a problem which cannot be solved. We may succeed in determining the exact nature of the molecular changes which occur in the braincells when a sensation is experienced; but this will not bring us one whit nearer the explanation of the ultimate nature of that which constitutes the sensation. The one is objective and the other subjective : and neither can be expressed in terms of the other. We cannot say that they are identical, or even that the one passes into the other, but only, as Laycock expresses it, that the two are correlated." 1

Just here I must fulfil my promise to refer to a courteous question asked me in print 2 by a gentleman who thinks that "chemical force and vital force are cognate." That is his language; and by it I understand him to mean that the one is kindred in origin with the other. Certainly he does not hold himself in such an attitude in this article that he can be exonerated from the grave charge that he disagrees with Ferrier, when the latter teaches, as Tyndall affirms also, that these molecular activities "cannot be made to pass into mental activities. Speaking of the effect of "tea and coffee and phosphorated food in oiling the wheels of the mind," this Boston writer says, "Such agents develop chemical force without question : this force, to the best of our knowledge, accelerates the wheels of life, and it is every way proper to suppose that, doing thus, it is analogous to the force which sets the wheels going; or, in short, that chemical force and vital force are cognate.' He then goes on to affirm that the "impressions" coming from different quarters "are to the individual the representative of the universe, and that it may be said that in this way the universe is each man's tutor, and forms his soul." Gentlemen, that is materialism.

Let us test this typical statement by a parallel case. The reasoning may be summarised in three propositions: (1) Chemical force accelerates the wheels of life; (2) Therefore it is analogous to the force which sets the wheels of life in motion; (3) Therefore chemical and vital forces are cognate. Now let us parallel that reasoning, point for point, for the sake of clearness. The strong current in the Merrimack or Charles River accelerates the motion of the rower in his boat. It is, therefore, every way proper to suppose that the force of the current is analogous to the force which sets the oars in motion.

I beg you to be courteous, gentlemen. This Lectureship has but one motto, "The clear, the true, the new, the strategic." I do not first seek orthodoxy; I seek first clearness. A man who sets before himself even truth as the first object is likely to make truth only the synonyme for his own opinion. Let us seek first clearness, whether the heavens stand or fall.

To proceed, then the force in the current accelerates the motion of the rower in his boat: therefore it is every way proper to suppose that it is analogous to the force that sets the oars in motion; and therefore the force of the current and the force that moves the oars are cognate.

But this is not all; for, to make the parallel complete, we must

1 Ferrior, Functions of the Brain, pp. 255, 256.

2 Daily Advertiser, Nov. 29, 1876.

assert that the force that moves the currents and the force that moves the oars are cognate in such a sense, that, when all things are fairly stated, it must be conceded that the force that moves the currents "forms" the force which moves the oars.

Undoubtedly the rower on the river is aided by the currents, and so, undoubtedly, is the rower called life aided by currents of purely physical force moving through the living organism; but to say that from this fact we must conclude that the two forces are cognate, is no more unreasonable in the former case than in the latter.

This gentleman thinks, that, at one point, I make a leap in my proof; but I never leaped across the difference between the current in the river and the force that moves the oars.

I need not mention in detail the reasoning in an earlier paragraph of this criticism; for the concessions made to me there destroy the criticism, and the whole falls when the word "cognate" falls. The gentleman says it is "force" which moves that portion of the brain which will not react under electrical stimulus. I say it is "force," but not physical force; for this, as Ferrier says, cannot be shown to pass into mental force. This gentleman's reasoning to prove that it does so pass proves astoundingly too much. The force, too, must be one adequate to account for the effect produced.

When he grave assertion is made that the bellows yonder accelerates the action of the organ, and that, therefore, it is perfectly proper to suppose that its force of rough wind is of the same character with the will of the musician whose fingers touch the keys, and that, therefore, the musician was blown out of the bellows, we come to a vivid view of the logic of materialism.

You put me into a bad mood, gentlemen. I have heard that hypotheses are allowable up to a certain point, but that there does come a time in logic when there must be an end of hypotheses. De Morgan, in his logic, tells a story of a servant who was to prepare a stork for dinner for his master. But the servant had a sweetheart; and, to gratify her, he cut off a leg of the stork after it had been cooked, and put the mutilated bird upon the table of the nobleman. When dinner was served, the nobleman called the servant to the door of the feasting-hall, and said, "How does it happen that this stork has but one leg?' Why, sir," was the hypothesis used in answer, a stork never has but one leg." No more was said in the presence of the company; but the next day, before the nobleman dismissed his servant, he thought he would see what further hypothesis the man would offer. So he took his servant into the grounds of the castle, and showed him the storks standing there. "See," the nobleman said, "each stork has two legs."-"But look again," said the servant, "each stork has really now but one;" and surely each was standing, after the manner of this bird, on one. But the nobleman shouted to the birds with a frightening gesture, "Off, away!" and each stork ran away with two legs. Yes," said the servant, who did not lack hypothesis; "but, yesterday you did not say, 'Off and away' to that stork on the table." There must at some point be an end to hypothesis; but materialism saves itself by saying, "Off and away!"

to the baked stork. better than that; for here?" said Hamlet;

66

Why, the poor grave-digger in Hamlet knew he was no materialist. "Who is to be buried and the fool answered

'One that was a woman;

But, rest her soul, she is dead."

At our present point of view, we need only name the propositions

which flow from the latest physiological research :

6. Molecular motions in the nervous system are now definitely

known to form in all cases a closed circuit.

7. They cannot, therefore, be said to be identical with mental activities.

8. They are only parallel with them.

9. They are demonstrably not transmuted into mental activities, but only correlated with them. Parallelism is not identity: the keys in motion are not the music of your organ.

10. Materialism, therefore, fails under the microscope of physiology, and it fails equally under a strict application of the law of causation. The externality of the soul to the nervous mechanism is just as well known in relation to the upper keyboard or influential arcs, as the externality of your fingers to the lower keyboard or the automatic arcs, is known in these experiments with the frog and the pigeon, the fish and the rabbit. You know how those motions in the lower keyboard are produced. You know, therefore, how those in the upper are started. Matter did not start them there. Matter does not start them here. Mind starts them here. Mind starts them there. We are conscious in ourselves of power of choice, and that inner witness must be combined with the testimony that comes from the scalpel and the microscope, to show that the power of self-direction does not originate in matter.

How the unextended substance, mind, can act upon the extended substance, matter, is a mystery; but to affirm that it does so involves no self-contradiction. What is a mystery? Something of which we know that it is, though we do not know how it is. What is a selfcontradiction? An inconsistency of a proposition with its own implications. That mind moves matter, we know. How it does it, we know not. Sir William Hamilton,' in his efforts to solve this mystery was anxious that even what is called mesmeric force should be investigated; and he and many other acute minds have asked whether it may not be within the power of the human will to influence another human will across the street, across the city, across a continent. In the name of exact science, many seek to-day to know whether by possibility human will may not, in some cases, make matter move by willing to do it. I hold no strange theory on this theme; I am shy to my fingers' tips of even the conclusions of Carpenter concerning it. But will you not allow me, in the name of Sir William Hamilton's curiosity, and in that of President Wayland of Brown University, to use, merely as illustration, this presumed power of the human will to

1 Professor Veitch, Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, p. 154.

move matter without contact through other matter? If you conceive that as possible, and fairly within natural law, then natural law itself becomes the magnetisation of all matter by the influence of one Omnipresent Will, in which is no variableness nor shadow of turning. As our wills play upon the keyboard of the influential human nerves, so Omniscience and Omnipresence, magnetising all worlds and their inhabitants, play upon all infinities and eternities. The connection of the Divine Will with matter may be thus obscurely revealed to us by that of the human will with matter. Each is a mystery; but, if these two are kindred mysteries, the universe is one, and man's passion for unity in science is satisfied. Matter is an effluence of the Divine Nature, and so is all finite mind, and thus the universe is one in its present ground of existence and in the First Cause. In a better age, Science, lighting her lamp at that Higher Unity, will teach that, although He, whom we dare not name, transcends all natural laws, they are, through His Immanence, literally God, who was, and is, and is to come. Science does this already for all who think clearly.

WHICH city has the greater right to an attitude of intellectual haughtiness, Boston or Edinburgh? In preparation for all inspired work in poetry and art, and, much more, in religion, it is necessary to make the palms of the hands clean and to shake off them the glittering, stout vipers,-intellectual pride, vanity, and self-sufficiency. Has Edinburgh shown a greater decision and skill than Boston in dislodging these wreathing reptiles from her fingers, as Paul shook off the serpent on Melitus, feeling no harm? Is Edinburgh really the equal of Boston in culture? Where is there in this city a better metaphysician than Sir William Hamilton or Dugald Stewart? Who here has advanced exact science more than Black, or Playfair, or Sir David Brewster? Is there a better political economist here than Adam Smith, the author of "The Wealth of Nations"? Have we better historians than Hume and Robertson? Is there any rhetorician here likely to be more influential than Hugh Blair? Have we a painter superior to Sir John Leslie, a more delightful essayist than Thomas De Quincey, a better writer on ethics than Sir James Mackintosh? What literary name have we, on the whole, superior to that of Walter Scott? Can Boston produce the equal of John Knox or Thomas Chalmers? What periodical of the same class have we better than "Blackwood's Magazine," as edited by a Lockhart and a Wilson? What quarterly have we here in Boston more famous than "The Edinburgh Review," with Francis Jeffrey, and Sidney Smith, and Horner, and Macaulay, and Brougham behind it? This Edinburgh, true to the deepest inspirations of conscience in her Scotch heart and intellect, knelt down lately on the shore of the North Sea, and was willing to have her devotions led by an American evangelist; and shall Boston, on this Puritan and Pilgrim shore, stand stupidly stiff when asked to kneel?

Dickens wrote in his last years, that he regarded a Boston audience as next to an Edinburgh audience, but that this was a high compliment to Boston; for he regarded an Edinburgh audience as perfect.

What if Boston in 1877 should receive, as well as Edinburgh did in 1874, evan

1 The fifty-seventh lecture in the Boston Monday Lectureship, delivered in Tremont Temple.