
 and drew forth much laudatory comment. 
 Here and there, however, a hostile voice was 
 raised ; amongst the rest that of Professor 
 Huxley, whose criticism was commenced in 
 the " Nineteenth Century " for March, 1895. 
 It was never finished. Before its completion, 
 death had robbed us of one of our most gifted 
 and vigorous scientists. 
 
 He would be a bold man who should 
 undertake to wield the club which dropped 
 from Huxley's grasp. Indeed there are some 
 who think the Professor himself had become 
 less belligerent, and that, had he lived a few 
 years longer, he would ultimately have found,
 
 PSEFACE. 
 
 like Spencer and Romanes, a peaceful meeting- 
 ground for science and religion. But of such 
 a tryst, combative materialism will at present 
 hear nothing. It asserts there is less prospect 
 of peace than ever, in view of the support 
 gained (as is thought) from the later advances 
 of physical and biologic science ; especially 
 from that luminous view of Evolution which 
 we owe to the genius of Darwin. In what 
 follows, an attempt is made to ascertain 
 whether this opinion is well-founded, or not. 
 
 With respect to the physiological data in 
 the third chapter, the writer has to express 
 his thanks for the kind supervision of Dr. A. 
 Hall, Professor of Physiology in the University 
 College. 
 
 267 Glossop Road, Sheffield, 
 May, 1898.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Page 
 
 Is Evolution Automatic ? i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Is Evolution Power, or Mandate ? 30 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Kinetics and Metakinetics of a Brain-cell 49 
 
 1. Reflex innervation 49 
 
 2. Conscious nerve-area. Excitants ; sense- 
 
 impressions ; sense-perceptions 55 
 
 3. Orange, objective and conceptual 68 
 
 4. Relation of excitant and sense-im- 
 
 pression to consciousness. Brain- 
 cells and psychism 76 
 
 5. Source of Excitants 88 
 
 6. Reality : meaning attached, relation to 
 
 matter and energy, evidence on which 
 
 it rests 102 
 
 7. Unification of Reality 107 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Theory of a Supreme Noumenon 113 
 
 l>
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC? 
 
 " Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas! 
 
 {Part of a conversation overheard in Sheffield.) 
 
 E. {Enquirer). So you turn our old 
 friend, Nature, into an Automaton — limitless, 
 self-maintaining, ruled by innate forces, its 
 material basis engaged by these forces in 
 endless alternating evolution and devolution, 
 and having an existence to which no term can 
 be assigned either in the past or future — a 
 grand automaton no doubt, but nothing 
 more. 
 
 M. (Materialist). My view, I believe, is 
 endorsed by science. Matter can neither be 
 destroyed nor originated by any known force. 
 Forever changing in form, it never varies in 
 sum, and never ceases to exist. In like 
 
 B
 
 2 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 manner, the energy associated with matter, 
 though subject to constant transformation, is 
 neither lost nor diminished. 
 
 E. What do we really know about matter ? 
 Of its varieties and properties, much ; of its 
 structure, something ; of its essential nature, 
 of its origin and destiny, absolutely nothing. 
 On these points you have had undeniable 
 authority, and I will merely remind you of 
 what Professor Tait said — " we do not know, 
 and are probably incapable of discovering, 
 what matter is " ; and again, " We advisedly 
 use the word structure instead of nature, for 
 it must be repeated, till it is fully accepted, 
 that the discovery of the ultimate nature of 
 matter is probably beyond the range of 
 human intelligence." (The italics are his. 
 See " Properties of Matter," 3rd edition, 
 1894, pp. 16-17.) Then as to duration. 
 You are entitled to say matter is imperish- 
 able under existing conditions, not under 
 any conditions. Our knowledge of past 
 and future conditions is far too limited 
 to permit of our assuming the everlasting 
 duration of matter. As we have seen,
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 3 
 
 scientific opinion differs on the point : some 
 think it certain, others only probable ; some 
 regard it as improbable, many as incapable 
 of either proof or disproof; another view is 
 that what is now known as matter will 
 ultimately be looked on as merely a mode of 
 energy. 
 
 M. Matter must be taken as we find it. 
 As to its indestructibility, the testimony of 
 chemistry and physics is conclusive : geology 
 and astronomy are equally positive as to its 
 existence for countless ages. To reason from 
 what is known to what is probable is certainly 
 in accordance with scientific usage. 
 
 E. Yes, but not the building up of a 
 pseudo- scientific hypothesis, as I think it, on 
 a foundation of which a notable part is at 
 once so essential and so precarious. But I 
 am not surprised at your pertinacity. For 
 me, the eternity or non-eternity of matter is 
 of no consequence, but for you it is vital. If 
 matter be not eternal, it had a beginning, and 
 you are ruined. For then, since you admit 
 no thing nor power outside of matter, nor 
 antecedent to it, you have to evolve it and 
 
 B 2
 
 4 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 all its belongings from — nothing ; an origin 
 even more hopeless than that ' spontaneous 
 generation ' of living organisms which science 
 denies, although there is then present at least 
 something to start from. As, however, your 
 postulate does not affect me, it shall be 
 conceded. Of course it is not enough : if 
 matter were eternal and nothing more, it 
 might have remained for ever in its primal 
 homogeneity. How does it emerge from 
 this ? 
 
 M. Obviously by impulse from the energy 
 which dwells in it. 
 
 E. Then you make energy an attribute 
 of matter. This is scarcely admitted by 
 science. It is usual to speak of matter and 
 energy. Matter one thing, energy another. 
 Energy always associated with matter no 
 doubt ; but not always with the same matter : 
 on the contrary, " continually passing from 
 one portion of matter to another," and " doing 
 work " (Clerk Maxwell, " Matter and Motion," 
 1891). In contrast with this, a leading 
 characteristic of matter, as laid down in the 
 text-books, is ' inertia.'
 
 IS' EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 5 
 
 M. So long as matter is acknowledged to 
 be the constant partner of energy, I care 
 nothing for its technical inertness. Listen 
 to this passage from your favourite Tait 
 (" Properties of Matter," p. 7)—" There is, 
 hovvever, a most important point to be 
 noticed. Energy is never found except in 
 association with matter. Hence we might 
 define matter as the Vehicle or Receptacle of 
 Energy ; and it is already more than probable 
 that energy will ultimately be found, in all 
 its varied forms, to depend upon Motion of 
 matter'' (the italics and capitals are his). 
 Mark, energy to depend on motion, not 
 motion on energy. The statement just 
 quoted has, I believe, the full sanction of 
 science, and its significance is great. It 
 enounces, first, a scientific certainty, viz., the 
 invariable association of energy and matter ; 
 second, the strong scientific probability that 
 energy in all its forms is dependent on the 
 motion of matter. The view, indeed, is 
 rapidly gaining ground that all forms of 
 energy — heat, light, electricity, chemic action, 
 &c. — arc mere modifications of motion.
 
 6 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC? 
 
 E. We have been over that ground, and 
 you will remember that science knows as 
 little of the origin and cause of motion as it 
 does of the origin and nature of matter. 
 Even Newton had to take matter as ' a going 
 concern,' without ascertaining the nature and 
 source of the assets. Science tells us hoio 
 matter moves, and has laid down the laws 
 of motion : why it moves, why in a particular 
 way, she does not pretend to know. How- 
 ever, I quite recognise the importance of 
 motion and all its modes. How do you 
 apply it ? 
 
 M. In this way. Whether dated from 
 forever or from a beginning, there is, so far 
 as we know, no such thing as motionless 
 matter, and never has been. When its move- 
 ment is no longer evident to unaided sense, 
 the chemist is there to demonstrate the 
 unceasing play of the elements ; the physicist, 
 to tell us of the ever-trembling ether, and the 
 probably constant vibration of the molecules 
 of even the hardest solids ; and the astro- 
 nomer, to point out the ceaseless flight of 
 suns and planets. The term ' resting,' as
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC? 7 
 
 applied to matter, is technical only. The 
 ' motion ' or ' rest ' of any given portion of 
 matter is relative to the position of another 
 portion, which is itself moving. A stone 
 ' rests ' on the ground ; they are moving 
 together, and with extreme velocity. Besides 
 having axial rotation, our earth is moving 
 in its orbit at a speed of 18 miles per 
 second. Our sun, with his planets, is held 
 to be travelling towards Vega at a rate, 
 variously estimated, of from 6 to 16 miles 
 per second, and he is slow compared with 
 certain other suns. In view of this incessant 
 atomic, molecular, and translational move- 
 ment, I claim the right to speak of motion 
 as an inalienable possession or characteristic 
 of matter. Add, now, the extreme scientific 
 probability that this motion of matter is at 
 the root of all forms of energy, and what you 
 are pleased to call my Automaton is nearly 
 equipped. One further touch only is needed. 
 Let energy be applied to develop as well 
 as move, and the evolution of the universe is 
 secured. 
 
 E. You are going back to the materialism
 
 8 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 of Moleschott and Biichner ; this was more 
 esteemed forty or fifty years ago than it is 
 now. Then you have blended your two 
 factors, matter and energy, in a way which 
 science does not at present ratify. So far as 
 our argument is concerned, this is of no 
 consequence ; we may say energy and matter, 
 or energy of matter, or we may combine the 
 two, and speak of energised matter} I have 
 now, however, to remind you that, in con- 
 structing your automaton, you have entirely 
 lost sight of a third factor, viz., that con- 
 summate intelligence which, unless our reason 
 perpetually plays us false, is so conspicuous 
 in the mechanism of the universe. From the 
 first we ruled out Chance ; order and law are 
 everywhere, and chance does not produce 
 
 1 According to an important book, by Singer and 
 Berens, which has appeared lately (1897), it seems 
 likely that current scientific views about matter and 
 energy may bave to be revised. See " Some Unrecog- 
 nized Laws of Nature," pp. 113-123. Tbe possibility 
 of impending change may also be gathered from certain 
 passages in the magnificent monograph on "Electric 
 Movement in Air and Water" recently published by 
 Lord Armstrong. See also his letter to the " Times " 
 of Aug. 26th, 1897.
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 9 
 
 these. Nor can we seriously regard them as 
 the mere products or inventions of human 
 thought. No doubt this has been suggested. 
 A ribald wit has even said, ' the heavens 
 declare the glory of Newton, and the firma- 
 ment sheweth his handy work.' Had anyone, 
 in like manner, asserted that the marvels of 
 biology declare the glory of Darwin, none 
 would have been more astonished than 
 Darwin himself. Most people I fancy will 
 regard the human mind as but a feeble and 
 belated investigator of the previous arrange- 
 ments of surpassing intelligence, and our 
 knowledge of the phenomena and laws 
 of nature as nothing more than the 
 " approximately successful outcome of endless 
 guessing " (Karl Pearson). 
 
 M. In place of a prior designing intelli- 
 gence, I put energy and evolution, and can 
 thus give a more natural and reasonable 
 account of the universe, whether in its origin 
 or history. 
 
 E. You are entitled to your opinion : 
 for many, a controlling intelligence is as 
 indisputable a factor as is matter or energy.
 
 10 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 In the early days of evolution, the popular 
 notion was that some new, subtle, and wide- 
 reaching kind of automatism had been dis- 
 covered, whereby the universe had produced 
 itself, and could maintain and develop itself, 
 independently of any intelligent control. 
 But the vision was premature — due chiefly 
 to the fact that certain votaries of the new 
 cult were too busy applying their novel 
 instrument, and too dazzled by its excellence, 
 to remember that no automaton has ever 
 been found or invented which will commence 
 and go of itself, or which can dispense with 
 constructive intelligence. As well imagine 
 that a watch can originate itself, arrange its 
 own works, and go without winding. The 
 blunder has now been rectified, and we need 
 no stronger illustration of the normal tendency 
 of evolution than is supplied by that prince 
 of evolutionists, Herbert Spencer. All the 
 wonders which evolution has disclosed, all 
 the phenomena of the universe, are traced 
 back, by his disciplined intellect, to a supreme 
 and eternal energy. 
 
 M. Precisely where I trace them to.
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? I I 
 
 Evolution is nothing more than a special 
 application of persistent energy. 
 
 E. Wait a moment. As Mephistopheles 
 says — 
 
 " Mit Worten lasst sich trefflich streiten, 
 Mit Worten ein System bereiten, 
 An Worte lasst sich trefflich glauben," 
 
 Huxley compared words to ' counters ' ; I 
 liken them to coin. You may stamp the 
 same image on good metal and base, but 
 that will not make them equal. The coin 
 you are offering has not the same value as 
 Spencer's. Your conception of supreme 
 energy differs essentially from his. Your 
 energy is purely physical — the motion of 
 matter, or derivatives therefrom. His is 
 psychic, as well as physical : the donor of 
 life, therefore itself living, or inclusive of life ; 
 the source of innumerable manifestations of 
 intelligence, therefore itself intelligent, or 
 including intelligence. ' Nemo dat quod 
 non habet.' Your notion of energy needs 
 expanding, but you will never get anything 
 psychic out of the motion of matter. If you
 
 12 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 are prepared to admit that supreme energy, 
 besides being all-powerful, is also living and 
 intelligent, I can be content. But in so 
 doing, you have given yourself away. My 
 third factor is accepted, and your Automaton 
 goes to pieces : in its place, we have an 
 universe regulated by intelligence, as well as 
 ruled by power. 
 
 M. Before admitting your third factor, let 
 us see what the two we have will do. I can 
 give you instances in which both life and 
 mind spring from their operation. Go into 
 the nearest field. There you will find water, 
 carbonic acid, ammonia, and salts turning 
 into grass, grass into sheep, sheep into mutton, 
 which mutton will presently turn into the 
 thinking grey cortex of your brain and mine, 
 and thus enable us to discern the sufficiency 
 of my factors. Take another illustration, the 
 human ovum. A simple cell, not more 
 than Y20 °f an mcn m diameter, the compeers 
 of which, in untold numbers, are daily 
 passing into oblivion as certainly as do the 
 superfluous eggs in the over-fecund roe of a
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? I 3 
 
 red herring. Yet, fertilise this cell, feed it, 
 environ it suitably, and in nine months it has 
 developed into a bouncing baby seven pounds 
 in weight ; in forty years, it has become a 
 Socrates or Shakespeare. If the womb of 
 woman and forty years of time can yield this 
 astounding result, what may we not expect 
 from the womb of the world in millions of 
 years. 
 
 E. You are incorrigible. Nothing will cure 
 you short of stripping away every rag of the 
 stolen garments in which you have clad your 
 factors. We must examine more closely this 
 alleged faculty of self-development. 
 
 Put briefly, its meaning and scope may be 
 thus stated : — 
 
 Energised matter, which potentially 
 contains, also determines the universe. 
 At first matter is homogeneous, both 
 physically and chemically, and distri- 
 buted uniformly through space. By 
 virtue of original endowment, it is in 
 motion ; this motion, at first of atoms, 
 becomes molecular- and, ultimately, 
 mass-motion. Impelled by its innate
 
 14 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC? 
 
 faculty of development (may Newton 
 forgive you), matter becomes aggre- 
 gated into masses, small and large, 
 and physical homogeneity disappears. 
 Accompanying this physical change, 
 there is a chemical one : matter 
 passes from chemical unity into 
 elemental diversity, and at length 
 takes the form of the various elements 
 which chemists recognise. Thus phy- 
 sically and chemically changed, matter 
 engages in endless and advancing 
 combinations, and at last presents 
 itself as Nature in its inorganic form. 
 From inorganic matter, by higher 
 synthesis but under impulse of the 
 same force, organic substance is 
 produced. In matter thus become 
 organic, organisms spring up, vegetal 
 and animal, and here occurs the 
 important moment in which life first 
 appears. Vegetal life pursues its 
 course simultaneously with animal 
 life, largely ministering to the latter, 
 and steadily growing in complexity 
 and importance ; but we need not 
 follow its steps, for it is from animal 
 life that the grand issue comes. When
 
 IS ET'OLUTION AUTOMATIC ? I 5 
 
 animal life is once started, there are 
 presently associated with it certain 
 psychic phenomena — sensation, per- 
 ception, volition, &c. — and to these 
 phenomena, when sufficiently ad - 
 vanced, the term < mind ' is given. 
 Animal life, like vegetal, is ever press- 
 ing onward and upward, and passes 
 through an infinite series of ascending 
 gradations. From unicellular to many- 
 celled organisms, from cells doing 
 everything to cells strictly specialised 
 and grouped in organs, from the 
 lowest invertebrate to the highest, 
 until at length the dignity of a hack- 
 bone is reached : then, through fish, 
 reptile, bird, mammal, until the 
 process, emerging by way of the 
 anthropoid apes, culminates in man : 
 man as a low savage at first, but 
 ever advancing, and, in his best 
 strain, capable of, and at last attain- 
 ing, the highest civilisation. 
 
 Such appears to me a fair account of the 
 passage from chaos to ' kosmos ' according to 
 the Materialist, and ascribed by him to that 
 faculty of self-development, resident in matter,
 
 I 6 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 which goes by the name of ' evolution.' But 
 this faculty is surely nothing more than our 
 old acquaintance, energy, under a new name. 
 Why should christening him afresh alter him 
 so advantageously ? 
 
 M. You are perfectly aware that he was 
 'altered advantageously' before being re- 
 christened. Darwin took care of that. Evo- 
 lution, though as I think simply a special 
 form of energy, was practically unknown 
 until Darwin discovered it. 
 
 E. Any eulogy of Darwin on my part 
 would be an impertinence, and I have far 
 too deep a respect for his genius to accept 
 that automatic caricature, which is all you 
 will ever get out of the motion of matter, 
 as the equivalent of what he meant by 
 evolution. We discussed this some time 
 ago when considering the advent and early 
 history of the elements, and the first ap- 
 pearance of life and mind in nature. Let 
 me remind you briefly of some of our 
 points. 
 
 As to the genesis of the elements, we saw
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? I 7 
 
 that no merely physical agent — whether Sir 
 Wm. Crookes's l electric ' pendulum,' or any 
 other mechanical ' differentiator of atoms ' — 
 would suffice. Clerk Maxwell's ' sorting 
 demon ' is more promising, but the imp 
 would need to be bigger. Whatever the 
 cause, the result was a precise, orderly, final, 
 chemic and physical discrimination and stamp- 
 ing of matter previously homogeneous and 
 uniform. In the wide interval which separates 
 azoic rock from nebula, the unceasing play 
 of energy and matter led to results w r hich 
 cannot be credited to chance ; and, if they were 
 automatic, I must ask you for the author of 
 the mechanism. Recall, for a moment, what 
 is included in the evolution of the elements. 
 Their curious number; their singular and 
 orderly appearance ; their wonderful variety in 
 
 1 See his Lecture at the Royal Institution on the 
 " Genesis of the Elements," reported in the " Chemical 
 News " for 1887 (pp. 83-88 and 95-99). It is scarcely 
 necessary to say that this eminent chemist, like 
 Newton, is enquiring hoiv, not whence or why. Primal 
 matter (' protyle '), and energy in the form of electricity, 
 are taken as present. A similar remark of course 
 applieB to Clerk Maxwell. 
 
 C
 
 I 8 18 EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 amount, weight, and properties ; their separate- 
 ness and independence — inviolable, yet har- 
 monised with a most intricate relationship ; 
 their innumerable combinations and sepa- 
 rations, yet always by fixed and definite 
 measure ; their permanence and unchanging 
 identity throughout the ages ; their unique 
 history ; their fitness to form sun, planet, star, 
 or comet — to become mountain, plain, ocean, 
 or atmosphere — to be the vehicle of life in 
 its unending manifestations, and take shape 
 as plant, animal, even as man himself, until 
 finally they reach their highest place and office 
 as the thinking matter (according to you) of 
 his brain ; in a word, to form the entire frame- 
 work in which all the wonders of the universe 
 are displayed. This is what the outfitting of 
 the elements means, and this the task your 
 energy had to accomplish. Was it then 
 blind? — Was it merely physical — whether 
 electric or otherwise ? Was there no intelli- 
 gence, no wisdom, no foresight in this ordering 
 of the elements, millions of years ago, so that 
 they should now have worked out such a 
 stupendous result ? Their fitness must, on any
 
 18 EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? I 9 
 
 theory, have been there ' ab initio '; and, since 
 they are unchanging, the chemist of to-day 
 can test their qualities. Hydrogen preserves 
 its identity, whether blazing in the sun, or 
 signifying its presence in the spectrum of 
 Sirius, or buried in a coal-seam, or when just 
 caught in the test-tube of the chemist : much 
 the same is true of all the elements. Does 
 the experimentor trace, in his crucible or retort, 
 any spark of intelligence or forecast in any 
 one of them ? Or can the physicist detect a 
 psychic trait in any physical energy whatever 
 which may have had to do with the outfit and 
 mission of the elements ? Yet without the 
 aid of marvellous intelligence, I contend that 
 the inauguration of the elements, such as we 
 find them to be, was impossible, and their 
 career doomed to confusion and disaster. 
 
 M. You are still harping on that wretched 
 1 design ' argument. As I have shown, it was 
 battered to pieces long ago by evolution. 
 What have you been about for the last thirty 
 years ? 
 
 E. Amongst other things, trying to find 
 intelligence in matter and physical energy, and 
 
 c 2
 
 20 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 I have not succeeded : trying to do without, 
 and again I have not succeeded. No doubt, 
 as you say, it is the ancient fire-mist, with its 
 remaining nucleus, the sun, which drives the 
 steam-engine of to-day, and has supplied 
 material and building-power as well as a 
 motor, but without the intelligence of man 
 there would have been no steam-engine. 
 Throughout its history, man has used and 
 controlled an energy which is physical, and a 
 matter which is inert. When I can believe 
 that the intelligence of Stephenson and his 
 predecessors had nothing to do with that 
 superb machine — that all has come from 
 the accidental observance of the lifting of 
 the lid of a boiling pot, and a certain lucky 
 environment of that fact, at the time and 
 since — then I may also believe that intel- 
 ligence has played no part in that amazing 
 complex of phenomena which we can clearly 
 discern, even from such little peep-hole as we 
 are limited to. 
 
 M. Intelligence, in a sense, no doubt there 
 was. Original matter must of course, ac- 
 cording to my view, contain the potentiality
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 21 
 
 of all things, and therefore of mind and 
 intelligence. 
 
 E. But your ' potentiality ' is not enough. 
 ' In posse ' will not do : 'in esse,' and that in 
 a most active shape, is required from the 
 beginning : we cannot wait for that long 
 subsequent date when intelligence, as the 
 accompaniment of animal life and mind, is 
 to make its first appearance. We have 
 questioned these late-comers before, and a 
 few words must now suffice. 
 
 Take life, vegetal or animal. As we have 
 seen, science has decided that life always 
 proceeds from previous life, and is never found 
 save in association with the physical basis 
 which we call protoplasm. Where to find the 
 first protoplasm ? Chemic synthesis does not 
 furnish it. No chemist has yet produced it, 
 nor, so far as we know, does it ever appear 
 even in nature's laboratory except under the 
 influence of existing life. Life is first, proto- 
 plasm second : given life, then as much 
 protoplasm from inorganic matter as you 
 please. Your fact from the sheep -field counts 
 for nothing : the grass, being alive, can of
 
 22 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC? 
 
 course transmute whatever inorganic material 
 it requires. Your embryonic fact is just as 
 useless. The human ovum would still be a 
 wonderful bit of protoplasm if it had produced 
 nothing better than you and me ; but it had 
 a father and a grandfather and an ancestry 
 reaching back probably to a Simian ovum, and 
 from that possibly to a primal cell. Find that 
 primal cell, and your discovery will be worth 
 something. The performances and possibilities 
 of the human ovum sink into insignificance 
 when compared with the charges which burden 
 the primal cell ; for it is pregnant with the 
 future of all animated nature, and parent 
 of all cells to the end of time. Another 
 of your facts, viz., that ' matter undeniably 
 did, at some remote period, pass from a non- 
 living to a living condition,' is equally true 
 and equally irrelevant. No one disputes it 
 and no one can explain it. ' Spontaneous 
 generation ' has been laughed out of court. 
 No ' differentiation of atoms,' nor ' auto- 
 matic synthesis,' ' whereby some should 
 become alive/ will suffice : either alternative
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 2$ 
 
 is merely a pompous begging of the question. 
 Lord Kelvin's whim — the arrival of germs on 
 a meteorite — might serve our earth, if the 
 germs did not get burnt in transit ; but we 
 should still have to find out how the meteorite 
 came by them. 
 
 Can physical energy in any form originate 
 life ? You have advanced no proof of it. It 
 is quite true, as you say, that all the life on 
 our globe is dependent on the energy eman- 
 ating from the sun, but no one pretends that 
 this energy originates organisms, however 
 essential it be to their maintenance and 
 spread. If wholly withdrawn, universal death 
 would no doubt follow : but sunlight, in cer- 
 tain directions at least, destroys germs instead 
 of creating them ; and sun-heat, if too nearly 
 approached, makes short work of that proto- 
 plasmic basis without which life cannot be. 
 The natural heat of the human body is about 
 98-^° : raise it for a short time by one-tenth, 
 and life ceases. Potential energy, in the shape 
 of food, is of course essential to life, and as 
 necessary to cerebration and muscular con-
 
 24 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 traction as to nutrition. Energy may, in a 
 thousand ways, aid in the work of that unstable 
 and intricate animated machine which we call 
 an organism ; but, so far as we know, it can- 
 not originate the machine, and whilst this is 
 going, life is master and controls all contribu- 
 tory energy. Take physical energy in any 
 form — as motion, or in any of its thermal, 
 electric, or chemic modifications — in none of 
 these, and in no combination of them, has it 
 hitherto been proved capable of transforming 
 non-living matter into living. We shall 
 presently find a better use for evolution, but 
 try it just now as what you conceive it to be, 
 viz., a form of physical energy. In such 
 capacity, it can no more originate a germ than 
 the whirling of a mass of rock can, and a 
 germ there must be before there can be any 
 biologic outcome. Science may some day 
 show that parentless organisms can and do 
 spring up in energised matter, and the demon- 
 stration will be very welcome, but until it has 
 been made, we have no right to regard a non- 
 animate energy as the author of life.
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 25 
 
 Then as to mind. The only mind you 
 admit is protoplasmic. So far as concerns 
 animal intelligence — say of ant, dog, or man — 
 you are correct enough. The biologist demands 
 a protoplasmic basis, whether he looks on 
 * neurosis ' and 'psychosis 'as two (Huxley), 
 or as one under two aspects (Lloyd Morgan). 
 Talk to him of potential mind in a fire-mist 
 and he will laugh at you. An oak in an acorn, 
 or a man in an ovum-cell, as often as you 
 please : if also chemist and aesthetic, he will 
 grant you potentiality of diamond in a lump 
 of carbon, or of hydrochloric acid in H and CI 
 if they join hands, but hardly potentiality of a 
 statue in a block of marble without a sculptor, 
 and as for latent life and mind (they go 
 together) in the fiery furnace of a sun — no, Sir. 
 
 Remember also the late date and inadequacy 
 of the protoplasmic mind. It is tardy in 
 appearing, humble in commencement, slow in 
 unfolding. Roll into one all of it which has 
 ever existed, unite every spark of intelligence 
 which has shown itself in man or brute or cell 
 since time began, and the total will not serve
 
 26 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 for the undertaking with which intelligence 
 was charged from the beginning. Much less 
 those faint stirrings of sensation, perception, 
 and volition which are all there is to show for 
 ages. 
 
 You speak of this protoplasmic mind as 
 though it were the only instance of intelligence 
 which nature presents. I maintain that before 
 protoplasm, and outside of it, we have, in the 
 orderly harmony and endless adaptations of 
 inorganic matter, abundant evidence of the 
 operation of intelligence ; and further, that the 
 protoplasmic mind itself is but the exquisite 
 and crowning proof of such operation. 
 
 Evolution has to take us all the way from 
 ' protyle ' to the grey cortex of the thinking 
 human brain. The first half of the journey — 
 from primal matter to the humblest speck of 
 living protoplasm — is arduous enough; the 
 second half is at least equally difficult. If a 
 superintending intelligence were indispensable 
 in the early evolution of inorganic matter, it 
 would seem even more necessary for the 
 inception and development of the wonders of
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC? 2J 
 
 biology. We cannot now go into these again, 
 but I, for one, entirely decline to admit that 
 protoplasm — supposing it started, and backed 
 solely by physical energy — could find its own 
 way, from the protozoan cell up through the 
 interminable ascent of the animal series, until 
 it burst forth in the splendour of a Plato, a 
 Newton, or a Darwin. 
 
 In examining energy we have had, as one 
 of our guides, the late Prof. Balfour Stewart. 
 In the last edition (1890, lately re-issued) of 
 his book, " The Conservation of Energy," at 
 pages 78 to 82 he enumerates eight Forms of 
 Energy ; but neither in this list, nor in sub- 
 sequent description, is there a word of any 
 psychic variety, nor of an indwelling intelli- 
 gence in any form of energy, as defined by 
 science. Most physicists agree with Balfour 
 Stewart. Add, if you like, the ' Rontgen 
 X-rays,' but you will not be helped ; they fall 
 under " Radiant energy." 
 
 Thus, except as a dream, or as an item in a 
 creed, there can be no more claim to psychism 
 for energy than there is for matter. Science,
 
 28 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 
 
 awake and sober, pronounces matter to be 
 inert and energy to be physical. Therefore 
 there is in them no source nor provision for 
 that initial intelligence which is indispensable, 
 nor yet for the faint copy of it which biology 
 finds later on. Up to the present, we have 
 had two factors — matter and energy. I now 
 claim admission for a third, viz., an adequate 
 and controlling intelligence. You say this is 
 present, from the beginning, in energised 
 matter. Science says it is not. No biologist 
 will admit the potentiality of mind in the 
 absence of protoplasm. The day of ' mind- 
 stufF,' unless the stuff be protoplasmic, has 
 gone by. 
 
 Either then you must accept my factor, or 
 enlarge your notion of energy. If you adopt 
 the latter course, you will have to seek inspi- 
 ration elsewhere than in motion of matter, and 
 cease importuning science for what she cannot 
 give. Better accept my alternative, and let 
 energy remain what science declares it to be, 
 viz., physical. But a source of life and mind 
 we must none the less have ; and, even if we
 
 IS EVOLUTION AUTOMATIC ? 29 
 
 entrust energised matter with the business, in 
 the course of ages, of producing life, we cannot 
 extract from it an intelligence which must be 
 present long before life begins. If you reject 
 both my suggestions, your hypothesis has to 
 go a-borrowing for intelligence. Where to? 
 Under your conditions, no biologist will hear 
 of ' potentiality/ Where else ? Surely you 
 will not stoop to a loan from eastern Pantheism, 
 or make shift with such a superstition as a 
 diffused ' anima mundi ' ? You, who are so 
 scientific. 
 
 Let us now see whether there be not some 
 better conception of evolution than that which 
 degrades it into a mere variety of physical 
 energy. You have called it, most appro- 
 priately, a ' master-key.' Possibly we have 
 overlooked some storehouse of help which it 
 can unlock.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IS EVOLUTION POWER, 
 OR MANDATE? 
 
 " A prima descendit origine tnundi Causarum 
 
 series." 
 
 E. All the world now recognises the great 
 importance and value of the hypothesis which 
 Darwin and Wallace were amongst the first to 
 seize upon and work out, and which has been 
 so luminously expanded by Spencer. Applied 
 at first to the problems of animal and plant 
 life, evolution is now held to explain the course 
 of inorganic nature also, back to its earliest 
 period. In its application to man, it is called 
 on to interpret not only his physical history, 
 but all his mental and moral progress, all his 
 social, ethical, and even religious advancement, 
 down to the days we live in. Thus, according 
 to its extreme adherents, evolution is the key 
 to most of the enigmas of the universe. It 
 explains the advance of matter from physical
 
 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE? 3 1 
 
 uniformity to aggregation, from chemic homo- 
 geneity to elemental diversity, and from these, 
 step by step, until the whole of inorganic 
 nature is accounted for. Then, when once the 
 leap to life is taken (and evolution, according 
 to some, reveals even this), the work is half 
 accomplished, and the ascent from the primal 
 cell to man becomes only a question of time. 
 
 Most of this can I think be accepted, if the 
 real nature of evolution be borne in mind. 
 For me, evolution is an instrument of research, 
 a ' master-key ' if you like, or a law, a plan, a 
 process, a mode of procedure, an explanation, 
 a history : not in any true sense, a power. 
 Behind it, and causing it, at every step, is 
 that intelligent force which, under different 
 names and differently localised, we both admit. 
 Without this force, evolution could not stir. 
 If you choose to regard evolution as in itself a 
 constituent part of energy, I am ready to give 
 it rank, ' pro tanto,' as a power. But then it 
 is wasted, being merged in a force which we 
 have already assumed to be ample. Its charac- 
 teristic value is gone, and we cannot afford 
 such a loss. The better way is, whilst
 
 32 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE? 
 
 maintaining the natural distinction between 
 evolution and energy, to ascertain so far as 
 we can the important relations which exist 
 between them. In attempting to show more 
 in detail the significance of evolution and its 
 relation to energy, I shall use the ground 
 common to both of us, viz., that, somehow 
 and somewhere, force and intelligence are 
 in co-operation ; matter of course is taken 
 as present, and I may have a word to say 
 on the relation, if any there be, between 
 evolution and matter apart from energy. 
 
 The mere evolutionist seems to me like 
 a man who cannot see the wood because of 
 the trees. He buries himself in a mass of 
 details, patiently adds link to link in his 
 unending chain of facts, shows how each 
 minute circumstance entails, or is caused by, 
 or is otherwise related to, its surroundings — 
 how, in his own language, each fact and 
 circumstance influences, and is influenced by, 
 its environment — until he loses his way in the 
 maze, or struggles out with the end of a trailing 
 chain in his hand, having found nothing to 
 fasten it to. His wiser brother says this will
 
 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? 33 
 
 not do. The human mind will not rest until 
 this chain or network of fact and circumstance 
 (phenomenon and environment, if you prefer 
 the terms), be it ever so long, widespread, and 
 intricate, is firmly attached to something 
 which will hold it ; and this Something — be 
 it matter, or energy, or intelligence, or any 
 combination of the three, or a Noumenon 
 behind the three — stands ultimately in the 
 relation of origin or cause to all phenomena. 
 
 I am aware that, of late and in certain 
 quarters, the necessity for this ' something ' has 
 been disputed : but the contention amounts 
 virtually to a reopening of that old and obsolete 
 question, whether chance has, or has not, 
 ruled the universe. For ourselves, we have 
 settled this point, and evolutionists certainly 
 cannot regard the question as an open one, 
 for they are perpetually confronted by causal 
 relation : amongst them, in English-speaking 
 countries at least, their philosophic chief, 
 Mr. Spencer, is ' facile princeps,' and he 
 traces all phenomena back to a supreme, 
 persistent energy. 
 
 Those who deprecate the idea of causation 
 
 i)
 
 34 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE? 
 
 condemn it chiefly on the ground that it is a 
 mere expedient, a bit of gness-work, invented 
 by the human brain to bring some sort of 
 order and harmony into its own inchoate con- 
 ceptions. They contend that all we have 
 before us is the interaction of a multitude of 
 phenomena which may precede, coincide with, 
 or follow each other, as the case may be, or may 
 appear to us as doing so : that ' causation,' 
 applied to elucidate all this, is a figment of 
 the imagination, unnecessary, unproven and 
 proving nothing, serving mainly as an illus- 
 tration of the way in which the human mind 
 contrives to solace its insatiable curiosity. As, 
 however, this same mind happens to be the 
 only instrument we possess, I, for one, am con- 
 tent to abide by what seem to be its legitimate 
 methods and conclusions. We habitually 
 recognise causation in practical, everyday life, 
 and rely upon it as a reality : to admit it in an 
 exercise of thought is at least equally reasonable. 
 It is useless to attempt to abolish the distinction 
 between sequence and con-sequence. Why 
 one sequence, and that constant, rather than
 
 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? 35 
 
 any of a thousand possible sequences, if one 
 and all are haphazard? Precedence, coinci- 
 dence, and sequence involve relation in time 
 and space, but they do not necessarily imply 
 or provide for interaction ; yet this is equally 
 evident : there really are such things as cause 
 and effect, and mere precedence can never 
 stand for the one, nor mere sequence for the 
 other. If instead of causation, we speak of 
 1 connected sequence,' or of ' collateral rela- 
 tion,' we do not thereby get rid of that old 
 notion of cause and effect which has served 
 the plain man so long and so well. We are 
 only re-clothing it in more fashionable words ; 
 and if causation is to be relegated to the limbo 
 of discarded fancies, I am afraid the credit of 
 evolution will also suffer. The chief function 
 of evolution is certainly not a bare cataloguing 
 of precedence, juxtaposition, and sequence, 
 amongst the facts and circumstances it pro- 
 fesses to explain. If this were all or principal, 
 the extraordinary value of evolution would be 
 hard to prove ; for any old-fashioned naturalist 
 of pre-Darwinian clays could, if possessed of 
 
 D 2
 
 36 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE? 
 
 sufficient information, draw up such a record. 
 But we expect much more than this from 
 evolution, and we are not disappointed. It is 
 essentially a delineator of the constant and 
 progressive interaction of phenomena, and is 
 engaged, not only in tracing out the relations 
 between objects and their environments, but 
 also in ascertaining what it is which determines 
 these relations, i. e., what causes them. Its 
 business is, not merely to marshal facts and cir- 
 cumstances in their proper order and sequence, 
 but to show how this order and sequence are 
 set agoing and maintained — in other words, 
 what produces them. Thus evolution is per- 
 petually occupied with causation : both are 
 indispensable, and may be rightly regarded 
 as allies and complementary of each other. 
 
 Let us now see what inevitably happens 
 when evolution comes to be applied. Groups 
 of interlinked facts, strings of related circum- 
 stances, causes and effects of all sorts and 
 sizes, are perpetually cropping up in the path 
 of the evolutionist j and, unless he is prepared 
 to see his work lost in confusion, he must
 
 JS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? ^7 
 
 perforce classify these things, trace them back, 
 and arrange them in the order of their date, 
 importance, relation to, and influence on, each 
 other. In this process, multiplicity gradually 
 gives way to unity, and diverseness to sim- 
 plicity : types become less and less complex, 
 and fewer in number : the relation between 
 objects and environments grows simpler : 
 secondary causes disappear, absorbed by more 
 important ones, and these in their turn 
 diminish in number and become unified. 
 When this stage is reached, the evolutionist, 
 if he be a genuine agnostic, will throw up his 
 clues, declaring they run out into utter 
 darkness : then he will settle down behind 
 his veil of sense-impressions, content with the 
 phenomena which reach him. But, if reso- 
 lutely bent on completing his enquiry, he 
 may decline to find a goal, whether in 
 unresolved phenomena however simplified, 
 or in a supposed impenetrable barrier beyond 
 them ; then, he is driven to trace on to some 
 sort of primal or originating cause. Many 
 scientists, as well as philosophers, insist on a
 
 38 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE? 
 
 ' noumenon ' behind every phenomenon, and 
 infer its existence as they infer the existence 
 of anything whatever outside their own con- 
 sciousness. The 'noumenon' may be what lies 
 behind the small group of phenomena which 
 we have agreed to call a table or a man : or 
 it may be the great, universal Noumenon, 
 which Mr. Spencer calls " persistent energy," 
 and which stands behind the phenomena of 
 the universe. This may well be * unknowable,' 
 in the sense of incomprehensible, inscrutable ; 
 but, since , we, know (t. e. infer) its existence, 
 and know (also by inference) that the 
 phenomena of the universe are manifestations 
 of this ' unknowable,' we can scarcely be said 
 to be in complete ignorance. As scientists 
 tell us, we are in precisely the same predica- 
 ment with respect to matter, i. e., we know 
 (infer) its existence from certain phenomena. 
 An anthropic mode of knowledge, no doubt, 
 but our only one and therefore valuable. To 
 find the completely ' unknowing ' animal, we 
 have to descend below the human level. We 
 shall seek it in vain in that intellectual caste
 
 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? 39 
 
 which has adopted the cognomen of 'Agnostic.' 
 An ox is a perfect agnostic, a man is not, and 
 can not be. (Our means and mode of know- 
 ledge are more fully discussed in the next 
 chapter.) 
 
 When evolution has thus carried us back to 
 the question of a primal cause, its office as 
 guide and interpreter comes to an end. It 
 has ushered us into the presence of a final 
 scientific trinity — matter, energy, and intel- 
 ligence — then its function ceases. It cannot 
 evolve matter out of nothing, nor yet energy ; 
 as to their origin, it is utterly dumb ; with 
 regard to intelligence, it is equally helpless. 
 The mocking agnostic has halted at a lazy 
 spot in the rear called ' ignoramus,' evolution 
 has ceased to speak, and we are left to choose 
 for ourselves. We might select a spontaneous 
 generation, ' ex nihilo,' of matter, energy, and 
 intelligence, if it were not so absurd ; or adopt 
 your idea of an eternal, intelligent, energised 
 ' materies,' if science would ratify it. We 
 may rest content with phenomena, or find 
 their ' noumenon ' in a persisting triumvirate
 
 40 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? 
 
 of matter, energy, and intelligence. Or, like 
 you, we may choose a single inclusive cause, 
 though a different one, as is done by Spencer 
 and the monotheist. The comparative reason- 
 ableness of these alternatives must be settled 
 by each thinker for himself, but once in face 
 of them, evolution can give him no further 
 help. Unless, indeed, those are right who 
 hold that evolution is even yet not quite silent, 
 but pointing distinctly to one single origin, 
 whether of matter, energy, or intelligence. 
 
 There is a side issue which we must notice 
 in passing. The attempt has sometimes been 
 made to discover, by a minimising expedient, 
 some other adjustment of matter, energy, and 
 evolution. A drop of water, a grain of silica, 
 an atom of oxygen, a microscopic cell, seems 
 to need so small a dose of energy and to 
 imply so trivial a movement in evolution. 
 With gradations so minute, circumstances so 
 trifling, progress from one step to another so 
 imperceptible, one requires only an infini- 
 tesimal energy for each infinitesimal step, and 
 the process of evolution, once started, may
 
 JS EVOLUTION TOWER, OR MANDATE ? 4 I 
 
 surely be left to work of itself over distances 
 so insignificant. No such belittling can, 
 however, affect the question. The microscope 
 is balanced by the telescope, and the problem 
 remains the same whether for suns or pebbles, 
 for man or amoeba. If energy be served out 
 in driblets to every atom in the universe, it is 
 simply distributed, not lessened, and its 
 relation to evolution is unchanged. Nor does 
 time make any difference. Every token 
 preserves its relation to energy as accurately 
 as does every what and where, and the 
 attitude of energy to evolution remains the 
 same. Energy does not alter its character 
 whether operating on a thimbleful of sand or 
 a solar system, during an aeon or a moment : 
 and if evolution be not automatic for a man, 
 neither is it for an epithelium-cell. 
 
 M. Your rhetoric is running away with 
 you. I have no wish to depreciate energy, 
 nor yet to disturb the harmony between 
 it and evolution. Have I not throughout 
 insisted that the energy in matter is adapted 
 to every emergency it has to encounter ?
 
 42 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? 
 
 E. Undoubtedly ; and in exploring this 
 by-path, I have only wished to show that, 
 whilst no subdivision nor distribution of 
 energy can alter its import, so also the 
 relation of evolution to energy remains exactly 
 the same, in the smallest as in the largest 
 instance. Resuming my argument, I contend 
 that evolution can neither orginate nor include 
 the self-development faculty you attribute 
 to matter. It will exhibit, in the clearest 
 manner, how energy has been applied in the 
 development of matter, but not why it should 
 have been so applied ; it can show, even be, 
 the way; it cannot explain why the way is there. 
 Evolution is ' modus,' energy is ' potentia ' ; 
 the control of both rests with 'mens.' 
 
 Evolution is equally at fault when applied 
 to matter. It can tell us nothing of the 
 origin of matter, nor how matter came by the 
 properties which science assigns to it. Only 
 when matter with its endowments, and energy 
 with its forces, are in the field, can evolution 
 put in an appearance. Again, try your 
 master-key on that intelligence which we both
 
 IS EVOLUTION TOWER, OH MANDATE ? 43 
 
 contend for, though we lodge it and appreciate 
 it so differently. Here surely evolution is 
 humble servitor. How can 'modus operandi' 
 possibly produce, or be also operator, and 
 find him brains into the bargain ? The idea 
 is absurd : the cart does not drag the horse, 
 nor is either of them driver, and if the act of 
 driving (evolution) takes place, a driver there 
 must be. 'Modus' is necessarily subordinate, 
 and dependent on some thing or power or 
 being which determines it. Evolution is 
 itself a thing to be accounted for, and needs a 
 cause. 
 
 Let us take the only occasion on which 
 evolution can be thought of as an originator 
 or creator, viz., the first appearance of life and 
 mind amidst inanimate nature. You, at any 
 rate, can admit no such claim, for you contend 
 that the potentiality of life and mind is 
 original in energised matter, and therefore 
 not initiated at any subsequent stage. Life 
 and mind may appear (as hydrogen and 
 oxygen may appear) at any date, and become 
 linked with an organism, but their poten-
 
 44 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? 
 
 tiality — i. e., their latent presence, and the 
 power which determines their ultimate ap- 
 pearance — was there, according to you, from 
 the beginning and before evolution came into 
 play ; on your theory, whilst primal matter 
 was still uniform and homogeneous. You 
 have called this appearance of life and mind 
 ' a mere detail of evolution.' That is true 
 though contemptuous. Such a ' detail ' as 
 the passage from non-living to living is an 
 important one, and as yet enshrouded in dark- 
 ness. We are all hoping for the moment 
 when some inspired evolutionist shall succeed 
 in lifting the veil, but the significance of 
 evolution will not thereby be altered. It will 
 still be interpreter, not cause. The cause 
 lies long away back ; on your own showing, 
 ages before it came into visible operation in 
 the process which we call evolution. 
 
 Admirable, then, as an expositor, evolution 
 may unroll the story of the universe from 
 beginning to end ; it cannot evolve the forces 
 on which the universe depends, nor can it 
 ever include, eliminate, or explain away the
 
 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OS MANDATE ? 45 
 
 intelligent power which stands behind the 
 process. If we liken the universe to a 
 mighty river, evolution can mark out its bed 
 and banks and course ; it cannot account for 
 the flood, nor for the force which impels the 
 flood. If we compare the march of the 
 universe to a stately history, evolution tells a 
 graphic story, but does not create the actors 
 and events. 
 
 Here seems to lie the great defect in the 
 explanatory value of evolution, so far as your 
 views are concerned. It cannot prove the 
 correctness of your fourth proposition 1 , viz., 
 that ' matter possesses inbeing power of self- 
 development.' If this power be otherwise 
 proven, or taken for granted, then evolution 
 will be a faithful servant. But it is quite 
 impartial : just as willing to serve the creedless 
 scientist who declines to deify matter, tracing 
 it and everything back to a persistent, 
 unknowable force ; or the theist, who also has 
 his one sole cause of all : it will even serve 
 the agnostic, so far as he can make up his 
 
 1 In Essay, from which these pages are taken.
 
 46 IS EVOLUTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? 
 
 mind to go. When once evolution has led 
 its votaries into the pantheon of the Gods, 
 they must choose a deity for themselves. It 
 will scarcely recommend 'Nihil/ supposing 
 that shadowy god to be there ; nor is it 
 partial to a Syndicate of matter, energy, and 
 intelligence, but it will submit to that if needs 
 be ; it would have served even the ' unknown 
 god ' of the Athenians, if those old gossips 
 could have guaranteed his existence. Its 
 preference is distinctly for unity. If you or 
 the Monist can succeed in crowning matter, 
 it will yield allegiance, but it is at least equally 
 ready to bow before the Ultimate Cause 1 of 
 Spencer, or the ' 9<?o<? ' of the opponent you 
 most dislike. Materialism has no monopoly 
 of its services. 
 
 I have spoken of a great gap in the 
 explanatory value of evolution, and am sorry 
 to utter one depreciatory word ; but this 
 gap does not occur until a perverted and 
 forced use of evolution is attempted. As an 
 instrument of research it is invaluable, and 
 has about it the true scientific ring. Like the 
 1 See Quotation, page 170.
 
 IS EYOLVTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? \~j 
 
 first Law of Motion, it answers to ' how,' not 
 to ' whence ' or ' why.' Newton does not 
 attempt to tell what matter and force are, nor 
 whence they sprang ; but matter and force 
 being there, he shows us the 'modus' of what 
 has taken place, and will take place, between 
 them. So with evolution. It cannot tell us 
 what matter, energy, and intelligence are, nor 
 whence they came ; but once there, it shows 
 their method of action. If we draw a com- 
 parison between this celebrated law of 
 Newton's and Evolution, and without dis- 
 paragement of the latter, this is surely adequate 
 eulogium. The one has stood the test of 
 scientific scrutiny for 200 years ; the other, 
 in its Darwinian form, is not half a century 
 old, and though it has come to stay, it is not 
 yet quite a perfect guide. But its nature is 
 ascertained: it is mandate, not power. It can 
 account neither for 'materies,' 'potentia,' nor 
 ' mens ' : its task is to register the method 
 and results of their co-operation. 
 
 In the Western thought of our day, the 
 materialist has two chief competitors, the
 
 4 8 IS EVOLVTION POWER, OR MANDATE ? 
 
 monotheist and the agnostic. Science, free 
 to all, is creedless. So also is the true 
 agnostic. His position is the ' Ignoramus 
 et Ignorabimus' of Emil Du Bois Reymond, 
 and is logical. But when he deviates 
 into materialism or spencerism, he becomes 
 a hybrid ; greatly improved, no doubt, if 
 he follows Spencer. On the other hand, 
 materialist and monotheist are creed-holders. 
 The former has matter and physical energy 
 for his gods, eked out latterly by a hazy 
 ' world-spirit,' or by dubious ' potentialities.' 
 When he attempts to press science into the 
 service of his creed, he finds Galileo as 
 recalcitrant as ever. Rather than a deification 
 of matter, many will prefer an apotheosis of 
 mind, and, with Newton, Faraday, and 
 Spencer, one supreme and undivided source 
 for all the phenomena of matter, energy, and 
 
 intelligence which the universe has to show. 
 
 ***** 
 
 In the next chapter, whilst aiming at the 
 same goal, we propose to try an entirely 
 different route.
 
 [To face p. +9. 
 
 Figure 1 (Reflex action). 
 
 Nerve-centre (Nc), formed by group of cells. 
 Nerve-fibres, passing to or from Centre. 
 
 outgoing fibre 
 
 incoming fibre 
 
 Nerve-centre 
 
 Muscle 
 
 [After Schofield.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 OF A BRAIN -CELL. 
 
 " Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et 
 efficax per exempla!' 
 
 Possibly, even probably, any attempt to 
 indicate mental processes by diagram will 
 be considered fanciful and useless. We 
 venture, nevertheless, to introduce a few 
 figures, and in these two colours are employed 
 — black, to signify what is held to be external 
 and objective ; red, for what is subjective and 
 psychic. We shall have to borrow some 
 simple data from biology and psychology, 
 and we commence by citing one or two in 
 reflex nerve-action. 
 
 1. Reflex Innervation. 
 Figure 1 represents the nerve-apparatus of 
 
 E
 
 50 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 reflex innervation, reduced to its simplest 
 expression. It consists of a nerve-centre or 
 area, formed by one nerve-cell or a group of 
 cells, into which one or more nerve-fibres 
 (centripetal or afferent) enter, and from which 
 one or more fibres (centrifugal or efferent) 
 depart. At their inner ends, the fibres are 
 frequently continuous with the cells, and may 
 be regarded as greatly elongated arms where- 
 by direct communication is kept up between 
 the cells and the structures they control. 
 In other instances, the inner terminal of the 
 fibre is in close proximity to the cell, but is 
 not continuous with it ; this arrangement has 
 possibly a distinct purpose, and does not 
 impair the completeness and security of the 
 circuit. The in- and out-routes are permanent, 
 and not interchangeable : along the incoming 
 track impressions pass to the nerve-centre, 
 and are there converted into, or give rise to, 
 impulses which depart by the outgoing track. 
 In true reflex innervation, the nerve-centre is 
 strictly non-conscious, and the whole process is 
 essentially automatic. The term ' automatic '
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 5 1 
 
 is here used in its popular sense, not with its 
 physiological meaning. 
 
 This reflex nerve apparatus is perhaps the 
 earliest, and certainly the most widely extended 
 form of nerve-system which is met with in 
 the animal kingdom. In the lower inverte- 
 brata, the simple type we have described is 
 apparently the only one which exists, and 
 even in the highest, the same form prevails. 
 In the vertebrate kingdom, the nervous system 
 rests throughout on a broad basis of reflex 
 arrangements. The spinal cord with its 
 bulbar expansion consists mainly of a pile 
 of reflex centres, connected, by outgoing 
 nerves, with every muscle in the body ; and, 
 by incoming nerves, with every sensitive area, 
 and with all organs of sense excepting, 
 perhaps, the olfactory : moreover, what may 
 be termed the domestic functions of the body, 
 viz., the whole of that visceral activity on 
 which the maintenance of an animal depends, 
 is relegated, almost entirely, to the sway of 
 reflex innervation. 
 
 In the higher mammalia, and apart from 
 
 e 2
 
 52 KINETICS AND METAKINETICB 
 
 that which remains dedicated to nutrition, 
 reflex action becomes increasingly masked by 
 the association and control of the brain proper, 
 itself a complex mass of nerve-centres ; also 
 by the co-operation of a dawning consciousness 
 and intelligence. In man, it has become so 
 greatly overshadowed that it is no longer 
 quite easy to pick out a perfectly pure and 
 simple reflex, suitable for non-technical illus- 
 tration. The difficulty is increased by the 
 fact that the same nerve routes (out and 
 in) are used, to a great extent, by nerve 
 impulses which affect consciousness or rouse 
 and express volition, and by such as never 
 pass further than a regulative, but non- 
 conscious, nerve centre. As instances of 
 natural reflexes we may name coughing, 
 sneezing, swallowing (in part), breathing (also 
 in part), and certain daily indispensable 
 functions of the body. The example we 
 select is the momentary closure of the eyelids 
 which is constantly taking place during 
 waking hours. Of course we can close the
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 53 
 
 eyes whenever we wish, and we can fix our 
 attention on their winking whenever it occurs ; 
 but, as everyone knows, this act is continually 
 happening whether we will it and observe it, 
 or not. Its chief purpose is to keep the 
 surface of the eye clean and moist : it is a 
 pure reflex, the nerve-apparatus concerned in 
 it being a twig of the fifth nerve reporting to 
 a centre in the medulla, from which a motor 
 impulse is sent along a branch of the facial 
 to the circular muscle which closes the lids. 
 Involuntary winking serves also another pur- 
 pose in the protection of the eye against a 
 sudden blow, as from a missile ; the action 
 is still reflex, but the optic (retina) takes the 
 place of the fifth nerve. 
 
 Bearing in mind the extreme importance 
 and range of reflex action, and that even the 
 highest members of the nervous system are 
 not exempt from its influence, we are not 
 surprised to find in many mental processes 
 a close analogy with what is reflex. Indeed 
 there are scientists who, taking reflex action
 
 54 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 in its widest and most philosophic sense, 
 are disposed to include under its rule, not 
 only the physical acts necessary to life, but 
 also the psychism of consciousness, volition, 
 emotion, and cogitation. Every variety of 
 psychic activity is thus held to be due 
 to excitor impulses issuing from the higher 
 cerebral centres, which centres, again, have 
 been thrown into action either by freshly 
 incoming impressions, or by these in associa- 
 tion with the accumulated and registered 
 impressions and conceptions of previous ex- 
 perience. In this way, all cerebration may 
 be looked on as reflex, and as an illustration 
 of the self-adjustment, re nervous system, 
 of an organism to its physical and psychic 
 environment. The view, however, is some- 
 what transcendental, and quite beyond our 
 present object, which is to note the likeness, 
 and also the difference, between a simple 
 non-conscious reflex, and that particular form 
 of nervo-psychic action we propose to examine. 
 The thesis we have to develop may be stated 
 thus : —
 
 [To face p. 55. 
 
 Figure 2. (A. and B.). 
 A. (Consciousness). 
 
 at rest in action 
 
 O # 
 
 B. (Protoplasmic conscious nerve area). 
 
 at rest in action 
 
 o *
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 55 
 
 A sense-impression, arriving at 
 a nerve-centre or area which is 
 conscious, may give rise, not to 
 an outgoing impulse ending, it 
 may be, in muscular contraction, 
 but to a change in consciousness 
 which results in the formation 
 or ' projection' of a conception. 
 
 The action is neuro-psychic, not neuro- 
 muscular. 
 
 "V 7|t p(T t|? TJC 
 
 2. Conscious Nerve-area. Excitants. 
 Sense-impressions, and their Perception. 
 
 Starting, now, from the one fact of which 
 each, for himself, is perfectly certain and 
 without proof, viz., Consciousness, we are 
 equally sure that this is always in one of two 
 states — in repose (as during dreamless sleep), 
 or in action. We represent consciousness by 
 a red circle — regular when in repose, irregular 
 when in action. See Figure 2, A.
 
 5 6 KINETICS AND METAKINETICB 
 
 Science teaches that consciousness, in man, 
 is associated exclusively with a certain area of 
 brain-protoplasm, in which molecular changes 
 occur concomitantly with changes in con- 
 sciousness. We may take the association 
 and changes dualistically ; as Huxley does, 
 and speak of ' neuroses ' (molecular states 
 and changes), and ' psychoses ' (states and 
 changes of consciousness) : or, with Lloyd 
 Morgan, we may take them monistically \ and 
 speak of one substance having two aspects — 
 external or objective (' kinesis '), for physical 
 states and changes ; internal or subjective 
 (' metakinesis '), for states and changes in 
 consciousness, Either view will serve us, 
 and both lodge consciousness in brain proto- 
 plasm. We now draw another figure repre- 
 senting the protoplasmic conscious nerve-area, 
 its molecular basis in black : see Figure 2, B. 
 This nerve-area has been called, in previous 
 
 pages, the protoplasmic mind. 
 
 Experience convinces us that consciousness 
 is roused in more ways than one, but notably 
 and constantly by influences from the external
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. $? 
 
 world. In view of their action on conscious- 
 ness we propose, in future, to call these 
 external influences, Excitants, Such ex- 
 citants, when they impinge on the periphery 
 of the body, rouse the activity of the outer 
 terminals of certain adapted nerve-fibres, 
 producing in them what are termed Sense- 
 impressions. These impressions pass 
 inwards along the fibres, and are communi- 
 cated by their inner terminals to the proto- 
 plasm of the conscious nerve-area. They 
 may arrive singly or in groups. They are 
 neural only, and are concerned in sight, 
 hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Under touch, 
 we include not only the highly developed 
 sense as it exists, for instance, in the finger- 
 tips, but also that general sensitiveness which 
 is present in the whole of the skin-surface, 
 and, in a less marked form, throughout the 
 interior of the body : we also include what 
 is sometimes called ' muscular sense.' 
 
 When sense-impressions reach the conscious 
 nerve-area, they arouse its psychic activity 
 and are responded to by perceptions of
 
 58 KINETICS AND METAEINETICS 
 
 light, sound, contact, position, shape, size, 
 colour, taste, odour, &c, according to the 
 nature of the impression which has been 
 communicated. See Figure 3. 
 
 Sense-impressions, and also the perceptions 
 to which they give rise, are, for the most 
 part, accurate and trustworthy. We must 
 insist a little on this point because their 
 validity has sometimes been questioned : 
 lately by an eminent thinker and statesman 
 (Mr. Balfour, in his valuable " Foundations of 
 Belief"). No doubt we have, in infancy, 
 to learn to see, hear, and touch correctly, just 
 as we have to learn to talk and walk : it is 
 equally certain that, throughout life, sense- 
 impressions have to be carefully scrutinised 
 and construed by reason. We have also to 
 sift out and exclude a certain group of well- 
 known fallacies due to imperfection, disorder, 
 or fag of the nerve-apparatus : such are 
 colour-blindness, double vision, * subjective ' 
 sensations, illusions, hallucinations, and the 
 like. Again, sense-impressions may be feeble, 
 uncertain, or thwarted by surrounding con-
 
 I To face p. 58. 
 
 Figure 3. (Object and Concept). 
 
 Line of excitants f black continuous arrows) 
 
 passing from external objects (black circles on left) to 
 periphery of body. 
 
 Line of sense-impressions (black dotted arrows). 
 
 Responding perceptions (red arrows) 
 
 projected in the reverse direction and to the site of 
 the external objects, as Conceptions (red circles) 
 of these objects. The red arrows and circles, of course, 
 8" should lie on the black ones ; they are slightly displaced 
 
 for sake of clearness. 
 
 periphery 
 of body 
 
 o. optic — for form, size, position, colour, movement. 
 
 a. auditory — for sound. 
 
 t. touch — for contact, resistance, weight, temperature, &c. ; 
 also for form, size, position, movement. 
 
 s. smell — for odours. 
 
 g. gustatory — for taste.
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 59 
 
 ditions ; they may be unheeded, or wrongly 
 interpreted ; they vary in intensity and 
 sharpness with the varying sensory acuteness 
 of each individual, with the attention and 
 amount of practice bestowed on them. Visual 
 impressions form the largest class, and it is 
 the trustworthiness of these which has been 
 most frequently called in question. No doubt, 
 as Helmholtz showed long ago, the human 
 eye is by no means an ideally perfect optical 
 instrument ; yet, for the manifold usage of 
 life, it may be even better than a more perfect 
 organ. We do not put into the hands of 
 a soldier an exquisite rifle, which requires 
 delicate handling and a dust-proof and water- 
 proof cover, but one which will stand rough 
 treatment as well as shoot straight. There 
 are puzzles connected with vision which are 
 not fully cleared up, and perception of colours 
 is one of its curiosities ; but no one, who has 
 an inkling of physiology, nowadays confuses 
 his visual perceptions of an external object 
 with qualities supposed to be resident in the 
 object. We shall presently have to examine
 
 60 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 more closely the relation between object, ex- 
 citant, sense-impression, and perception, but 
 just now our business is to vindicate the 
 character of sense-perceptions. When we say 
 a bush is green, we are of course speaking in 
 a conventional or convenient way. We do 
 not mean that green-ness is a quality of the 
 bush, but of the picture which, presented by 
 the optic nerve, is read-off green by per- 
 ception. This reading is accurate, and as 
 it should be ; otherwise how shall we dis- 
 tinguish between the bush and the gay 
 flowers which bedeck it, or secure that laugh 
 at the exceptional person who sees the bush 
 red ? Instead of our perceptions of colour, in 
 its endless variety, being traps for the unwary, 
 they are rather proofs of the extreme exactness 
 with which the retina responds to probably 
 very slight differences in ether- vibration, and 
 of the equally wonderful fidelity with which 
 perception discriminates between minutely 
 differing reports from the optic nerve. 
 
 Language is steeped in metaphor and 
 imagery. We can hardly speak of an external
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 6 1 
 
 object without endowing it with some quality 
 or activity which we know it does not possess. 
 A bell rings, a shoe finches, a knife cuts, a 
 door creaks, an engine runs, a pin (sometimes 
 a conscience) pricks, sugar is sweet, snow is 
 white and cold. It is scarcely fair, perhaps, 
 to say that our way of speaking of external 
 objects — as hard, smooth, soft, rough, red, 
 green, warm, cold, &c. — is merely meta- 
 phorical : it is really a remnant of ignorance 
 which we retain on account of its convenience, 
 and which the 'man in the street ' still believes 
 in ; but neither the scientist nor his critic 
 makes any blunder about it. 
 
 Our contention then is that, habitually, 
 our sense-impressions and the perceptions 
 founded on them are accurate and trust- 
 worthy. Were it not so we should indeed be 
 badly off, in view of the multitudes in which 
 they occur daily to everyone, and our utter 
 dependence on their guidance. Think for a 
 moment of the safety and success with which 
 they enable us to follow all sorts of mech- 
 anical trades and pursuits, many of them
 
 62 KINETICS AND METAEINETICS 
 
 requiring minute precision and involving risk 
 to life and limb. Think of the important part 
 which accurate sense-perception necessarily 
 plays in rigid and exact scientific work ; during 
 the recent eclipse, for example, or in the con- 
 stant transit work of an observatory. Think 
 of the quick and true perceptions of a crack 
 shot, in covert, or in Indian jungle where his 
 life may depend on the correct planting of a 
 bullet in the right spot at the right moment ; 
 think of the keen-ness and accuracy of sight 
 and touch in the Wimbledon marksman, in the 
 Afridi ' sniper,' alas !, whose stolen rifle would 
 have been useless without his truth of vision 
 and touch. Remember the eye and hand of 
 an expert cricketer or billiard-player, of golfer 
 or tennis-player ; of the London bus-driver, 
 as he threads his difficult way through the 
 Strand at noon ; of the mariner, with one 
 sense fixed on the trembling needle and 
 another on the helm, as he steers a straight 
 course for the port he is making; of the 
 surgeon in a delicate eye-operation, of the 
 artist at his easel, architect at his plans, en-
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 63 
 
 graver at his plate, watch-maker at his bench, 
 ploughboy at his furrow, or even of the self- 
 congratulating Irish hodman, precariously 
 balanced on the rungs of a ricketty ladder, 
 mounting bricks all day to " the other man 
 at the top, faith, who does all the wurrk." 
 Even our daily glance at the paper, or the 
 writing of a letter, gives ample proof of the 
 trustiness of average sight and touch. Try 
 writing a few lines with the eyes shut : or try 
 another sense altogether, and note the audi- 
 tory perfection of the skilled conductor as he 
 guides his orchestra though the intricacies 
 of an overture ; listen to his first violin, or 
 observe merely the musical precision of a 
 clever piano-tuner. As a contrast to the 
 reliance which experience has taught us may 
 be placed on sense-evidence, note the help- 
 lessness of such as have been deprived of it. 
 Watch a blind man in the street — how closely 
 he listens, how painfully he gropes with his 
 stick. Take away his hearing and his em- 
 barrassment is doubled : take from him also 
 his sense of touch, and where is he ? The
 
 64 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 three great classes of sense-impressions — 
 of sight, hearing, touch — are gone ; naught 
 remains but smell and taste, and these 
 blunted. He is worse off than the man 
 struck down by coma, for lie remains miser- 
 ably aware of the awful boycott which has 
 befallen him. We are scarcely likely to 
 undervalue our sense-impressions or cease to 
 trust our perceptive interpretation of them, 
 seeing how faithfully we are served by both, 
 and how completely we are dependent on 
 them for any cognisance we can have of an 
 external world. 
 
 We have been using two terms — sense- 
 impression, and sense-perception : for our 
 purpose, it is necessary to distinguish clearly 
 between these. Sense-impression is neural 
 only, sense-perception is the psychic inter- 
 pretation of a neural state : both are often 
 thought of, and talked about, much more 
 loosely than with the definite meaning we 
 attach to them. A child is knocked down 
 and half-killed by a runaway cab ; it has had 
 very serious sense-impressions, but, being
 
 OF A BRAIN- CELL. 65 
 
 instantly stunned, has scarcely perceived 
 them. Of the spectators, however, one has 
 what he calls an ' impression ' that the driver 
 did not see the child, another has an ' im- 
 pression ' that the cabman shouted, another 
 that he was only swearing at his horse, 
 another that he was drunk, another that a 
 rein had broken, another is simply horror- 
 struck. They have all seen the accident from 
 about the same point of view, and have all 
 had practically the same sense-impressions, 
 but when they detail and compare their 
 supposed ' impressions,' it is not these, but 
 the product of them — the recollection, mental 
 picture, conception or judgment founded 
 thereon — which they recount. 
 
 We define ' sense -impression ' as that 
 change which is wrought, on the nerve-tract 
 and molecular basis of the conscious nerve- 
 area, by the action of an excitant. We do 
 not need to determine what the change is ; 
 it may be physical or chemical or electric, or 
 all three and more, or different from any — 
 science has not yet decided — but it is neural, 
 
 V
 
 66 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 not psychic, and it is limited to the protoplasm 
 of fibre and cell. The change, like the tract 
 which it affects, lies intermediately between 
 excitant and consciousness. It begins where 
 the excitant rouses the outer terminal, or 
 some other part, of the nerve-tract ; it 
 ceases when, at the inner terminal, it has 
 aroused consciousness. Take, for example, 
 the sense of hearing. Undulating air is the 
 excitant; sense-impression is the change set 
 up by this in the auditory nerve ; perception 
 of sound is the change in consciousness pro- 
 duced by the delivery of the sense-impression. 
 Thus when sense-impressions reach the 
 conscious nerve-area, they produce, or result 
 in, an active state of consciousness : how, we 
 know not. Material and objective, in the 
 nerve-fibre; material and objective even in 
 the protoplasmic basis of the nerve-area, they 
 nevertheless, in some unknown way, give rise 
 to (are transmuted into ?) subjective psychic 
 states. The first state produced is perception 
 — the incoming impression is perceived ; but 
 along with, or closely following perception,
 
 OF A SB UN-CELL. 6j 
 
 there may be many states and changes. 
 Thus, together with perception may go a 
 feeling of pleasure, annoyance, or curiosity. 
 The incoming impression may be recognised, 
 or compared with predecessors, or silently 
 stored in memory. Or it may start a whole 
 train of mental pictures and processes : for 
 instance, an impression, incoming by the 
 olfactory route, may remind us of a certain 
 pleasant meal, of the scene, time of year, 
 friends present, where they are now and what 
 has since happened to them ; and so may 
 lead on to volition, issuing in another dinner 
 invitation, or maybe in a cheque to an un- 
 lucky former guest who has come to grief at 
 the Antipodes. 
 
 There is, however, another way in which 
 incoming sense-impressions affect conscious- 
 ness. They may lead to conceptions, or a 
 combination of conceptions, which are referred 
 directly to the external objects from which 
 the excitants, producing the impressions, are 
 supposed to proceed. Of such objects, 
 
 mental pictures or conceptions are thus 
 
 F 2
 
 68 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 formed — are ' projected,' to use a word some- 
 times employed. The term is expressive, and 
 probably more accurate as regards visual and 
 tactual impressions ; certainly it lends itself 
 more readily to diagrammatic presentation. 
 
 It is to this last-named destiny of 
 sense-impressions that we limit our 
 enquiry, and we now proceed to ex- 
 amine a familiar and time-honoured 
 illustration of it. 
 
 ***** 
 
 3. Orange, objective and conceptual. 
 
 Let an orange be so placed as to arouse 
 our sense-impressions. An excitant (say, an 
 ether-vibration of appropriate rate), reflected 
 from the surface of the orange, strikes the 
 outer terminal (retina) of the optic nerve, 
 produces therein a sense-impression which 
 travels inwards to the conscious nerve-area, 
 is there received, jy^rceived, and gives rise 
 to (is transmuted into ?) a conception of 
 colour. Bat the retina, with its coverings, is
 
 OF A BRAIN- CELL. 69 
 
 arranged as a camera and has lenses in front, 
 the result being that an upside-down image is 
 formed on the retinal terminal and constitutes 
 an important sense-impression : this is com- 
 bined en route with a similar impression from 
 the other eye, the position of the reversed 
 image is rectified — we need not here enquire 
 how — and the result is that a corrected and 
 unified sense-impression is finally delivered at 
 the conscious nerve-area, and there gives rise 
 to conceptions of size, shape, and position. 
 These conceptions are checked and confirmed 
 by tactual impressions reaching the nerve- 
 area along nerves of touch. Such tactual 
 impressions of size, shape, and position are 
 perhaps truer than their corresponding visual 
 impressions, and may of course replace them, 
 as when the eyes are shut or blinded. 1 We 
 
 1 In everyday life we trust largely to visual im- 
 pressions because of their convenience, rapidity and 
 practical correctness ; for distant objects, we have to 
 rely almost entirely on them, except where hearing or 
 smell are concerned. But there can be little doubt 
 about the aid which touch gives in the training of 
 sight ; and in the appreciation of near objects, the two
 
 70 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 have now only to add a sense-impression, 
 travelling by the olfactory nerve and resulting 
 in a perception of fragrance ; and an impres- 
 sion arriving by the nerve of taste, resulting 
 in a perception of sweetness and flavour, if 
 the orange be a good one. 
 
 In reference to our orange, we have thus 
 arrived at certain conceptions of shape, size, 
 position, colour, fragrance, and taste. These 
 conceptions are combined in consciousness, 
 and ' projected ' as a conceptual Orange. 
 See Figure 4. 
 
 Here comes a * crux ' : the very one to 
 nail a Naturalism-man on. The rustic says 
 that what he is seeing, tasting, handling, is 
 the orange itself, and he cannot be persuaded 
 to the contrary. And all of us, in an ordi- 
 nary way, speak of like -formed conceptions 
 
 senses remain in very close alliance. In all information 
 afforded by the many varieties of contact (including 
 the physical causes of pain, itching, tingling, &c), 
 touch is of course paramount. In certain cases, even 
 for a distant object — for instance, a distant source of 
 heat — it is touch, in a modified form, which comes into 
 play.
 
 [To face p. 70. 
 
 Figure 4. (Orange) 
 
 conscious 
 nerve -area 
 
 Excitants (black continuous arroivsj. 
 Sense-impressions (black dotted arrowsj 
 
 Perceptions of sense-impressions (red arrowsj 
 combined and projected as Conceptual Orange. 
 
 1. (Visual) for colour, shape, size, position. 
 
 2. (Tactual) for contact, shape, size, position. 
 
 3. (Olfactory) for fragrance. 
 
 4. (Gustatory) for sweetness, flavour. 
 
 N.B. — As in Figure 3, the red arrows and circle should lie on the black 
 ones ; they are slightly displaced for sake of clearness.
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. ~, I 
 
 of external objects as though they were the 
 objects themselves. Science tells us we are 
 mistaken in doing so, and must recognise the 
 practice as a convenience only. All that we 
 really perceive are the changing states of con- 
 sciousness, and conceptions arising therefrom : 
 out of these we construct conceptual oranges, 
 tables, houses, &c. But, as we have seen, 
 such changes in consciousness are brought 
 about by incoming sense-impressions, and 
 these again are produced by excitants external 
 to ourselves. Even so-called ' subjective ' 
 sense-impressions are, as is well-known, pro- 
 duced by causes external to the conscious 
 nerve-area. Thus a bit of diseased bone in 
 the middle ear may produce a sense-impression 
 on the auditory nerve which is perceived in 
 consciousness as a disagreeable sound, or a 
 vascular disturbance in a blind retina may 
 result in the perception of a luminous outline. 
 Such starting-points within the body are, of 
 course, as truly external to the conscious 
 nerve-area as is a distant church-bell, or a 
 star.
 
 72 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 So far, in our observations, we have arrived 
 at a definite result, viz., a conceptual orange. 
 Tracing this back, we find it is the outcome of 
 certain changes and conceptions in conscious- 
 ness. These, again, are caused by incoming 
 sense-impressions, which, in their turn, are 
 produced by influences external to us. The 
 series is thus : — 
 
 External influence or excitant-^ 
 sense-impression -*- change in con- 
 sciousness -*- conception. 
 
 As we have seen, the plain man takes his 
 conceptual for real : the scientist says he is 
 wrong ; what he is taking for reality is merely 
 a combination of sense-impressions. The 
 predicament is not avoided if we look on our 
 orange simply as a mass of matter. Accom- 
 plished physicists assure us that we are 
 entirely ignorant of what matter is, and must 
 remain so. We can no more see and handle 
 real matter than we can see and handle a real 
 orange. Even Dr. Johnson did not touch 
 reality when he kicked the stone with his 
 philosophic toe. What we can know of
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. J% 
 
 matter is its properties, just as what we can 
 know of an orange is its properties ; and such 
 knowledge is obtained, in each instance, in 
 the way indicated. Matter is held to be 
 composed of molecules and atoms. But 
 atoms and molecules are inventions of thought 
 — conceptions of imagined entities which 
 may, or may not exist ; ' ether ' is a scientific 
 conception or postulate ; the atomic theory 
 and the corpuscular theory of matter are 
 useful working hypotheses : that is all, and 
 competent experts are not wanting who are 
 prepared to clear them away, and substitute a 
 hypothesis of ' units of force ' for atoms of 
 matter. 
 
 Bearing in mind this difficulty as to 
 whether what goes by the name of ' matter ' 
 is a real entity or not, we return to our series 
 as it at present stands, viz., excitant - 3 - 
 
 sense-impression -*■ consciousness -*■ 
 
 Conception. We should apologise for the 
 apparent incongruity of thus linking objective 
 with subjective, were it not clear that such 
 association is constant in neuro-psy chic action.
 
 74 KINETICS AND METAEINETICS 
 
 Of the series itself it may, however, be urged 
 that the only certainties are the last two 
 members. Whatever the excitant be, what- 
 ever modification it may undergo, wherever it 
 may come from and by whatever route, it (or 
 its modification) is delivered ultimately at the 
 innermost terminal, viz., the molecular proto- 
 plasm of the nerve-area, and is there as truly 
 external to consciousness as though it were 
 a hundred yards away ; further, that of this 
 molecular protoplasm, or of any agitation 
 occurring in it, we can know nothing save in 
 the way of a conception. The monistic view 
 might here help, since it regards the molecular 
 agitation (neurosis) and the concomitant sub- 
 jective activity (psychosis) as merely the 
 outside and inside aspect of the same thing. 
 But it renders no aid to that true and 
 complete agnosticism which says — ' what I 
 know is consciousness ; all that I can know of 
 an outside world are the pictures and con- 
 ceptions which arise in consciousness.' Any- 
 one who seriously adopts this position is, 
 however, pretty certain to drift off, sooner or
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. ~$ 
 
 later, into a world of phantoms in which the 
 sole remaining certainty is his private con- 
 sciousness, valid only for himself. Losing his 
 grip of protoplasm, he has clutched a shadow; 
 but this, too, eludes him. The " Ego cogito, 
 ergo sum " of Descartes is really of no use to 
 him. He is reduced to ' cogitare ' — cannot 
 keep even ' cogitans ' — for he has begged his 
 ' ego,' and we can take it from him. It is per- 
 fectly legitimate to call upon him to surrender 
 it, for the introspective proprietorship, which 
 this imaginary entity is supposed to possess, 
 can quite readily be transferred to conscious- 
 ness. We have only to regard consciousness 
 as in part specialised to observe its own 
 proceedings — as appliable and applied to 
 itself — then the delusion of personality may 
 be dismissed, a proprietor is no longer 
 needed, and the ghost, if there be one, is left 
 to cover its nakedness, if it have any, with 
 such ownerless conceptions as may happen to 
 be about. 
 
 Fiom this dismal pitfall we are saved by 
 the assured conviction of real existence which
 
 76 KINETICS AND METAEINETICS 
 
 every sane person has, and for which he asks 
 no proof. We may also remember, as 
 Professor Morgan reminds us (in " Monist," 
 Oct. 1897), that each individual's experience, 
 whether correct or not, is, for himself, 
 undoubtedly real. The lad who, on a dark 
 night, has taken a flapping sheet of newspaper 
 blotted against the hedge for a ghost, and 
 has thereby been frightened out of his wits, 
 has had an experience very real and alarming, 
 though founded on false data. So also has 
 the well-meaning but over- worked signal-man, 
 whose tired eyes and weary metakinesis end, 
 at last, in the wrong lever and a fatal 
 crash. 
 
 ***** 
 
 4. Relation of excitant and sense-impres- 
 sion to consciousness. Brain-cells 
 and Psychism. 
 
 With respect to the last two members of 
 our series— consciousness and conception — 
 we have thus no anxiety. Let us now see
 
 OF A BRAIJY-CELL. J J 
 
 whether an equal, or at least adequate, 
 certainty can be established for the first two, 
 
 viz., excitant and sense-impression. 
 
 Fortunately they are open to very simple 
 experiment. 
 
 Shut the eyes in broad daylight, and the 
 sense-route (optic) falls at once into repose, 
 no impression travels on it, and no perception 
 of light occurs. Open the eyes, and an 
 external excitant ( l light) at once falls on the 
 optic nerve, producing in it a sense-impression 
 which passes on to the conscious nerve-area 
 and occasions a perception of light. Control 
 these observations by another. Open the 
 eyes when in complete darkness, and no 
 perception of light takes place. In the first 
 and third instance — eyes shut in daylight, 
 eyes open in darkness — two conditions are 
 alike, viz., perceiving area and conveying 
 
 1 We use the word ' light ' in the ordinary way : 
 more exactly, our excitant should perhaps be spoken 
 of as that particular vibration of ether which is the 
 proper stimulus of the optic nerve, and rouses its 
 specific activity.
 
 78 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 route ; there is capacity for sense-impression, 
 but the impression itself is absent, the third 
 necessary condition being either excluded or 
 not present. Introduce this condition, and a 
 perception of light at once follows. This third 
 condition concerns the first two members of 
 our series : with respect to them, and in so 
 far as the foregoing illustrations are concerned, 
 we draw two conclusions — first, that the 
 co-operation of excitant and sense-impression 
 is indispensable to the final result (seeing) ; 
 second, that both are external to, 'and 
 independent of consciousness, and of any 
 conception arising therein. The experiment 
 may be varied by shutting one eye whilst the 
 other is open, or by using a pair of eyes in 
 one of which the cornea is opaque or the 
 pupil blocked. A similar trial may be made 
 with any other nerve of sense. Take the 
 glosso-pharyngeal (nerve of taste) in a 
 quiescent state, the conscious nerve-area being 
 also quiescent so far as perception of taste is 
 concerned. Now bring to bear on the nerve 
 an external excitant from, say, a pinch of
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. J() 
 
 salt or sugar ; a sense-impression at onee 
 arises, and is presently followed by a per- 
 ception of taste in consciousness. Again — 
 touch gently the hand of one who is asleep : 
 there is an excitant and a sense-impression, 
 but both too feeble to rouse the slumbering 
 consciousness : now squeeze the hand smartly, 
 and consciousness awakes, possibly very cross. 
 Let the sleeper be heavily drugged, as by 
 chloroform, and nothing will rouse him : that 
 terrible excitant, the surgeon's knife, and the 
 violent sense-impression produced by cutting 
 through sensitive nerves, are for the moment 
 totally unheeded ; but consciousness will rage 
 presently, when the merciful spell has 
 passed. 
 
 Try yet another simple experiment. Take 
 an insulated piece of copper wire, having a 
 movable needle connected with one end of it ; 
 at the other end introduce a current of 
 electricity, and the needle is immediately 
 deflected. In this case, the electric current 
 represents the external excitant of our 
 previous observations, the copper wire takes
 
 80 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 the place of nerve-fibre, the change in the 
 particles of the wire produced by the passing 
 current represents sense-impressions, the 
 needle stands for the molecular protoplasm 
 of our nerve-area, and the movement of the 
 needle for ' neurosis ' or ' kinesis.' Let us 
 suppose, for a moment, that in the moving 
 needle there is an area of consciousness : in 
 this case, a subjective state ('psychosis' or 
 ' metakinesis ') would at once arise, and result 
 in the conception or mental picture of a 
 moving needle. There is no such area in the 
 needle, but we need not be at a loss, for it 
 is easy to switch on a human consciousness. 
 Let A, who is to supply the consciousness, 
 have his eyes bandaged and ears stopped, so 
 that no sight nor sound can reach him ; then 
 let another person, B, conduct the experiment. 
 It is complete and successful, but A, though 
 present, is none the wiser. Continue the 
 experiment as before, but connect A's con- 
 sciousness by removing bandage and stopping, 
 and immediately A becomes aware of the 
 whole business. In his consciousness he has
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 8 I 
 
 a perception of the moving needle ; he can 
 hear its click, or the ringing of a bell if the 
 current have been arranged to ring a bell as 
 well as move a needle ; and if he touch 
 needle or bell, he may get still another very 
 direct and less agreeable proof of the reality 
 and externalness of an excitant. To make 
 sure, he may then perform the experiment 
 on B. Of course we cannot connect the 
 consciousness of A or B directly with needle 
 or bell, nor even with the current ; there is 
 the inevitable loop-line of medium, eye, ear, 
 skin, nerve-tract, and protoplasm of perceiving 
 centre to be got over, but the connection is 
 none the less effectually made in the end. 
 Such experiments are sound and conclusive, 
 for they can be repeated any number of 
 times by any number of observers, and 
 because the result is always the same and 
 predictable with certainty. 
 
 By this time we are probably convinced 
 that the excitants we have been experimenting 
 with do veritably exist, do set up sense- 
 impressions, and also that botli are external to 
 
 a
 
 82 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 consciousness and entirely independent of it. 
 So far from being to us merely conceptions, 
 we recognise in them causes and antecedents 
 without which no such conceptions would 
 arise. It may be objected that we can, and 
 often do form a mental picture or conception 
 of an external object when no such object is 
 present, and therefore no excitant and no 
 incoming sense-impression. The objection 
 seems valid, but is easily met. Such an 
 apparently non-caused conception has simply 
 been summoned from the storehouse of 
 memory. Originally produced by an incoming 
 sense-impression, it has been repeated, 
 refreshed, strengthened by a long succession 
 of such impressions, until it has become a 
 permanent and available mental asset, at the 
 service of either volition or association. Not 
 of course retainable without its protoplasmic 
 companion. We do not in the least know 
 what the companionship is, nor how long it 
 will last, nor how end, but in the present it 
 is indissoluble. The carriage and retention 
 (so to speak) of such conceptions imply, for
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 83 
 
 the biologist, the continuous existence of 
 appropriate brain-cells, and may, without 
 committing him to either dualism, monism, 
 or materialism, be fairly regarded as a function 
 or office performed by such cells. Brain-cells, 
 like all others, in their successive generations, 
 hand down type, structure, and function with 
 extreme fidelity. Thus it may well be that, 
 in recalling what appears to be a past concep- 
 tion, we are really dealing with a closely- 
 resemblant successor. If the metaphor can 
 be permitted, we may be merely reading, 
 not the original imprint, but a facsimile of 
 it, maintained in stereotype by succeeding 
 generations of brain-cells, and presented by 
 the generation actually existing. 
 
 There are still some who find, in the 
 memory of their past experience, a convincing 
 proof that personality and psychic states, re- 
 lating to the past, may exist without a physical 
 accompaniment, and be in some way inde- 
 pendent of the brain. The protoplasm con- 
 cerned in our past experience, say they, has 
 long been defunct, yet our memory of that 
 
 g 2
 
 84 KINETICS AND METAEINETICS 
 
 experience remains, and is at times uncom- 
 fortably vivid. Those who hold this view are 
 of course forgetting the registering and be- 
 queathing power of brain-cells ; and the theory 
 of memory above given is certainly more in 
 accord with the imperative dictum of modern 
 biology, viz., that for every psychic state and 
 event there is an associated presence of, and 
 movement in, brain-protoplasm. The same 
 theory also at once rids us of the difficulty in 
 understanding how mental pictures may arise 
 in consciousness, apparently in the absence of 
 an external excitant. The constituents of the 
 picture are already in the safe keeping of some 
 morsel of brain-protoplasm, and nerve arrange- 
 ments are provided whereby such constituents 
 shall be produced when consciousness calls 
 for them. Such a morsel (brain -cell) may be 
 compared to a cell in the battery we were 
 using. Let the nerve-battery (protoplasm of 
 brain-cells) be thrown into action — it is quite 
 at the mercy of its surroundings — and an 
 excitant is at once forthcoming which may 
 summon, and send along the prescribed route 
 a stored impression, or its psychic equivalent,
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 85 
 
 which presently makes its appearance in con- 
 sciousness. As electricity may be stored, so 
 undoubtedly may nerve-force, and an un- 
 noticed trifle may set either free. Of the 
 storage and routine application of nerve-force, 
 at a stage in advance of what is simply reflex, 
 we have a good illustration in that action of 
 certain nerve-centres which physiologists call 
 ' automatic.' It is exemplified in many acts 
 which habitual repetition has at length ren- 
 dered almost independent of volition ; as 
 instances may be cited the half-mechanical 
 execution of familiar music, and the act of 
 walking, continued perfectly though the walker 
 has lost himself in thought. Between this 
 kind of routine storage and usage of nerve- 
 force, and that whereby mental energy is 
 accumulated and applied in the commoner 
 forms of psychic action, there is probably a 
 close analogy. 
 
 At one time, dream conceptions, occurring 
 when the senses are at rest in sleep, were 
 occasionally quoted as instances of conceptions 
 arising independently of sense-impressions. 
 We now know, or think we know, that dreams
 
 86 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 depend on the fact that consciousness, not 
 perfectly at rest, is open to the invasion of a 
 pack of acquired conceptions, set at liberty to 
 play high jinks, in consequence of the sus- 
 pended inhibition of a half-asleep brain, like a 
 parcel of schoolboys when the master is nod- 
 ding. We further know that many vivid 
 dreams owe their origin to the arrival of 
 actually fresh, though distorted, sense-im- 
 pressions. Thus the frozen miner in Klondike 
 of our dream turns out to be a staid fellow in 
 London who has merely kicked the blankets 
 off; the sybarite, buried deep in a feather 
 bed, becomes Thomas Atkins, marching with 
 a heavy load on his shoulders over an endless 
 sand-waste under a blazing sun ; an im- 
 prudent supper results in a grinning demon 
 on the pit of the stomach at 3 o'clock in the 
 morning, and unlimited whiskey leads to a 
 waking dream of 'blue devils'; &c, &c. In 
 disease, as is well known, morbid physical 
 conditions within the body give rise to innu- 
 merable disagreeable sensations and gloomy 
 forebodings in consciousness.
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 8] 
 
 We have dwelt on these illustrations because 
 it is important to establish beyond question 
 the relation between external excitant, im- 
 pression on nerve, and subjective conception. 
 To those who are familiar with the subject, 
 most of what has been written will be trite 
 and superfluous, but to such as have no time 
 for dabbling in biology and psychology, even 
 a few elementary matters may be useful. Up 
 to the point we have reached, our contention 
 is that, in the great majority of instances, 
 there is a causal sequence operating on a line 
 passing from without inwards towards the 
 conscious nerve-area, and whether the excitant 
 arises outside or inside the brain. Further, 
 that the disturbance of consciousness which 
 results in conceptions of external objects can, 
 as a rule, no more occur without the co- 
 operation, direct or remote, of sense-impres- 
 sions, than, in reflex innervation, a motor 
 impulse can issue from a non-conscious nerve- 
 centre unless preceded by an ingoing excitor 
 
 impulse. 
 
 *****
 
 88 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 5. Source of Excitants. Reality. 
 
 We have now to make a further short 
 examination of the first member of our series, 
 the excitant, and learn what we can of its 
 origin. We take for granted that its existence, 
 externalness, independence of consciousness, 
 line of direction and route as regards the 
 perceiving nerve-area, have been established 
 by the foregoing experiments. Further, we 
 are convinced that so real an influence (exci- 
 tant) as that which has unquestionably led to 
 the disturbing of consciousness must itself 
 have a real source or origin ; for we entirely 
 decline to believe that it arises in nothing and 
 comes from nowhere. ' Nihil,' as the source 
 or producer of an excitant, can scarcely satisfy 
 even the wild imagination of a half-crazy 
 philosopher. 
 
 Once more and for the last time we de- 
 scribe a simple experiment, the excitants to 
 be examined being light as before, and heat. 
 We do not stop to enquire what light and 
 heat are, nor how they are related to com- 
 bustion of hydro-carbons or clash of molecules
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 89 
 
 or vibrations of ether, nor how one rate of 
 vibrations corresponds to radiant heat, another 
 to light, a third to electricity, nor how it 
 comes that these rates may replace each other. 
 We take light and heat, as in common parlance 
 — light and heat of sun, lamp, gas-flame, &c. — 
 and, without going into detail, we speak of the 
 sun, ignited lamp, or gas-flame as the source 
 of the light and heat in question. For con- 
 venience, the description of the experiment is 
 partly in dialogue. 
 
 It is a bright, hot day. A, a shrewd gas- 
 man, but knowing nothing about sense- 
 impressions, nerve-areas, excitants and the 
 like, is led into a perfectly dark room where 
 there are arrangements of which he is ignorant. 
 To him enters B, a scientist ; he manipulates 
 a certain apparatus, and the room is at once 
 lighted up. 
 
 "Well Mester," says A, "yo've browt a 
 leet in ; Aw doant knaw wot it is, but it's 
 bchoind that theer screen." 
 
 Again darkness. 
 
 A, " Now yo'vc takken t'leet awaa, or puttcn 
 it aght."
 
 90 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 Again there is light : A pushes the screen 
 aside, finds a burning lamp, and exclaims 
 " Theer's t'leet, Mester ; ony foo-il can see 
 that." 
 
 B. "Can he? Try again." 
 
 Once more darkness, followed by light. 
 
 A. " Yo've browt t'lamp back agean ; an' if 
 Aw thowt yo wor 'umbuggin' me, yo'd get it 
 at yer 'e-ad sharp, an' mebbe larn summat 
 fresh abaght it." 
 
 When the screen is moved, there is no lamp, 
 but a gas-flame. 
 
 A. " Wot difference does that mak ? It's 
 t'gas as does it ; if yo'll stick yer finger agen 
 it, yo'll knaw an' oal ; an' if yo blaw it aght, 
 as Aw did wunst when Aw wor a lad, yo'll 
 knaw it's theer, oal t'sa-ame, by t'smell." 
 
 Another interval of darkness, followed by 
 light. 
 
 A. " Yo've gotten another leet behoind 
 t'screen. Mebbe it's a cannel this toime." 
 
 The screen is moved, and an incandescent 
 electric lamp is found. 
 
 A. "Aw knaw oal abaght that too. Aw've
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 9 1 
 
 a brother fits them things up, an' yo can turn 
 off t'lectricity same as yo do t'gas." 
 
 Again darkness, succeeded by light. This 
 time there is nothing behind the screen, and 
 A is at a loss. Presently he notices that the 
 light is flashed from certain points, and on 
 examining these he finds a cunningly arranged 
 set of mirrors, by which the light is dispersed 
 in all directions. But he knows mirrors do 
 not produce light. There's that old cracked 
 looking-glass in his bedroom, before which he 
 has shaved himself on many a dark morning, 
 but he had to light the gas before he could 
 do it. So he seeks further, and at last finds 
 a gap in the wall through which a strong 
 beam of light is entering, and sees how it 
 passes from mirror to mirror and is scattered 
 through the room. 
 
 A. " Well it's just t'sunleet. Yo've letten 
 it in through that 'oile." 
 
 B. " How do you know that ? From where 
 you are, you cannot see the sun. As a matter 
 of fact, the light is coming from a piece of 
 burning stuff, called magnesium, which is
 
 92 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 behind the wall. Now put your hand opposite 
 this other hole, when I draw the slide back. 
 You feel a strong heat coming in, and if you 
 hold this bit of glass in its way and put your 
 pipe at a certain place before the glass, we 
 shall set the tobacco on fire. Where do you 
 suppose the heat comes from ? " 
 
 A. " Doant knaw ; mebbe yo've putten a 
 furniss behoind t'wall." 
 
 B. " No. This time it is the sun. We 
 have merely arranged a contrivance outside 
 for collecting its heat, and sending it through 
 the hole. Come and look at it." 
 
 They go out into the sunshine. 
 
 B. " Now then, can you touch the sun ? " 
 
 A. " No, but Aw can see it." 
 
 B. " Shut your eyes a moment. Now 
 where's the sun ? " 
 
 A. " It's theer oal t'toime, Mester. Aw 
 can feel it." 
 
 B. " What without touching it ? But you 
 are right enough. On a hot day like this, 
 we can feel better with our heads than our 
 hands, and that is why yon lady has her
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 93 
 
 parasol up. Go back to your gas a moment. 
 It is leaking somewhere, and presently the 
 room will be full of it. You can neither 
 see it nor touch it, and if you had a bad 
 cold in your head you might not smell it ; 
 but if some idiot were to bring a light in, 
 we know what would happen. Do you 
 think you could touch the sun, if your finger 
 were long enough ? " 
 
 A. " Mebbe Aw cud. But it 'iid happen 
 get melted." 
 
 B. " I know a lady who has lately grown 
 a tremendously long finger, which will not 
 melt. It is ninetythree millions of miles 
 long, and she can put it exactly in the place 
 where the sun is ; yet she cannot touch the 
 sun, any more than you or I can. Strangely 
 enough, she can feel its light, by the trem- 
 bling of her finger : indeed the light will 
 travel along her finger and reach the place 
 where she is standing, 93 millions of miles 
 off, in just about eight minutes. But her 
 finger is far longer than that ; she can stretch 
 the tip of it to stars so distant that their
 
 94 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 light takes scores of years to reach her. 
 She can even tell sometimes that the light 
 has broken off, and the stars gone out." 
 
 A. " Them's ta-els, Mester. Yo doant 
 expeck me to b'lieve 'em." 
 
 B. " I can introduce you to the lady, and 
 she will show you her finger, if she still has 
 it about her. Such things have a way of 
 dropping off. But 1 know she has it now." 
 
 A. " They saay seein's believin', but Aw 
 shouldn't b'lieve oal that, not if she wor to 
 show me twenty fingers." 
 
 B. " Well, you can make her acquaintance 
 any day. Her name is Science, and if you 
 will listen to her a while she will convince 
 you, as she has convinced me and many far 
 wiser than you or I will ever be, that all 
 we call touching, seeing, smelling and so on, 
 is done in a little spot inside our heads. 
 There we sit all day long and night too, 
 receiving and sending messages like a tele- 
 graph clerk in his office, but with this 
 difference — we have to sleep in the office, 
 and can never get out as long as we live." 
 
 A. " Aw've 'eerd summat loike that afore.
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 95 
 
 A chap once tell'd me 'e cucl sit in 'is own 
 'e-ad, an' 'ear t'clock strike, an' see little 
 picters ; but Aw thowt 'e wor a bit luny. 
 Look 'ere now, Mester. 'Ere's this bench 
 we're settin' on. It's 'eavy an' it's 'ard cos 
 it's med uv iron, an' it's pented green, an' 
 it s got a se-at an' a back an' fower legs. Do 
 yo me-an to tell me we're settin' on nowt, 
 an' as 'ow Aw'm a jackass an' can't tell 
 t'difference atween a picter in my 'e-ad an' 
 this 'eer bench? Aw've a little lad as goes 
 to school, an' a sharp little chap he is too ; 
 whoy he'd mak yo a picter of t'bench in 
 no tonne, aye, an' pent it too ; an' he'd 
 knaw t'picter warn't t'bench, just sa-ame 
 as yo an' me does." 
 
 B. " None the less, my friend, if you 
 did not form a picture of it in your head 
 you would not see the bench, and if your 
 little boy did not do the same, he could not 
 make his drawing. The picture does not 
 stop in your head : without knowing it, you 
 have planted it just where the bench is. 
 But there is a real bench, and we are sitting 
 on it, though we can neither see nor touch it."
 
 96 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 A. " Aw wor sartin theer vvor summat 
 'eavier nur a little picter." 
 
 B. " And you were right. You were 
 only wrong in the way you were trying 
 to prove you could see and touch the real 
 bench, or can see, touch, or smell the things 
 you are working amongst every day — gas, 
 pipes, gasometers, retorts, coal, &c. You are 
 dealing all the time with real things, though 
 not in the way you imagine. Have a chat 
 with the lady. She is everybody's friend, 
 and will tell you far more than I can. In 
 the end, she will convince you that you 
 can no more touch the real thing in a gas- 
 flame, not even though your fingers get 
 burnt, than you can touch the sun." 
 
 A. " Aw'll see her abaght that onyway, 
 Mester. Aw doant b'lieve as 'ow Aw'm 
 not tonchiu' t'fla-ame, wi' my fingers frizzlin' 
 in't. It 'ud be a merrycle." 
 
 Thus scientist and workman agree that 
 underlying every external object there is 
 reality, though workman is wrong in the 
 way he takes his^ sense-evidence. And
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. qj 
 
 metaphysician agrees with both, unless he 
 be one of the rare sort whose sole reality- 
 is consciousness, or one of the still rarer 
 kind who can accept 'nihil' as an origin 
 for excitants which are continually rousing 
 his consciousness. The man of science is 
 cast in a different mould. When he has 
 resolved heat, light, electricity, into vibration, 
 he immediately seeks about for what it is 
 which vibrates, and if he cannot find it, he 
 invents it : his scientific instinct compels 
 him to assume ether, as he did atoms. And 
 if, some day, he finally routs the ' units-of- 
 force ' men, and demonstrates conclusively 
 the existence of ether and atoms, he will then 
 tell us they fall into the same category as 
 the workman's bench, and, equally with it, 
 demand a reality. 
 
 Science does not admit pheuomena l 
 without noumena to account for them. 
 
 1 In this 3rd chapter, the word ' phenomenon ' has 
 hitherto been purposely avoided, because it is used 
 in speaking both of what is objective and what is 
 subjective, and so is liable to produce confusion. As 
 antithetic to 'noumenon,' it is in its place. 
 
 H
 
 98 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 T* *F •?* *t* 
 
 It would thus seem that we are now 
 entitled to complete our series by prefixing 
 a fifth member, viz., reality. In this case, 
 the series would be : — 
 
 Eeality (noumenon) -*- excitant (phe- 
 nomenon) -*=- sense-impression -^ con- 
 sciousness -^> conception. 
 
 If an objector says we have no right to 
 this new member except as a postulate or 
 assumption, we reply — Very good ; take it 
 at that, but take the consequences. The 
 evidence for the existence of anything what- 
 ever rests finally, for each individual, on 
 the testimony of his consciousness. He can 
 never leave his protoplasmic prison, and must 
 content himself with what can reach him 
 there. Science admits this, though she 
 insists, as we have seen, on the particular 
 way in which the testimony of consciousness 
 is elicited. We see and touch (as we say) 
 an external object, and are sure we are 
 dealing with a reality, though not in the 
 rustic's way ; but the ultimate evidence on
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 99 
 
 which this assurance rests is the testimony 
 of consciousness. It is this testimony alone 
 which, in the last resort, convinces us that 
 we have such things as arms and legs ; 
 indeed, upon it alone, each one, for himself, 
 rests his unshakable conviction of so im- 
 portant and fundamental a matter as his 
 individual existence. We submit that, though 
 often criticised, the Cartesian aphorism, 
 < Cogito, ergo sum,' remains perfectly valid. 
 Cogito implies cogitans, thinking implies 
 thinker ; just as motion implies something 
 which moves, just as vibration implies a 
 medium. Two hundred and fifty years of 
 cogitating, aided by a century and a half 
 of modern science, have altered, not what 
 is expressed, but the mode of expressing it. 
 Huxley insists quite as strongly that ' psycho- 
 sis ' involves ' neurosis, 5 and Lloyd Morgan 
 that ' metakinesis ' implies ' kinesis,' as 
 Descartes insisted that thinking proves 
 thinker. The dress is modern, the wearer is 
 not. Even if we take its very latest fashion, 
 viz., "the indisputable axiom Eocperientia est" 
 
 u 2
 
 100 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 (see " Monist " for Oct. 1897, page 4) of the 
 genial Bristol Professor whose guidance, 
 valued in the past, is a cherished hope for 
 the future, we do not seem to have advanced 
 much. We peep inside the robe, and there 
 is the very same dame, though a trifle older : 
 she has changed her name — it is a way ladies 
 have — from Cogitatio to Experientia, and 
 the later name perhaps better befits her 
 maturity. Otherwise she is wonderfully pre- 
 served. Something is ' experienced ' which 
 was formerly ' thought ' ; somebody experi- 
 ences who formerly cogitated. We still have 
 to ask, whose experience?, as the French 
 philosopher asked, whose thinking ?, and the 
 same reply answers both questions. 
 
 It suits our purpose exactly to find 
 ' Experientia ' [nee ' Cogitatio ') remaining so 
 vigorous, above all, so real ; and the ground, 
 cleared and occupied by Descartes 250 years 
 ago, stable and tenable as ever. But we 
 must remember that, as the assured con- 
 viction of personal existence which each 
 individual possesses rests solely on the
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 1 01 
 
 testimony of consciousness, so also does his 
 certainty that he has arms and legs, so also 
 his certainty about any external object. If 
 he denies reality to sun, lamp, bench, orange, 
 &c, he is bound to deny it equally to limb, 
 eye, ear, nerve, and brain-protoplasm, since 
 all alike are external to consciousness : nay, 
 he must abandon his very existence ; it is no 
 longer real, and consciousness shrinks to a 
 bodiless phantom. On the contrary, once 
 accept the testimony of consciousness as to 
 the reality of personal existence, and it may 
 be relied on equally for the reality of all 
 external objects, if sufficient and correct 
 evidence of them has been taken at the bar 
 of consciousness. The battle for reality is 
 ultimately fought out in the brain-cells : if 
 it be won there, as many think it has been, 
 it is won everywhere. We therefore submit 
 that the member now placed first in our 
 series is no mere postulate or assumption, 
 but a deduction as sound as the deduction 
 of personal existence from consciousness. 
 Further, that reality — be it assumed, postu-
 
 102 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 lated, deduced, implied, or inferred — is 
 necessary to the very occurrence of con- 
 sciousness : just as necessary as, for the 
 biologist, is that brain-cell protoplasm, which 
 all admit to be the nearest neighbour and 
 inseparable companion of consciousness, and 
 which, according to the monist, is incor- 
 porated with it. 
 
 ***** 
 
 6. Reality. Meaning attached to it ; 
 relation to matter and energy ; 
 evidence on which it rests. 
 
 We are nearing our goal and have only to 
 add a few words about what is now the first 
 member of our series, viz., reality. Not 
 that we propose any metaphysical discussion 
 of what reality is. If in no other way, we 
 are warned off that dangerous ground by 
 the old Scotch professor — "when ae body 
 is tellin' anither body, wha doesna under- 
 staun' him, aboot maitters which he doesna 
 understaun' his-sel, that's metapheesicks."
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. 1 03 
 
 So that, if asked what ' reality ' is, we 
 frankly say we do not know. That is, we do 
 not know its nature : it does not follow that 
 we know nothing at all about it, attach no 
 meaning to it, and are wrong in looking on 
 it as the source or origin of those external 
 influences or excitants which affect con- 
 sciousness. When Professor Tait says we do 
 not know what matter is, and in all probability 
 are incapable of knowing — that all we know 
 of what is called ' matter ' is a little of 
 structure, and much (as his own admirable 
 book shows) of properties — he quite re- 
 cognises, unless our humble judgment is 
 mistaken, that in or behind so-called matter 
 there is a something (pass the term), intangible, 
 invisible, and, in its nature, unknowable, 
 because inaccessible to sense ; but still there, 
 as ' Causa vera/ of all that bundle of 
 properties which uninstructed people take to 
 be matter itself, and which could not exist 
 in the absence of this ' causa vera.' This 
 ' true cause ' is what we mean by Reality, and 
 is, like all true causes, independent of, and
 
 104 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 prior to, its effect. We may call this effect 
 what we please — property, manifestation, phe- 
 nomenon, influence, stimulus, excitant — but 
 it is entirely dependent on its predecessor, 
 Reality, though we can use it as proof of the 
 existence of that predecessor. 
 
 Conceivably, reality may be disconnected 
 from what is called matter ; indeed, must be, 
 if energy or mental activity can exist apart 
 from material concomitants. As most people 
 are aware, matter is regarded as the "re- 
 ceptacle " or " vehicle " of energy. But let 
 us suppose, for a moment, that the associa- 
 tion of energy and matter, at present held to 
 be inviolable, has been for some good scientific 
 reason discarded, atoms, ether, and cor- 
 puscular theory of matter banished, and a 
 theory of energy and ' units of force ' 
 accepted in their place. What we now call 
 matter would then fall into line as a mode or 
 expression of energy. But reality would 
 remain : as indispensable to units of force as 
 to atoms of matter. Of the ultimate nature 
 of energy we know as little as of the ultimate
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. IO5 
 
 nature of matter, and experts alone can deal 
 with either question. But even lay-folk can 
 understand that such important forms of 
 energy as heat, light, and electricity are 
 modifications of motion, and that all forms of 
 physical energy are probably due to motion. 
 Layman, as well as scientist, is permitted to 
 enquire — motion of what ? ; and the answer 
 for either of them is, at present, motion of 
 matter. But when layman asks the man of 
 science what matter is, the reply he gets is 
 that we do not, and cannot know, and must 
 be content with a good working hypothesis 
 of material atoms and molecules ; moreover, 
 since these are not supposed to occupy the 
 whole of inter-stellar or inter-planetary space, 
 and since action, without a medium, between 
 bodies at a distance is held to be impossible, 
 we are further compelled to postulate such a 
 medium, the one which answers our require- 
 ments best being ' ether.' If layman then 
 says — all we thus seem to be sure of are 
 certain properties of certain hypothetical 
 atoms and molecules as these are taken to
 
 106 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 exist in ' matter ' ; and sundry stresses, 
 transverse vibrations, or undulations of a 
 certain hypothetical ' medium ' — his remark 
 will probably be taken as the measure of his 
 ignorance. If he further presume, in his 
 unscientific way, to imagine that, of the two, 
 we could more readily dispense. with matter 
 than with energy, he will again be charged 
 with ignorance. He may, however, console 
 himself with the reflection that since there is, 
 for scientist as for himself, unquestionable 
 reality behind ' matter/ whatever matter be, 
 so there is indubitable reality behind energy, 
 whatever energy be. Further, that this 
 reality is proven to him by the way in which 
 the phenomena of matter and energy affect 
 his consciousness, just as the reality of his 
 limbs is proven to him. The evidence is 
 practically the same all round. If he does 
 not feel called upon to abandon the reality of 
 his body and bodily movements, neither need 
 he relinquish the reality of any external object 
 or force, provided the evidence for it in con- 
 sciousness is sufficient.
 
 OF A BRAIN-CELL. IO7 
 
 We therefore submit that, for all mani- 
 festations of energy, as for all material phe- 
 nomena — that is, for the physical universe, 
 so far as it is cognisable by man — we are 
 fully entitled to postulate Reality, and that 
 its natural place is first in our series. In 
 reference to ourselves and an external world, 
 conception is at one end of the chain, reality 
 at the other, consciousness is between : on 
 one hand, consciousness formulates or ' pro- 
 jects ' conceptions — on the other, it receives 
 and operates on external influences (excitants) 
 emanating from reality. And thus we are 
 linked with the universe. 
 
 ***** 
 
 7. Unification of Reality. 
 
 Going back now for a moment to the 
 corpuscular theory of matter which, until 
 science pronounces differently, we of course 
 loyally abide by, the question arises whether 
 we are to regard every material object, which 
 our senses note, as having an independent
 
 io8 
 
 KINETICS AND METAKINETICS 
 
 and isolated reality. If chair, table, orange, 
 has each its separate reality, then so has 
 every leaf in the forest, every blade of grass, 
 every grain of sand by the seashore, every 
 particle of vapour or gas, and (taking them as 
 entities) every atom of matter and every 
 imaginable division of ether. On this line, 
 we fill the universe with inconceivable hosts 
 of separate realities. This, again, is perhaps 
 the nonsense of the layman. But he does 
 not commit it: he is continually combining 
 and unifying his myriads. Behind the forest, 
 with its innumerable details, he puts a single 
 reality ; he sees but one reality behind the 
 sand of seashore, desert, and rock ; one 
 serves him for water in all its forms, and one 
 for a man though made up of uncountable 
 cells. And the step from this process of 
 unification, to the conception of one universal 
 reality underlying all which meets his senses, 
 may be rapidly and surely taken. 
 
 As with matter, so with energy ; only that, 
 thanks to modern science, in framing a con- 
 ception of energy we seem to arrive at the
 
 OF A BBAIN-CELL. I O9 
 
 idea of unity more quickly. Starting in 
 infancy, probably from such notions of force 
 as the exercise of a childish volition and the 
 use of puny muscles give us, we are soon 
 educated to a perception of the infinitely 
 greater forces which surround us, and are 
 ready to follow the astronomer who demon- 
 strates an ' Universe in motion,' and the 
 physicist who is reducing all forms of energy 
 to motion. Leaders of thought who stretch 
 our ideas thus widely have none the less, like 
 ourselves, had to begin from the same humble 
 basis of conceptions arising in an infantile 
 consciousness. The astronomer, who is using 
 the diameter of the earth's orbit as a base- 
 line and calculating distance by light-years, 
 took his earliest conceptions of space and time 
 from the dimensions of his nursery and a 
 hungry waiting for his dinner. The physicist, 
 who is now solving the problems of motion, 
 gathered his early notions from the spin of 
 his top and the roll of his marbles. Leverrier 
 and Adams, who won the blue ribbon of their 
 age by the prediction of Neptune, had to learn
 
 110 KINETICS AND MKTAEINETICS 
 
 to count five on their baby fingers, like the 
 rest of us. From infancy to maturity, from 
 the smallest to the greatest which comes 
 within our ken, we have to build up our con- 
 ceptions of external objects and forces from 
 the impressions which reach consciousness, 
 much in the same way as the astronomer builds 
 up, from a yard-measure, the base-line which 
 is to help him to determine the parallax of a 
 distant star. Measurements of distance, 
 calculations of mass, time, and force, have 
 constantly to be verified and checked, even 
 for the most experienced, by fresh observations, 
 and these, like all before, depend greatly on 
 the validity of sense-perceptions. 
 
 Thus we come back to our contention, viz., 
 that the proof of existence for anything ex- 
 ternal to us, whether it relates to matter or 
 force, rests ultimately on the testimony of 
 consciousness ; and this, because man is such 
 as he is — ' avQpunoc, ' : as effectually shut up 
 in his anthropism, as an ox in its bovism, or a 
 dog in its canism. This need not prevent
 
 OF A BRAIX-CELL. I I I 
 
 him from using his faculties as far as ever 
 they will go : their range is not reached until 
 the latest data, by the ablest experts aided by 
 the most finished instruments, have been 
 gathered. But all such data, from the earliest 
 to the latest, must in the first instance pass 
 through the narrow gateways which lead into 
 the court of consciousness, and it is from the 
 testimony presented in that court, when com- 
 pared with and checked by previous and 
 collateral testimony, that the value of all data 
 referring to an external world is determined. 
 For reality in the sources from which such 
 data originate we have to trust to the same 
 evidence we unhesitatingly accept for personal 
 existence : not so intimate and immediately 
 convincing, it may be, but clearly of the very 
 same nature, and of the only kind our an- 
 thropism permits. Thus for Reality under- 
 lying every manifestation of matter and energy 
 that reaches us, we rest our case, and with 
 confidence, on precisely the same description 
 of evidence which convinces us of the reality
 
 I I 2 KINETICS AND METAK1NETICS. 
 
 of our bodily existence. They stand or fall 
 together. The same holds good for the 
 phenomena of psychism. 
 
 If it be objected that, with so wide a 
 generalisation in view, it is absurd to start 
 from so humble an object as an orange, our 
 reply is that any complete examination of 
 that homely fruit will, in the end, lead on to 
 the problems of the universe as inevitably as 
 does the telescope of the astronomer. In 
 addition to the physics of an orange, we may 
 also bear in mind that a single pip involves 
 the enigma of life, and carries us back to 
 the earliest mystery of protoplasm. Had a 
 scientist condescended to take our route, 
 his purpose could have been equally served 
 by a pebble from the roadside, the petal 
 of a flower, the dust from a bit of chalk, or 
 the impress on a photographic film from a 
 star too distant to be ever seen by mortal 
 eye.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THEORY OF A SUPREME 
 NOUMENON. 
 
 "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto" 
 
 If only one could 'try on' a few minds. 
 Burns wrote 
 
 " wad some Power the giftie gie us 
 To see oursel's as ithers see us ! " 
 
 A candid neighbour sometimes helps us to a 
 brief possession of that " giftie," and the effect 
 is wholesome. But the other one? Pancy 
 its surprises and lessons. A very interesting 
 revelation would be the varying way in which 
 different minds regard a supreme Noumenon. 
 It is one on which men seldom tell their 
 inmost thought — not the men whom one 
 would like to hear ; yet in dumb or articulate 
 fashion, the human mind has always been 
 
 1
 
 114 THEORY OF A 
 
 more or less occupied with it. Primitive men 
 have found it in anything stronger or craftier 
 than themselves : philosophers have searched 
 all Nature, including their own, with strange 
 and conflicting results. Some have contended 
 that, since the mere existence of such Nou- 
 menon is a point we can never make sure of, 
 enquiry is arrested from the beginning: others, 
 admitting its existence, have pronounced its 
 nature and operation to be utterly unknowable, 
 and therefore not open to investigation : many 
 have thought that most information is to be 
 gained by questioning sacred books and tra- 
 ditions. It does not fall within our present 
 scheme to enquire from authority and tradition, 
 and we have neither competence nor leisure 
 for " chasing the Absolute through the libraries 
 of Europe." We must therefore limit our- 
 selves to a brief examination of some of the 
 commoner theories. So far as it is applicable, 
 we propose to follow the same naturalistic 
 method as in the preceding chapter. 
 
 Many will refuse to advance beyond the 
 point therein reached. Accepting the evidence
 
 SUPREME NOV ME NO If. I I 5 
 
 as we have it, they hold that the way is blocked 
 when we come to the universal Reality which 
 underlies all phenomena. They contend that 
 since this Reality is intangible, invisible, quite 
 inaccessible by the only route open to us, we 
 must be satisfied with its simple recognition, 
 and resign ourselves, with such patience as 
 we can muster, to the nescience of Agnosticism. 
 We agree as to the blocking of that particular 
 road, but in entering it, the avowed object 
 was to trace out only one mental process. 
 This we think has been fairly accomplished, 
 and until it is ascertained that no flank-path 
 is available, we are not inclined to abandon 
 the journey. Though we must regard the 
 sense-impression route as the sole natural 
 channel through which information from an 
 external world can reach us, we also remember 
 that every item which arrives by this route 
 has to pass under the scrutiny of reason. A 
 judge sits in the court of consciousness, incor- 
 ruptible, vigilant, ever ready to lay bare the 
 imperfection and fallacy which beset even the 
 most painstaking testimony ; appealed to, be 
 
 1 2
 
 Il6 THEORY OF A 
 
 it observed, by none more eagerly and confi- 
 dently than by those very scientists who collect 
 the bulk and best of our evidence. 
 
 It would be a serious mistake, however, to 
 suppose that this judge has nothing else to do 
 but weigh sense-evidence. His business is 
 extensive and various. It falls within his 
 province, for instance, to decide about the 
 validity of a document we picked up, just as 
 the big rock came into view. There is no 
 name to it, and it has evidently been dropped 
 by some previous traveller who, like ourselves, 
 has found the way obstructed. He seems to 
 have been engaged in a similar enquiry, and 
 he comments as follows : — 
 
 Here we appear to have the universal 
 Reality or Noumenon which underlies 
 and explains all the phenomena of 
 matter, energy, and intelligence we 
 have met with. "We can neither get 
 past it nor explore it, but it seems 
 reasonable to believe two things about 
 
 it;- 
 
 First; that the phenomena in ques- 
 tion are ultimately dependent on, and
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. II "J 
 
 manifestations of, this supreme Reality. 
 With this goes, of course, the corollary 
 that man, though for himself and so 
 far as he knows, the most important 
 item in the universe, is yet but one 
 amongst many phenomena, dependent 
 and related like the rest. 
 
 Second ; that, taking the universe, in 
 so far as our feeble powers can grapple 
 with it, as in some sort a measure of 
 duration, magnitude, and force, the 
 Reality on which it depends must at 
 least equal it. But we can assign no 
 limits to the universe, and therefore 
 none to the Reality on which it depends. 
 From this position to the acceptance of 
 eternity, universal presence, and un- 
 bounded power in such Reality, the 
 step is not a long one. And if, as some 
 contend, we find in this same Reality 
 the source of that consummate intelli- 
 gence which is everywhere manifest, 
 we are not far from conclusions which 
 are satisfactory to reason and, at the 
 same time, in harmony with science. 
 
 So much for the document. Should its 
 deductions be approved by the judge who lias
 
 I I 8 THEORY OF A 
 
 to test them, it is clear we are in possession 
 of certain definite and valuable knowledge 
 respecting the great Noumenon we are con- 
 sidering : a knowledge of existence, manifest- 
 ation, attribute, and relation, which cannot 
 fail to influence the entire attitude of thought 
 in those who accept it. Possessed of such 
 knowledge, we can afford to look calmly on 
 that frowning and unapproachable " Unknow- 
 able " which today is paraded in our midst, 
 robed in the ineffable garb of an adjective to 
 which a restricted and half-technical signifi- 
 cance has been given by certain ' illuminati,' 
 and for which older and equally expressive 
 terms (incomprehensible, inscrutable, un- 
 searchable) have been roughly pushed aside. 
 Comprehension there can never be for man, 
 apprehension there may be. Though pos- 
 sessed, as he thinks, of the knowledge in 
 question, even the simplest theist adds to it 
 the conviction that the Supreme and Eternal 
 Power which he humbly recognises, is, in its 
 nature, utterly inscrutable and incompre- 
 hensible. We who have not yet emerged
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. II9 
 
 from " Naturalism," and plume ourselves on 
 exactness of thought, can certainly in this 
 instance lay no claim to priority or greater 
 definiteness. Let us at least be honest, and 
 confess that the limitation of our knowledge 
 in the direction we are considering, so strongly 
 emphasised by the fashionable agnosticism of 
 the day, was insisted on by eastern sages long 
 ago. Zophar the Naamathite, and Professor 
 Huxley are at one on the point. When the 
 ocean can be held in a winecup, when an ant 
 can expound the planet on which it creeps, 
 when man can pass the inexorable limit which 
 his anthropism imposes, then perhaps we may 
 find some bridge across the impassible gulf 
 which divides finite from infinite. 
 
 But we are anticipating. We wish to be 
 quite frank, and therefore admit at once that 
 the universal Reality underlying physical 
 phenomena, even if accepted, can become a 
 causal and ruling Noumenon only by theory. 
 There is no inevitable transition. A monistic 
 manoeuvre might effect it, or the two deduc- 
 tions of the document we found, but in cither
 
 120 THEORY OF A 
 
 case we have to change rails. When Faraday 
 quitted his week-day hard-headed, proof- 
 demanding scientific labour, to conduct the 
 Sunday contemplations of an obscure and 
 peculiar religious sect, he must surely have 
 opened an altogether distinct chamber in his 
 mind, reserved strictly for such occasions. 
 The agnostic chemist who is examining a 
 lump of sulphur or chalk may accept a reality 
 behind the group of phenomena he is investi- 
 gating, and may even agree to its being con- 
 sidered a part of one universal Reality ; but 
 when his philosophic friend proceeds to adorn 
 this with the regal robe of final and intelligent 
 causation, he may well cry, " Halt there. You 
 are wandering into an entirely different region, 
 and the road does not go through my labora- 
 tory. If you find anything interesting I shall 
 be glad to hear of it; in the meantime, I 
 stick to my reagents and lenses." Nor can 
 we be surprised that the literary agnostic also 
 should have grown distrustful of philosophy 
 and logic. He may have learned their weak- 
 ness by experience. None the less, we think
 
 SVPREME NOUMENON. 121 
 
 that agnosticism, as in popular vogue, has 
 gone far past its legitimate scientific use, and 
 has itself set up as a full-blown philosophy of 
 doubt and negation. We place it with other 
 views for examination. 
 
 With regard to the conversion of Reality 
 (Noumenon) behind phenomena, as accepted 
 by an agnostic scientist, into the ennobled 
 form which it must assume, as we think, 
 before it becomes adequate, one further 
 remark should, however, be made. Psychic 
 phenomena have to be accounted for as well 
 as physical phenomena : they cannot be 
 investigated in a laboratory, and they equally 
 imply a noumenon. If the Reality or 
 Noumenon which underlies the phenomena 
 of matter, energy, and psychism be unknown 
 and unknowable, it is just as unwarrantable 
 to assume that it is physical as that it is 
 psychic. It may be both, or neither, but it 
 must include both ; unless a myth, it must 
 be held capable of producing both. We 
 recall the fact that the most exalted pheno- 
 menon we know, viz., man, exemplifies in
 
 122 TKEOBY OF A 
 
 a very striking way the close association 
 (dualism) or unity (monism) of mind and 
 matter. It is precisely his psychism which 
 gives man his superiority, and in his double 
 nature we see, as we think, a strong analogical 
 warrant for the inclusion of what is psychic, 
 as well as what is physical, in a basal Reality 
 or Noumenon. As will be shown presently, 
 the anthropomorphism involved in such con- 
 ception need not trouble us in the least. 
 Nor is there much danger of being caught in 
 the obsolete 'mind-stuff' trap: in these 
 protoplasmic days, we fancy it is nearly 
 abandoned. ' Mind-stuff ' is now a pheno- 
 menon only, and, for the biologist, means 
 brain-stuff, of man and animal. Noumenon 
 was there and busy long before the appearance 
 of the particular phenomenon, protoplasm, 
 whether neural or ante-neural : so also, in our 
 opinion, were psychic phenomena. As already 
 stated, we consider the view untenable which 
 limits these to what the protoplasmic mind 
 has to show.
 
 [To face p. 123. 
 
 Figure 5. 
 
 (Conception of Supreme or Universal Noumenon), 
 
 N 
 
 N. 
 
 Supreme Noumenon. 
 
 Pm 
 
 Phenomena of matter. 
 
 Pe. 
 
 „ energy. 
 
 Pi. 
 
 ,, ,, intelligence, general and 
 
 
 protoplasmic. 
 
 plm. Protoplasmic mind. 
 
 CN. Conception of Supreme Noumenon.
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. 12? 
 
 On these grounds we submit that, though 
 the agnostic scientist, ruled by his sense-habit, 
 may content himself with a physical Noumenon, 
 the agnostic philosopher, having psychism on 
 his hands, must adopt a Noumenon which 
 includes this. It is this complete form we have 
 now to examine, and we venture on a somewhat 
 risky diagram which may serve as text. See 
 Figure 5, opposite. 
 
 «$lf m zlc J& *Jg. 
 
 *T» *J\ *I* *1* 
 
 N is represented by a broad radiating 
 curve, taken as part of a circle or sphere 
 embracing the universe. This, of course, is 
 sheer phantasy, and hopelessly vitiated by the 
 limitation which occurs whenever a circle 
 is drawn, with whatever radius. Circles, 
 however, are favourite symbols, often used 
 in science ; for instance, by physicists and 
 chemists, when trying to make us understand 
 the ways and wars and compacts of hypo- 
 thetical atoms. To ordinary eyes, the sun is a. 
 circle or disc which may be covered by a penny : 
 since its recent eclipse, however, astronomers
 
 124 THEORY OF A 
 
 have once more been telling us of its vast 
 dimensions, as they told us long ago of its 
 ancient nebular area, planet-progeny, and 
 sway throughout the sun-realm. By supposi- 
 tion, let our circle be as a sun to the universe, 
 and draw it with an infinite radius. 
 
 Pm, Pe, Pi, represent the phenomena of 
 the universe as we are cognisant of them. 
 How we construe them in detail is shown in 
 Figure 3 (page 58). Amongst them is the 
 protoplasmic mind of animal and man (plm), 
 every human mind, except his own, being 
 objective to each subjective observer : indeed, 
 the introspective faculty of consciousness 
 gives it the power of observing even itself. 
 All phenomena are held to emanate from the 
 Supreme Noumenon, however long and 
 devious the route by which they reach the 
 observer. They may possibly concern other 
 beings beside the conceited inhabitants of our 
 little planet, and be differently presented. 
 
 It is clear that any, or all phenomena, if 
 regarded as manifestations of an eternal 
 Noumenon, may themselves be eternal, yet
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. I 25 
 
 dependent. It also becomes indifferent 
 whether we view life and psychism (animal 
 or human) as direct emanations from such 
 Noumenon, or as the result of synthesis, 
 modo evolutionis, amongst phenomena. 
 Further, when phenomena are once relegated 
 to their normal and subordinate position, we 
 can afford to be very liberal to the Materialist 
 in the matter of ' potentialities,' and can 
 welcome the most startling discoveries of 
 evolution. They are only adding to our small 
 knowledge of the ways of the Supreme 
 Evolver : we are under no compulsion to 
 declare paper and printing of the book we 
 are reading to be, not only book itself, but 
 also author. 
 
 ON stands for conception of the Universal 
 Noumenon, and is represented by the symbol 
 of interrogation (?). As well it may. Here 
 is a conception we can neither formulate nor 
 ' project,' and the attempt of our Figure is 
 confessedly a failure. Yet the mind of man 
 has been trying to frame such a conception 
 in every place and age of which we have a
 
 126 
 
 THEORY OF A 
 
 record. Small blame to the ignorant savage 
 with his wooden god. Feebly lit, he 
 is unconsciously struggling with the same 
 problem as the old Hebrew prophet and the 
 encyclopaedic professor at Oxford. Small 
 blame to any of them for the anthropo- 
 morphism which beguiles them, unless to be 
 human is a reproach. The most attenuated 
 abstraction of the metaphysician is as strictly 
 anthropic as is the crudest conception of the 
 latest recruit in the ' salvation army.' 
 
 We put the theistic conception with the 
 rest. It is far too important and widely held 
 to be lightly dealt with, but as we do not 
 here enquire what a special revelation teaches, 
 we can discuss the conception only from a 
 naturalistic point of view. We are justified 
 in doing this, for even such revelation has 
 admittedly, with one solitary exception, come 
 through man to man, and is therefore deeply 
 tinged with the anthropism of both medium 
 and receiver. And as to the exception, what 
 can be more anthropomorphic than the 
 opening words of the prayer enjoined, as a
 
 SUPREME XOUMENON. 12/ 
 
 pattern, by the greatest Teacher the world has 
 ever had. So also, nearly 2000 years later, 
 for such as can read between the lines, is 
 the summing-up of a renowned philosopher 
 (Mr. Spencer, quoted at p. 170). 
 
 We have seen (Chap. II.) how far modern 
 science, aided by its interpreter, evolution, 
 can help us in framing a conception of a 
 supreme Noumenon. In these latter days, 
 choice seems to be narrowing. To return to 
 our diagram, CN may represent N" as, — 
 
 1. Non-existent (Atheism). The fool - 
 
 negation. Rare. 
 
 2. Unknowable (Agnosticism), Noun or 
 
 adjective : taken as adjective and with 
 < incomprehensible ' for synonym, we 
 are all agnostic. 
 
 3. Energised Matter (Materialism). Primal 
 
 matter with 'potentialities': protyle 
 and power. Is expressed by the 
 equation . . . Matter -f physical energy + 
 evolution=universe. Evolution either 
 a potentiality of matter or a special 
 form of physical energy, and capable 
 of producing psychism.
 
 128 THEORY OF A 
 
 4. Syndicate of matter, energy, and intelli- 
 
 gence (Pantheism). 
 
 5. << Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which 
 
 all things proceed " (Spencerism). 
 
 6. 0EOS (Theism). 
 
 Each thinker will choose for himself. They 
 are all anthropic and all, except the first, 
 more or less anthropomorphic. Whoever 
 adopts the last (theistic) conception may, 
 however, laugh at the bogey of anthropo- 
 morphism, or its variant " idiomorphism." 
 Why hesitate ? Put in a ' t ' at once, and let 
 it then be, for the wonderful people whom it 
 imposes on, an appropriate estimate of the 
 view held by, say, an Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, or call it the stupefying drug which 
 befogs the understanding of the multitude. 
 Looked at closely, the scarecrow of anthropo- 
 morphism is really a poor affair. A celebrated 
 writer of the first century says, in one place, 
 " I speak as a man " ; in another, " I speak 
 as a fool." On the present issue, or on any, 
 we can think and speak only in one or
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. 11C) 
 
 other of these capacities. Man's perceptions, 
 ideas, language, necessarily remain anthropic, 
 whether for an orange or a Deity. He cannot 
 pass the limits which Nature has assigned, 
 and all his conceptions bear the inevitable 
 mark of the instrument which produces them. 
 His notions of existence, power, intelligence, 
 and personality spring originally from what 
 he observes in himself ; from this he infers 
 to what and who are external to himself. 
 By his own sense of existence he understands 
 existence outside himself: the personality he 
 attributes to others is the transference of an 
 idea springing from his own sense of 
 personality : for appreciating an external 
 intelligence, the only faculty he has is his 
 own intelligence, and this, whether he knows 
 it or not, remains virtually the measure he 
 applies elsewhere. 
 
 Anthropomorphism infests even science. 
 Energy, in all its forms, is tainted by it — is 
 continually, as we say, compelling and con- 
 trolling the inoffensive particles of inert matter. 
 All conceptions of a supreme Noumenon
 
 130 THEORY OF A 
 
 suffer in like manner, but we grow indignant 
 only when the culprit is a theist. Well, 
 perhaps he is the blindest sinner ; so we will 
 have him in the dark room and examine his 
 eyes. As we have no beam in our own, we 
 shall see clearly the mote in his. 
 
 ***** 
 
 A prominent, and to many, most objec- 
 tionable feature in the theistic conception is, 
 the transference of the idea of personality 
 from man to Deity. The supreme Noumenon, 
 from being immaculate ' It,' has become a 
 debased ' He ' — a sort of grand Personage 
 who originates, devises, and rules, like a big 
 man, only more so. There is a fallacy here. 
 We submit that ' it ' is a fraud and sneak, 
 doing precisely the same things which ' he ' is 
 condemned for. With regard to the trans- 
 ference in question, far from disputing it we 
 contend that it is harmless, natural, and due 
 to the inveterate habit of our mental instru- 
 ment. However we account for it, there can 
 be little doubt that the sense of personality
 
 8UPEEME NOUMEXON. I 3 1 
 
 is one of the strongest elements in onr 
 consciousness, if not the strongest : small 
 wonder that we constantly transfer the idea 
 it contains to the world of beings, and even 
 of things, around us, or that language is so 
 deeply tinctured by it. Not merely do we 
 regard our fellow-mortals as persons like our- 
 selves, but we personify their races, govern- 
 ments, institutions, dignities, and pursuits. 
 We take a man to pieces, and personify his 
 strength, beauty, reason, will, imagination, 
 passion, virtue, and vice. We personify 
 nature, science, art, even our petty inven- 
 tions. For us, sun rises, darkness falls, 
 wind moans, howls, whispers, sea roars and 
 rages, light pierces, cold searches, blow 
 hurts, locomotive shrieks, arrow flies, mouse- 
 trap catches, gold tempts, time presses, space 
 permits, passion blinds, ambition spurs, 
 thought, strikes, tickles, stings, oppresses, 
 dazzles : death is a reaper and carries a 
 sickle, time is furnished with a fore-lock and 
 wings. From being a mere convenient peg 
 on which to hang things, Nature bacomes 
 
 K 2
 
 I32 THEORY OF A 
 
 the most imperious and alluring of dames ; 
 Science is a band of sisters, Art a group of 
 Muses. Personification filled the Olympus 
 of Greece and the Pantheon of Rome : a 
 little later, with characteristic audacity, it 
 converted ' Theos ' Himself into ' Trinitas.' 
 When we come to think of it, personification 
 is a most useful fellow. Supplies parts to 
 the geometric point, rids motion of its tire- 
 some travelling companion, and thought of 
 protoplasm ; sets ether trembling and em- 
 bodies atoms ; incorporates factors, qualities, 
 abstractions, hypotheses ; serves even the 
 nefarious ' It ' at every turn and corner ; 
 enables the Materialist (himself a personi- 
 fication) to conjure with ' protyle ' ; and, after 
 personifying Evolution for us, transforms him 
 into an interpreter. What barm comes of all 
 this ? We are not deceived by the mental 
 trick, if it be one, any more than the scientist 
 is deceived by his sense-perceptions. We 
 are merely thinking of the things around us 
 in our personal way, and talking of them in 
 such language as we have. Doing so does
 
 SUPREME NOUHENON. I 33 
 
 not confuse nor lessen the distinction between 
 ourselves and what surrounds us ; certainly 
 does not commit us to any admission of 
 likeness : the habit is simply a convenience, 
 or rather an exigence. If we choose to 
 discuss the universe and its cause, our 
 thoughts and language must be anthropic, 
 and both the one and the other are incu- 
 rably saturated with metaphor, imagery, and 
 personification, because man is such as he 
 is — an imaginative being and a person. 
 
 The chief objection to the personal con- 
 stituent in a conception of Deity lies of 
 course in the idea of limitation, and likeness 
 to ourselves, which it is supposed to carry. 
 But does it ? When we transfer, from our 
 acquired mental possessions, the ideas of 
 power and intelligence to a conception of 
 Deity, limitation is at once dropped, and a 
 sense of contrast, rather than of likeness, is 
 felt. Weakness is contrasted with absolute 
 power, ignorance with perfect knowledge. 
 Much the same may be said of the idea of 
 personality as applied to Deity, at least
 
 134 THEORY OF A 
 
 by an educated theist. Such an idea has 
 assuredly nothing to do with limitation. 
 One would scarcely be surprised if man, as 
 phenom en on-in-chief, did bear some impress ; 
 but if likeness there be, so also is there 
 contrast and unlikeness. As we take it, the 
 theist is trying, in his anthropic way, to 
 express his conviction that Deity means 
 living, independent, intelligent Being ; not 
 diffused ' Welt-geist,' nor yet non-animate, 
 non-intelligent force. And he draws this 
 contrast — 0EO2, is a Being, but eternal 
 and self-existent ; man is also a being, but 
 derived, transitory, and utterly dependent : 
 0EO2 is living, but the Source of life ; man 
 is also living, but only as a drop from this 
 source, lodged for a moment in a morsel of 
 protoplasm. Thus, as with the notions of 
 power and intelligence, so with that of perso- 
 nality ; likeness and limitation are lost in the 
 idea of infiniteness. Though not a disciple 
 of " Naturalism," the theist may perchance be 
 a naturalist, and then, in spite of his weakness 
 for the protoplasmic basis of life and the
 
 SUPREME XOVHEKOX. I 35 
 
 limiting periphery of an organism, he will 
 be aware that biology is not omniscient, and 
 probably he will think that, even respecting 
 it, there is room for Hamlet's opinion of 
 Horatio's philosophy. 
 
 The conception of personality as applied 
 to Deity is valued, by those who know no 
 better, for another reason. It expresses a 
 belief in what may be called, for lack of a 
 fitter term, an approachable side in such 
 Deity. Very anthropomorphic no doubt, 
 but why unreasonable ? Some sort of con- 
 nexion, some line of relationship, cannot be 
 denied between the phenomenon, man, and 
 the cause of this phenomenon, be this cause 
 what it may — an energised ' Materies,' or 
 the Spencerian ' Unknowable ' source of all 
 phenomena, or the ' @eoc ' of the theist. To 
 some minds, such a relationship may mean 
 nothing more than the link between a phe- 
 nomenon and its cause j it may be the 
 frostiest recognition of reason, the barest 
 instance of causation. To other minds it 
 may mean far more than this. Man is
 
 I36 THEOliY OF A 
 
 an emotional and imaginative, as well as a 
 reasoning creature, and we cannot limit the 
 affair to bis reason. Tear or admiration will 
 spring up, if the source of all phenomena be 
 regarded as supreme in power and wisdom ; 
 or a sense of constant supervision and de- 
 pendence, if control be looked on as incessant 
 and universal ; and of trust, if the ruling 
 power be considered just and benevolent. 
 Moreover, since man is notoriously also a 
 religious animal, such nonsense as prayer, 
 confession, thanksgiving, &c, may seem 
 natural to the devout imbecile who cannot 
 understand that an intelligent Power is not, 
 as a rule, interested in its own operations, 
 nor that an Almighty has certainly, by his 
 own act and deed, made himself the slave 
 of unalterable laws — indeed is, as superior 
 people have long known, nothing more than 
 a ' personification ' of these laws. 
 
 Underlying all these conceptions, from the 
 professor's to the washerwoman's, is the 
 fundamental iden that man is in relation 
 with a supreme power or being. On man's
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. I 37 
 
 side, the relation is of necessity personal. 
 How far it shall remain so, and involve 
 personality in the supreme being or power, 
 depends on the stage of thought and the 
 idiosyncracy of the thinker : certainly the 
 relationship is personal throughout the whole 
 tract of thought which lies between the fetish 
 of the Hottentot and the purest conception 
 of the monotheist. Personality may be 
 lost in the abstraction of the metaphysician, 
 or the ' unknowable ' of the agnostic ; but 
 relationship is not, and it cannot be got rid 
 off except by denying the noumenal basis of 
 phenomena. We may also bear in mind 
 that ' Demos ' has to be catered for, as well 
 as those who can live on Hamilton, Spencer, 
 Browning, or Karl Pearson. A contented 
 resting in abstractions is for the select few ; 
 the popular mind refuses to be nourished on 
 abstractions. 
 
 ***** 
 
 We have spent more time on the theist 
 than some will think he is worth ; in any 
 case we must now attend to his rivals.
 
 I 3^ THEORY OF A 
 
 Spencer we regard, and with all respect, as 
 an ally rather than a foe of theism ; we have 
 therefore to look elsewhere, and we propose 
 to search the haunts of " Naturalism." For 
 dialectic purposes, it is convenient and legiti- 
 mate to place under the ban of " Naturalism " 
 sundry perverse modes of thought, and then 
 castigate the offenders who indulge in them. 
 We do not presume to criticise the distin- 
 guished writer who has laid the ban ; indeed, 
 in the first chapter, we have followed his 
 example. But in belabouring Materialism, 
 our object has been to show, not so much 
 that it is wrong, as that it is inadequate. 
 As we are all necessarily to a considerable 
 extent agnostic, so are we all, in a sense, 
 materialist. Even Hume jumped from the 
 roadway to the safe footpath, in famous 
 Princes Street, when a material carriage was 
 coming. Why mince matters ? Theism 
 itself is partly materialistic. The crown of 
 theism is usually held to be Christianity, and 
 of this, the central truth is the ' Incarnation.' 
 Where — we ask with all reverence — is a
 
 SUPREME NOUMEXOX. I 39 
 
 choicer example of materialism to be found ? 
 Deity embodied in protoplasm — " manifest in 
 the flesh." No doubt, as a biologic theist 
 might remind us, Deity is ' manifest ' in an 
 epithelium-cell and in every man it helps to 
 cover, but this is a quibble which orthodoxy 
 would disdain. For it, " manifest in the 
 flesh " has a crasser meaning ; more akin to 
 the ' hoc meum corpus est ' which Luther 
 declined to relinquish. Can it be that such 
 opposed forms of thought as theism, agnos- 
 ticism, and materialism (and pantheism ? — 
 ' of him, and through him, and to him ") 
 actually hold out a hand to each other? 
 Strange if true, but reassuring. 
 
 The cave of " Naturalism " is reputed to 
 harbour a numerous and motley population. 
 Two of its leading sections (materialist and 
 agnostic) we have sufficiently examined. The 
 largest tribe are the Gallios. Some years ago 
 Mr. Laurence Oliphant, in his " Piccadilly," 
 called them " Wholly-worldlies " ; at present 
 they are " Secularists." They are by no 
 means confined to the cave, indeed, there are
 
 I4O THEORY OF A 
 
 as many outside as in : the majority of them 
 are short-sighted, some very ; as a whole, 
 the clan is remarkable for numbers, rather 
 than wisdom. But they have a nucleus (or 
 is it a nucleolus?) of earnest, thoughtful, 
 philanthropic men, who redeem the character 
 of their tribe, and are ready, oddly enough, 
 to enter into alliance with ' ists ' of any sort, 
 theists included, who will adopt the catholic 
 shibboleth of providing " things honest in the 
 sight of all men " — things material and 
 ethical, for themselves and others. This 
 nucleus rarely quits head-quarters, and, for 
 the most part, holds a strong opinion on the 
 ' Noumenon ' question ; but the bulk of the 
 Gallios are much too engrossed with business 
 or fun to care about a ' Noumenon ' of any 
 kind ; they will adopt any or go without, just 
 as it happens. 
 
 It is said there are many scientists in the 
 cave. We believe this is a fact, but we have 
 nothing to do with them as scientists. Science 
 has no creed. She is charming but a flirt, 
 and will forgather with any ' ist ' whose wits
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. I4I 
 
 please her. " Naturalism " has certainly no 
 monopoly of the scientists. Many eminent 
 among them, past and present, have been or 
 are theists and even christians, and have found 
 no difficulty in harmonising their faith with 
 their science. The difficulty is therefore not 
 insuperable. An old-fashioned poem has the 
 line 
 
 " An undevout astronomer is mad." 
 
 Had the Rector of Welwyn been better in- 
 formed, or more candid, he would scarcely 
 have penned that line, for many a very sane 
 and skilful star-gazer has been materialist or 
 agnostic. But not because he was astronomer. 
 A. long roll, with Newton at its head, might 
 be cited to show that, so far as astronomy 
 goes, if agnosticism or materialism can be 
 built on science, so equally can theism. The 
 same holds good for all branches of science. 1 
 
 1 The late Mr. Romanes, himself at one time 
 agnostic and almost materialist, writes as follows in his 
 •' Thoughts on Religion " (page 137), published (1895) 
 after his death : — 
 
 " Thus, if we look to the greatest mathematicians in
 
 142 THEORY OF A 
 
 There are some minor groups — positivists, 
 determinists, pantheists, &c. — but their num- 
 bers are small, and they are not influential. 
 Asia is the proper home of pantheism : there 
 it has millions of followers, but in the locality 
 we are examining it is represented only by 
 a few cranks, known as ' esoteric Buddhists. 5 
 
 We must not forget the oldest inhabitant. 
 His race may at one time have been sturdy, 
 but the ' struggle for existence ' has been too 
 much for him ; he is a mere survival. We 
 refer to the Atheist : not, of course, to the 
 man so-labelled, but to him who holds his 
 
 the world's history, we find Kepler and Newton as 
 Christians ; La Place, on the other hand, an infidel. 
 Or, coming to our own times, and confining our attention 
 to the principal seat of mathematical study : — when 
 I was at Cambridge, there was a galaxy of genius in 
 that department emanating from that place such as 
 had never before been equalled. And the curious thing 
 in our present connexion is that all the most illustrious 
 names were ranged on the side of orthodoxy. Sir W. 
 Thomson, Sir George Stokes, Professors Tait, Adams, 
 Clerk -Max well, and Cayley — not to mention a number 
 of lesser lights, such as Routh, Todhuuter, Ferrers, &c. — 
 were all avowed Christians."
 
 Sl'PBE.UE A'OUMEXOX. 1 43 
 
 view after due thought; to such we concede 
 honesty, but diagnose mental climacterism. 
 Doubters abound in the cave, but not deniers : 
 non-theists are in plenty, but non-theism is 
 not atheism; a difference, as well as a dis- 
 tinction, if you please. Christians were called 
 atheists by supercilious Romans who would 
 not take the trouble to understand them. It 
 is not surprising that men like Tyndall and 
 Huxley resented the nickname ; they had too 
 much brain to be atheists. 
 
 For our own part, we would rather build 
 up than destroy. The proper antithesis to 
 ' Naturalism,' we submit, is not theism but 
 Supernaturalism, and as such, not the an- 
 tagonist, but the complement of ' naturalism.' 
 We are inclined to think that, nowadays, 
 there are but few who seriously regard Nature 
 as a self-constituted, self-regulative Auto- 
 matism, working forever in a closed cycle of 
 evolution and devolution. For most there 
 is some sort of supreme originating and 
 administrative Power, which Nature, as or- 
 dinarily understood, does not supply. Such
 
 144 THEORY OF A 
 
 Power is variously named and appraised, but 
 it is essentially Super-nature. Where it is 
 not accepted, all sorts of ' potentialities ' have 
 to be smuggled in under the elastic cover of 
 evolution ; and physical energy, hiding in the 
 convenient shelter of an ' unknowable ' mist, 
 has to be stretched until it is expanded into 
 the all-sufficing, all-fulfilling Power of Spencer. 
 If a venture of our own can be tolerated, we 
 would suggest that, by combining the 
 " Supreme Mind " of Plato with the " Infinite 
 and Eternal Energy " of Spencer, we reach a 
 conception which is adequate, and which need 
 not offend either theist or non-theist. 
 
 ***** 
 
 After all, conduct is greater than creed ; 
 the latter is important chiefly as it influences 
 conduct. Stuart Mill says, " One man with 
 a belief is worth two with opinions." In 
 a sense this is true enough, especially for 
 fighting purposes, but opinion and belief are 
 merely different stages of the same thing, and 
 neither is of much value unless founded on
 
 SlPSEirS NOUMENON. 1 45 
 
 reason. Faith not resting on reason is credu- 
 lity ; is just as objectionable as the incredulity 
 which will not yield to reason. Unfortunately, 
 one's respect for creeds and beliefs is dimin- 
 ished when one comes to think how, for the 
 most part, they are determined. What a 
 man believes depends far more on the country 
 and race to which he belongs, on the times 
 in which he lives, on parentage, training, 
 temperament, and individual experience of 
 life, than on any process of reasoning. He is 
 a christian, mohammedan, buddhist, or wor- 
 shipper of sticks and stones, chiefly because 
 he belongs to this or that country and people. 
 In Europe and America Christianity is the 
 dominant creed, but here again its adoption 
 is largely a matter of birthplace and race. 
 Though christian enough to be classified as 
 such in Whitaker's almanack, a large majority 
 of the inhabitants of both continents admit- 
 tedly hold their creed in very languid fashion ; 
 they have it because it is prevalent, just as 
 they put on the same clothes, live in the same 
 houses, and adopt the same pursuits and 
 
 L
 
 I46 THEORY OF A 
 
 habits as their neighbours. By none is this 
 indifference more clearly seen, and keenly 
 felt, than by that earnest and convinced 
 minority without which the creed would 
 perish. 
 
 The very incomplete success of Christianity, 
 after nineteen centuries, is usually attributed 
 to the wickedness of man's heart : we venture 
 to snggest it is due partly also to the fact that 
 his reason has not been more fully won. 
 Whether this be owing to defect in teaching 
 or d ulness in learning we leave others to 
 decide, but it is clear that, hitherto, men have 
 learnt very partially and very slowly. The 
 result is that the christian faith, instead of 
 being for all its adherents the living force it 
 should be, is professed by many on account 
 of its current respectability, and by not a few 
 as a mere compromise, an ' in case ' for 
 possible eventualities. Is proof demanded? 
 Then enquire in London or Paris or Berlin 
 or St. Petersburg or New York or Chicago. 
 Their senates, municipalities, bourses, com- 
 merce, amusements, literature, streets, palaces,
 
 SUPREME KOUMENON. I 47 
 
 prisons, slums, yield proof enough ; and 
 country tells the same tale as chief city, if less 
 noisily. At the present moment (March, 
 1898) we have the five or six leading christian 
 powers of the world jealously watching each 
 other, preparing for a wild and bloody scramble 
 for what does not belong to any of them. 
 Verily a fine object-lesson for the disciples of 
 Confucius and the worshippers of Mumbo 
 Jumbo ! At best, internecine amenities are 
 held to be sufficiently safeguarded by the 
 " do ut des " principle of " Broker " Bismarck. 
 But Christianity is not intended to meet inter- 
 national difficulties? Good. Note its in- 
 fluence, then, on men in smaller groups or 
 individually. It is a commonplace that com- 
 mittees, companies, boards, syndicates, are 
 infested by the demons of log-rolling and 
 ' exploitage.' " Every man for himself and 
 devil take the hindmost' 3 is an ordinary 
 maxim of mercantile life. ' Caveat emptor ' 
 serves the London tradesman just as it helped 
 the Roman shopkeeper 2000 years ago. " Do 
 
 unto others as they do unto you" is 
 
 L 2
 
 I48 TSEORT OF A 
 
 held by many to be good enough, even for 
 friends. The gracious insertion — " as ye 
 would they should do " — which Christianity 
 makes, is a counsel of perfection fit only for 
 dreamers. Forgive your enemies ? Nay, we 
 find the prickly motto of Scotland more useful. 
 Turn the other cheek to the smiter ? Well, 
 yes — just to see if he means it ; but if he hits 
 that too, then go for him. Take the two 
 precepts which sum up the code of theo- 
 christianity. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart," &c, "and thy 
 neighbour as thyself." What proportion of 
 Whitaker's 448 millions of Christians, of 
 London's six millions, even pretend to observe 
 these precepts ? Dread God — think as little 
 about Him as possible — sometimes get so far 
 as to trust Him — but love Him, and in the 
 formidable measure required ? And the neigh- 
 bour-law — who obeys it ? One per cent, one 
 tenth per cent, of nominal christians ? The 
 average christian, like the average man, loves 
 and cherishes himself profoundly and con- 
 stantly, as indeed he must if he would
 
 SUPEEME NOUMEXON. 1 49 
 
 1 survive ' : in happy families, christian and 
 not, there is much love for husband, wife, 
 children, and parents. But the neighbour — 
 how much for him ? The moiety demanded ? 
 Surely the Devil laughs at the paltry quotient 
 forthcoming. Think for a moment of the 
 omissions and commissions of our own most 
 christian community. Of the foul courts and 
 alleys in our large towns ; of the grinding 
 miseries of the poor ; of the dens of vice and 
 corruption ; of the army of loafers and crimi- 
 nals; of the mad and fevered race for wealth; 
 of the deceptions and trickeries which disgrace 
 our trades and professions ; of the selfish 
 frivolity which marks so many of our pleasures 
 and pursuits ; of the meannesses, hypocrisies, 
 low motives and aims which disfigure the 
 daily walk and life of Britain's forty millions 
 of Whitaker-christians. If the superficies of 
 statistical Christianity be scarcely satisfactory 
 for the end of the 19th century, we certainly 
 do not derive much comfort by plumbing its 
 depth, even in a part where our insular vanity 
 thinks it deepest. Far be it from us to speak
 
 150 THEORY OF A 
 
 slightingly of real christians and their work. 
 They are the very salt of the earth, and their 
 loving unceasing labour for others is the 
 despair and admiration of lazy critics, but the 
 disproportion between harvest and labourers 
 is too marked, the apathy of nominals too 
 glaring, to escape notice. 
 
 This is the seamy side on which pessimism 
 delights to dwell ; happily there is another 
 whereon moral beauty and noble effort are 
 just as distinctly inscribed, nor can there be 
 any doubt how greatly these are fostered by 
 Christianity. Though it is sometimes credited 
 with ameliorations which are due rather to 
 the advance of science and civilisation, we 
 hold it to be the most powerful factor for 
 good which has yet appeared among men, and 
 only regret that its advance should be hindered 
 through lack of a closer alliance between faith 
 and reason. Compare for instance what is, 
 w T ith what might be, the influence of just one 
 elementary tenet, viz., the belief in a future 
 life wherein happiness or misery will depend 
 on conduct in the present life. Man is,
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. I 5 I 
 
 amongst other things, a forecasting and pru- 
 dent creature ; he strives to ensure himself 
 against future contingencies, and the greater 
 their probability and importance, the greater 
 is his self-protective effort : as Bishop Butler 
 said, probability is the very guide of his life. 
 Can we doubt what would be the result, in 
 average men and women, if they were at all 
 certain that a future life and a strict reckoning 
 awaited them ? It is because they do not 
 believe that they do not care. For ourselves 
 we have found sufficient proof, though not 
 easily. In searching for it and other things, 
 we have grown persuaded that unconvinced 
 reason, quite as much as evil disposition, is at 
 the bottom of the impatience with which the 
 message from the chancel is listened to. 
 Surely our experience in mundane matters — 
 the Bishop quotes it — bears this out. When 
 once the understanding is informed and con- 
 vinced, the lessons of life are usually accepted 
 without demur. A man will hearken to his 
 lawyer or his doctor, and if his judgment be 
 satisfied, will follow their advice, often with
 
 152 THEORY OF A 
 
 pathetic docility. Why will he not listen to 
 his priest ? Of course many do, but the 
 majority do not ; why ? As we think, because 
 he does not succeed in proving his case. 
 Excellent things in their way are imposing 
 fane and ritual, captivating music, impassioned 
 appeal to feeling and imagination; still more 
 excellent is the contagion of good example 
 and consistent life ; but reason will not abdi- 
 cate at the bidding of any of these counsellors. 
 We have no desire to exalt this royal 
 faculty unduly. The repulsive bawd set up 
 by an infuriated French mob was certain 
 to be presently cast back into the gutter ; 
 there is perhaps scarcely more chance of 
 general and ultimate acceptance for the 
 scornful rationalism which preceded and 
 followed that infamous travesty : but doubt 
 and indifference abound, and will probably 
 continue to do so until the intelligence of man 
 is more fully enlisted against them. The 
 view is heterodox, yet it seems just as 
 necessary to carry the intellect of man as to 
 win his emotional side, if the success of theo-
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. I 53 
 
 Christianity is to be complete and lasting. 
 Of all the great Faiths which have swayed 
 mankind in the past, or still prevail, it is the 
 only one which has come in close contact 
 with science, and she will certainly not omit 
 her search-light in deference to authority and 
 tradition : for these, her respect is quite 
 limited. ' No one wishes her to omit/ say 
 some ; ' we have no fear for the truth, but let 
 science stick to her domain, and leave us to 
 our's.' That is just what she will not do : 
 the inquisitive jade insists on peering into 
 everything which interests her ; she will not 
 stop to ask whom it belongs to, and indeed 
 religion has set her the bad example of uni- 
 versal interference. They have quarrelled in 
 the past and are quarrelling still, but there 
 is no necessity for unending border-warfare. 
 Both domains are required to meet the wants 
 of man's complex nature, and many hope for 
 an eventual peaceful union. In the mean- 
 time, as we think, the christian priest is 
 contending at a disadvantage for want of a 
 few modern scientific weapons. Will not the
 
 154 THEOBY OF A 
 
 christian master of science give a little more 
 assistance ? He is about, and notable enough, 
 but he is modest, and his tendency is to 
 abstain from any field in which he does not 
 consider himself an expert. In the present 
 instance he could help greatly, for he alone 
 has exact knowledge of the enemy's strength : 
 he is man as well as scientist, and humanity, 
 even in its religious perplexities, has a claim 
 upon him. Will he tell us clearly and frankly 
 why and how far he believes, and so help on 
 a considerable body of honest, ill-informed 
 gropers ? 
 
 But we are off the track : there are so 
 many inviting side-paths. We shall regain it 
 most quickly by returning for a moment to 
 the cave. There is a report that this contains 
 treasures as well as men. Intellect is un- 
 doubtedly found there ; so also is worth of 
 character. Its inmates further allege the 
 possession of ethics, morality, conscience, a 
 sense of duty and responsibility, and a few go
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. I 55 
 
 so far as to claim even natural religion. 
 Their opponents say they have stolen these 
 good things, but this they strenuously deny, 
 and sometimes hurl back an indignant ' tu 
 quoque.' If they really have these treasures, 
 we care not a fig how they came by them. 
 By evolution ? By revelation ? — What does 
 it matter ? All is revelation, all is evolution, 
 determined by Super-nature. 
 
 The present moral condition of man 
 is held, by the evolutionist, to mark the 
 level to which he has as yet risen from a 
 lower and brutish stage. The theologian 
 regards it as the degradation of an originally 
 pure and innocent being, for whose restoration 
 a remedial process is slowly operating. Which- 
 ever view be taken, a strong religious instinct 
 in man, past and present, can scarcely be 
 denied. How it arose is really of little con- 
 sequence. Out of dreams, shadows, ghosts, 
 nature's thunders, respect for ancestors and 
 heroes ; from intuition, from revelation ? 
 Again, what docs it matter? The evolu- 
 tionist is prepared to expect the grandest
 
 I56 THEORY OF A 
 
 outcome from the feeblest beginning. Man 
 has maybe come from an ape ; we know for 
 certain that, he starts everyday from a cell. 
 His religion may have commenced in the 
 fancies of a dream, in the watching of a 
 shadow, in dismay at the tempest, but neither 
 he nor his religion need be ashamed of an 
 humble origin ; its humbleness is, after all, 
 only a human notion. The simplest cell, the 
 faintest gleam of moral light, equally demand 
 a superhuman origin, and nothing is either 
 small or great to an infinite Evolver. Man 
 does not remain a cell, nor his religion a 
 dream. Both grow, even as evolution has 
 had to do. * Omne vivum ex ovo ' was not 
 reached in a day, and there is a long step 
 between it and Spencer's all-embracing 
 theories. 
 
 It is worth while to look a little more 
 closely at the treasures of the cave-men. The 
 evolutionist does not go far in his study of 
 man before he stumbles on a conscience. He 
 may even fancy to catch glimpses of such a 
 faculty before he gets to the human animal,
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. I 57 
 
 but in man it is soon pronounced and 
 operative. Whence comes it ? From the 
 improving stress of environment ; from the 
 exigencies of family, tribal, communal re- 
 lations ; as a special ray from a supreme 
 ' Noumenon ' ? It matters not : better follow 
 Newton's example and study what and how, 
 rather than whence ; though indeed, on our 
 theory, whence is plain enough. However 
 accounted for, conscience remains as much a 
 fact in evolution as is the man who possesses 
 it. Here comes a queer, but welcome note 
 of agreement between naturalist and super- 
 naturalist. The existence of conscience, with 
 whatever origin, is admitted — nay, eagerly 
 claimed — by materialist, agnostic, secularist, 
 and theist alike. They may call it by different 
 names, and differ as to sanctions, but they all 
 recognise the faculty, and insist on its import- 
 ance. We have no space here for a dissection 
 of conscience, and it needs no panegyric. It 
 is sufficient to find in it the basis on which 
 self-discipline rests, and the source of that 
 sense of duty and responsibility to self,
 
 I58 THEORY OF A 
 
 kindred, and community, which is, at once, 
 the best present help we have for humanity 
 and the best augury for its future. Let the 
 utilitarian call it ' enlightened self-interest ' if 
 he pleases. He has warrant both in nature 
 and revelation. In the " Beatitudes," this 
 and that condition or act is declared " blessed " 
 — why 1 : not because it is good in itself or 
 does good to others, but because ' great is the 
 reward ' attached to it. In like manner, 
 evolution insists on discipline and endurance, 
 if ' number one ' is to be rewarded. But 
 both nature and super-nature provide for the 
 gregariousness of man. Let him do good to 
 himself — in physical and moral health ; in 
 wealth, mental, ethical, or metallic — and he 
 cannot help at the same time doing good to 
 others. In return, the communal conscience 
 benefits each individual. Self-interest and 
 other-interest thus complete and correct each 
 other. Turned inwards, conscience benefits 
 its possessor ; turned outwards, it prompts to 
 altruism. 
 
 zfe $(£ 7& T& 7$
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. I 59 
 
 There is another weighty matter on which, 
 as we think, nature and super-nature agree : 
 it arises out of the ' environment ' in which 
 man is found. Everywhere he is surrounded 
 by laws to which he has to accommodate 
 himself. It makes no difference whether 
 these be taken in a forensic or scientific sense : 
 there they are, and man must obey or suffer. 
 Laws of physics, chemistry, and biology ; 
 laws affecting body, mind, and estate ; laws 
 of health and morality, of civic and social 
 life : he is encompassed by them, and woe 
 betide him if he be ignorant or negligent. 
 These laws are conditions of environment, 
 and come into play in the course of evolution. 
 The supernaturalist would probably add, 
 they are therefore manifestations of the 
 supreme will which expresses itself in evolu- 
 tion ; but waiving this, we point out that 
 many of the cave-dwellers unreservedly admit 
 these laws, and insist on the imperative 
 necessity for knowing and observing them. 
 It would be easy to draw up a decalogue to
 
 l60 THEORY OF A 
 
 which most would subscribe — 
 
 Beware of false gods. Worship 
 neither wealth, nor power, nor fame, 
 nor science, nor business, nor pleasure, 
 nor man, nor nature. Bow only to the 
 Supreme Power on which thou art 
 dependent. Thou shalt inform thyself 
 on the laws which surround and 
 control thee, and obey them, for 
 ignorance and disobedience will not 
 pass unvisited. Thou shalt be clean, 
 active, temperate in all things, or thy 
 health will suffer. Thou shalt be 
 diligent in business, true and honour- 
 able in thy dealings, for in industry 
 and probity is welfare for thee and 
 others. Incessant toil is, nevertheless, 
 bad for thee, therefore thou shalt rest 
 one day in seven ; what is good for 
 thee is good also for thy servants ; see 
 to it thou art not a humbug, resting 
 thyself but compelling thy slaves to 
 go on working. Thou shalt honour 
 thy parents, lest thy children dishonour 
 thee. Thou shalt not steal, nor murder, 
 nor commit adultery, nor covet thy
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. l6l 
 
 neighbour's possessions, nor tell lies 
 about him. Thou shalt be merciful to 
 the poor and unfortunate, for one day 
 thou also may need help and meroy. 
 
 Such a code includes a large slice of the 
 " whole duty of man," yet it is common 
 property, enjoined by all respectable ' ists.' 
 Whilst some are rejoicing, with Arnold, over 
 this " stream of tendency which makes for 
 righteousness," the benighted theist rubs his 
 eyes and exclaims, " Bless me ! why all these 
 things are written down in my book, and 
 here are these fellows rinding them out with- 
 out once opening the book." The simple 
 soul has got such a trick of looking straight 
 to the top that he never sees the ladder. 
 Very wrong of hirm Much better be well 
 acquainted with every rung of the ladder, 
 than know or care where it goes to : besides, 
 it can be far better studied lying on the 
 ground than reared up. His first mistake 
 betrays him into a second. His habit of 
 ignoring the road up leads him to take his 
 laws straight from the top, and then his head 
 
 M
 
 1 62 THEORY OF A 
 
 gets dizzy. What if the laws concern, not 
 only himself and his neighbours, but also 
 the lawgiver, who, having issued them, can 
 scarcely be indifferent as to their observance. 
 " What a fool you are/' says the evolutionist, 
 " nobody knows anything about a lawgiver, 
 and never will. Why cannot you be content, 
 like other folks, to pick up your conscience 
 where you find it, and apply it where it is 
 wanted. The laws are lying all round you ; 
 learn them and obey them, or go to the 
 devil." — " Just what my book says, only its 
 language is milder." Odd that he should 
 come to sound conclusions by so ludicrous 
 a method. 
 
 $fc % % yfc W 
 
 It will probably be agreed that, amongst 
 the followers of " Naturalism," there are 
 many who are not only earnest thinkers but 
 exemplary moralists, and not a few who 
 pride themselves on the imperative and 
 urgent view they take of duty and responsi- 
 bility. For all such there is common ground
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. 1 63 
 
 on which, we suggest, the theist may also be 
 allowed standing-room. Let us, in conclusion, 
 try to measure it : — 
 
 1. There exists a supreme power. 
 
 2. The universe (including man) is the 
 
 manifestation of this power — there- 
 fore dependent on it. 
 
 3. Man is surrounded by laws, physical and 
 
 moral, and his interest lies in know- 
 ing and obeying them. 
 
 4. In man there is a regulative faculty 
 
 called conscience, operating on him- 
 self and influencing his conduct to 
 others. 
 
 These four propositions are pretty generally 
 held by non-theists, as well as theists : we 
 submit that they form an excellent basis for 
 natural religion. We are going to add a 
 fifth, deduced from the preceding. It is 
 tinged with anthropomorphism, but as to that, 
 for reasons already given, we are entirely 
 careless. We think that at least some 
 non-theists can accept it, and we leave it to the
 
 164 THEORY OF A 
 
 judgment of the reader, if there happen to 
 be one. It is this — 
 
 5, The laws which concern man, and the 
 conscience found in him, being as 
 strictly manifestations of the supreme 
 power as anything else in the uni- 
 verse ; furthermore, they being of the 
 nature of conditions to be fulfilled 
 or directors to be followed, man is 
 not in his legitimate position until he 
 accepts these conditions and obeys 
 these mandates. "When he does this 
 completely, he is in harmony with, 
 and obedient to the ( Voluntas ' ex- 
 pressed in them ; he is perfect, so 
 far as his enlightenment and de- 
 velopment permit ; if a non-theist, 
 he is at least a good man ; if a theist, 
 he is religious as well as good. 
 
 This attempt to demonstrate a natural 
 bond between morals and faith will be 
 regarded by many as visionary and academic ; 
 some, however, think such a connection is 
 manifest enough in the nature and history of 
 man. In certain quarters, no doubt, it is 
 stoutly maintained that ethics and morality
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. 1 65 
 
 have really very little to do with religion, 
 have originated apart from it, and can flourish 
 without it. The separation can of course 
 be effected in lecture-room or treatise, but 
 scarcely in man as we have him, nor in 
 practical life. History and research show 
 clearly that a religious bent is one of the 
 earliest and commonest features in the 
 psychism of man : his ethics and moralities, 
 such as they were at the first and have 
 since become, such as they are today amongst 
 savages, have always been greatly influenced 
 by respect for the gods who for the time were 
 ruling. In this way, morality, ethics, and 
 religion have become inextricably interwoven ; 
 they have grown up together and the result 
 of their mutual interaction has become 
 ingrained by heredity and time ; the mischief 
 is done and a separation is no longer possible. 
 Physically, socially, ethically, religiously, the 
 19th century man is the outcome of the ages ; 
 he is heir of all his ancestors, and can no 
 more escape from the results of their early 
 and confirmed instincts and practices than 
 the modern Englishman can elude the landing
 
 1 66 THEORY OF A 
 
 of Julius Caesar, or the American the arrival 
 of the ' Mayflower.' In tracing down the 
 ethical and moral history of man, the most 
 salient factor met with is probably the 
 influence of great teachers. Plato, Socrates, 
 Confucius, Zoroaster, Gotama, Mohammed, 
 have moulded the ethics of large masses of 
 men ; but for Europe and America, Moses 
 and Christus far outweigh the rest put 
 together. Under any circumstances, the 
 historian of ethics and morals knows well 
 that the influence of theo-christianity is 
 ineradicable. Gibbon, in his celebrated 
 15th chapter, disparages it, yet it is note- 
 worthy how frequently his great history is 
 occupied in recording the struggles and 
 successes of this very Faith. We believe 
 with most people that it has come to stay and 
 spread, but if it were extinguished tomorrow 
 it would leave its mark on the moral and 
 ethical evolution of man to the end of time. 
 Its impress would remain as distinct and 
 significant for the remote student of ethics, as 
 are the vermiform appendix of the intestine
 
 SUPREME NOUMENON. \b"J 
 
 and the disused muscles of the external ear for 
 the biologist of today, or the fossils of the rocks 
 for the geologist. Whatever be its short- 
 coming and blemish, few will deny that it 
 has sharpened the conscience of man, and 
 helped greatly to curb the vicious elements in 
 his nature. Eor western nations, it is at this 
 moment the most powerful moral antiseptic 
 which exists ; its cleansing and purifying 
 action is beyond question. Moreover, if the 
 importance of religion in the making and 
 history of man be undeniable, equally so is 
 the part it plays in the making of his present- 
 day environment. It is useless to point to 
 the blameless life and high ethical standard 
 of individual men or small groups of men, 
 who, in casting aside all religious belief, have, 
 as they think, got entirely rid of its influence. 
 Such a situation is imaginary, is rendered 
 illusory by heredity and environment. These 
 estimable men remain, in spite of themselves, 
 under the momentum of good ancestry, 
 sometimes very good, and they breathe a 
 moral atmosphere to which religion is a large
 
 i68 
 
 THEORY OF A 
 
 contributor. How long would the momentum 
 last, if unrenewed; how long would the 
 atmosphere continue respirable, if religion 
 were totally eliminated ? Fortunately, under 
 existing conditions the experiment cannot 
 be made. It was half-tried at the French 
 Revolution, and the result was not encouraging. 
 One minor sequence to any such venture may 
 perhaps be foreseen — however well a choice 
 few, with everything in their favour, might 
 conduct themselves, the masses of humanity, 
 with nothing better than a religionless 
 morality to guide and restrain them, would 
 soon learn to despise so feeble a mentor, and 
 would rise in lawless strength to take for 
 themselves whatever the classes refused to 
 give. 
 
 ¥ * * * * 
 
 We must now leave the relations between 
 " Naturalism " and Supernaturalism to those 
 who are better able to deal with them. For 
 us, the two seem but different aspects of the 
 same truth ; obverse and reverse of a sterling, 
 though very human coinage. Supernaturalism
 
 SVPREME NOUMENO&. I 69 
 
 is not superstition. Religion will shake off 
 superstition — has, indeed, to a considerable 
 extent done so — even as astronomy has shed 
 astrology, and chemistry alchemy. But 
 neither religion nor naturalism can ever 
 dispense with super-nature. Possibly we are 
 as much mistaken as naturalist and super- 
 naturalist at present consider each other to 
 be, but we plead, in the name of bewildered 
 onlookers, that cave as well as chancel should 
 have a hearing, and that mutual abuse should 
 cease. Meanwhile we gather up our scanty 
 but precious salvage, glad to find that even 
 so much can be rescued from the shipwreck 
 of former hopes and beliefs which the waves 
 and rocks of modern science and biblical 
 criticism have wrought. It is to secure this 
 remnant for ourselves, not to convince or 
 edify others, that these pages have been 
 written : we venture, however, to think they 
 voice the inarticulate broodings of many 
 who, like ourselves, have tried to eke out 
 an imperfect education with a smattering of 
 science. We can only hope that brighter 
 
 N
 
 I70 THEORY OF 'A 
 
 and better-furnished wits may be tempted to 
 take our data, or similar ones, and show they 
 can be made to yield a sounder position. If 
 the stepping-stone we have attempted to lay 
 could once be rendered secure, it should not 
 be difficult for those who follow " Naturalism ' : 
 to pass on to the ground which Spencer offers 
 as the peaceful meeting-place of science and 
 religion. In the last edition (1S96) of his 
 "Principles of Sociology'' (page 175), 
 Mr. Spencer concludes his chapter on 
 " Religious Retrospect and Prospect " in the 
 following words : — 
 
 " But one truth, must grow ever 
 clearer— the truth, that there is an 
 Inscrutable Existence everywhere 
 manifested, to which he" (man of 
 science) " can neither find nor conceive 
 either beginning" or end. Amid 
 the mysteries which become the 
 more mysterious the more they are 
 thought about, there will remain the 
 one absolute certainty, that he is 
 ever in presence of an Infinite and 
 Eternal Energy, from which all things 
 proceed."
 
 SUPUE2IE XOTJMENON. I/I 
 
 This may be nothing more than a handful 
 of that " metaphysical grass of transfigured 
 Realism " with which Mr. Spencer has been 
 said to " feed his lambs," but it may possibly 
 appease certain wistful longings, which 
 torment them, better than either the parched 
 and garnered hay of science, or the tough 
 roots of orthodox tradition. In suggesting 
 that " Naturalism ' and Supernaturalism, 
 when rightly viewed, are complementary, and 
 allies rather than foes, we are aware that our 
 synthesis and apology will probably be rejected 
 by both philosopher and theologian. To the 
 last we may have to cry, with Goethe, for 
 " more light " ; but, for fellow-troglodytes 
 and others, there is always hope from that 
 Noumenal Light " which lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the world." Whether 
 the light come by way of an implanted 
 religious instinct, or an evolved conscience, 
 or through a special revelation, its source is 
 the same. 
 
 Printed by Taylor & Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleot Street, E.C.
 
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