SCIEXCE AND MAX. 



105 



tion, if any, between the objective and subjective, 

 between molecular motions and states of con- 

 sciousness ? My answer is : I do not see the con- 

 nection, nor have I as yet met anybody who does. 

 It is no explanation to say that the objective and 

 subjective effects are two sides of one and the same 

 phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon have 

 two sides ? This is the very core of the difficulty. 

 There are plenty of molecular motions which do 

 not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water think 

 or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a win- 

 dow-pane? If not, why should the molecular 

 motion of the brain be yoked to this mysterious 

 companion, consciousness '? We can present to 

 our minds a coherent picture of the physical pro- 

 cesses — the stirring of the brain, the thrilling of 

 the nerves, the discharging of the muscles, and 

 all the subsequent mechanical motions of the or- 

 ganism. But we cau present no picture of the 

 process whereby consciousness emerges, either as 

 a necessary link or as an accidental by-product 

 of this series of actions. Yet it certainly does 

 emerge — the prick of a pin suffices to prove that 

 molecular motion can produce consciousness. 

 The reverse process of the production of motion 

 by consciousness is equally unpresentable to the 

 mind. "We are here, in fact, upon the boundary- 

 line of the intellect, where the ordinary canons 

 of science fail to extricate us from our difficulties. 

 If we are true to these canons, we must deny to 

 subjective phenomena all influence on physical 

 processes. Observation proves that they interact, 

 but in passing from the one to the other we meet 

 a blank which mechanical deduction is unable to 

 fill. Frankly stated, we have here to deal witli 

 facts almost as difficult to be seized mentally as 

 the idea of a soul. And if you are content to make 

 your "soul" a poetic rendering of a phenomenon 

 which refuses the yoke of ordinary physical laws, 

 I, for one, would not object to this exercise of 

 ideality. Amid all our speculative uncertainty, 

 however, there is one practical point as clear as 

 the day — namely, that the brightness and the use- 

 fulness of life, as well as its darkness and disaster, 

 depend to a great extent upon our own use or 

 abuse of this miraculous organ. 



[In an article betraying signs of haste and its 

 consequent confusion, a well-known and accom- 

 plished essayist pulls me sharply up in the Spec- 

 tator for the phraseology here employed. In a 

 single breath he brands my "poetic rendering" 

 as a " falsehood " and a " fib." I should be loath 

 to apply to any utterance of my respected critic 

 terms so uncivil as these. They are, in my opin- 

 ion, unmerited, for poetry or ideality and untruth 



are assuredly very different things. The one 

 may vivify while the other kills. When St. John 

 extends the notion of a soul to " souls washed in 

 the blood of Christ" does he "fib?" Indeed, 

 Christ himself, according to my critic's canon, 

 ought not to have escaped censure. Nor did he 

 escape it. " How can this man give us his flesh 

 to eat?" expressed the skeptical flouting of un- 

 poetic natures. Such are still among us. Car- 

 dinal Manning would doubtless tell my critic that 

 he, even he, "fibs" away the plain words of his 

 Saviour when he reduces " the body of the 

 Lord" in the sacrament to a mere figure of 

 speech. 



Though misuse may render it grotesque or in- 

 sincere, the idealization of ancient conceptions, 

 when done consciously and above board, has, in 

 my opinion, an important future. We are not 

 radically different from our historic ancestors, 

 and any feeling which affected them profoundly 

 requires only appropriate clothing to affect us. 

 The world will not lightly relinquish its heritage 

 of poetic feeling, and metaphysic will be wel- 

 comed when it abandons its pretensions to sci- 

 entific discovery, and consents to be ranked as a 

 kind of poetry. "A good symbol," says Emer- 

 son, " is a missionary to persuade thousands. 

 The Vedas, the Edda, the Koran, are each re- 

 membered by its happiest figure. There is no 

 more welcome gift to men than a new symbol. 

 They assimilate themselves to it, deal with it in 

 all ways, and it will last a hundred years. Then 

 comes a new genius and brings another." Our 

 ideas of God and the soul are obviously subject 

 to this symbolic mutation. They are not now 

 what they were a century ago. They will not be 

 a century hence what they are now. Such ideas 

 constitute a kind of central energy in the human 

 mind, capable, like the energy of the physical 

 universe, of assuming various shapes and under- 

 going various transformations. They baffle and 

 elude the theological mechanic who would carve 

 them to dogmatic forms. They offer themselves 

 freely to the poet who understands his vocation, 

 and whose function is, or ought to be, to find 

 "local habitation " for thoughts woven into our 

 subjective life, but which refuse to be mechani- 

 cally defined.] 



We now stand face to face with the final 

 problem. It is this : Are the brain, and the 

 moral and intellectual processes known to be 

 a-soeiated with the brain — and, as far as our 

 experience goes, indissolubly associated — subject 

 to the laws which we find paramount in physi- 

 cal Nature ? Is the will of man, in other words, 



