LITERARY NOTICES. 



493 



I 



seen of the work, and a better one than we 

 could prepare, appeared in Nature^ and we 

 shall best serve our readers by quoting 

 freely from the review : 



" Tlie preliminary chapter states the fact 

 of the all but universal belief in, or aspira- 

 tion after, immortality. It admits that that 

 doctrine is inconsistent with the doctrine of 

 continuity as generally understood and as 

 applied solely to the visible universe. It 

 accepts and explains the principle of conti- 

 nuity in the fullest sense, and it attempts to 

 reconcile it, as thus apprehended, with the 

 doctrine of immortality. Incidentally out 

 of the apparent waste of energy in space, 

 and on other indications chiefly teleologieal 

 it constructs an hypothesis of an invisible 

 universe, perhaps developed out of another 

 invisible universe, and so on ad infinitum. 

 It is another consequence of the theory that 

 our natural bodies are probably accompa- 

 nied by a sort of invisible framework or 

 spiritual body, and that the phosphonis 

 and other substances of which the natural 

 body is built up are not really identical 

 with these elements in their ordinary con- 

 dition of inorganic atoms, but are somehow 

 transubstantiated by the coexistence, along 

 with the mere chemical substance or with 

 its chemical properties, of this invisible, im- 

 ponderable, immaterial, accompanying es- 

 sence, wliicli derives a kind of vis mvida 

 from a connection with the unseen universe. 

 The passage from the visible universe to the 

 invisible seems to be made intelligible to 

 the authors by the existence of the ether, a 

 substance into which energy is continually 

 being passed, and into which it is perpet- 

 ually, and, so far as any obvious or sensible 

 effect is concerned, finally, absorbed. 



" As a first postulate the authors assume 

 the existence of a Creator. Finite beings, 

 creatures, are conditioned by the laws of the 

 universe, and it is in these conditions that 

 we must seek to discover its nature. The 

 first pair of subjects for human thought are 

 matter and mind, and the materialists tell 

 us that, whereas mind or mental activity 

 never exists without being associated with 

 some forms of matter, we may perfectly con- 

 ceive matter, as for instance a block of wood 

 or a bar of iron, existing without intelli- 

 gence. Is mind, then, the dependent is 

 there nothing in matter which serves as the 

 vehicle of intelligence different from all 

 other matter ? The authors answer that we 

 have no right to assume that the brain con- 

 sists of particles of phosphorus or carbon 

 such as we know these substances chemi- 



cally, that we cannot say that there may not 

 be something superadded to their chemical 

 and physical qualities. They dwell upon 

 another fact the fact that individual con- 

 sciousness returns after sleep or trance ; a 

 fact inferring some continuous existence. 

 The assumptions of the materialist are less 

 inevitable than he supposes. Turning to 

 mind, finite conditioned intelligence, the 

 authors ask, what is essential to it? It 

 must have some organ by which it can have 

 a hold upon the past, and such a frame and 

 such a universe as supply the means of 

 activity in the present. Outside they find 

 physical laws, and they look on the prin- 

 ciple of continuity as something like a physi- 

 cal axiom. By this principle we are com- 

 pelled to believe that the Supreme Governor 

 of the universe will not put us to perma- 

 nent intellectual confusion. It is in the 

 nature of man, certainly in the nature of 

 scientific man, to carry the explanation of 

 every thing back ad infinitum, and to refuse 

 perpetually to grant what is perpetually de- 

 manded of him, that he has arrived at the 

 inexplicable and unconditioned. On this 

 principle scientific men have supposed 

 themselves to prove that the physical uni- 

 verse must one day become mere dead mat- 

 ter. The authors consider that this is a 

 monstrous supposition, although they grant 

 that the visible, or by-sense-perceivable uni- 

 verse, must in transformable energy, and 

 probably in matter, come to an end. They 

 think that the principle of continuity itself 

 demands a continuance of the universe, and 

 they are driven to believe in something be- 

 yond that which is visible as the only means 

 of explaining how this system of things can 

 endure in the future, or can have endured 

 forever in the past. They see a visible 

 universe, finite in extent and finite in dura- 

 tion, beyond which, on both sides stretch- 

 ing infiuitely forward and infinitely back- 

 ward, there is an invisible, its forerunner 

 and its continuation. It is natural to infer 

 that these two invisibles must meet across 

 the existing finite visible universe. As we 

 are driven to admit the invisible in the past 

 and in the future, tliere must be an invisible 

 framework of things accompanying us in the 

 present. 



" What, then, is this present visible uni- 

 verse ; and can we point to sure signs of 

 this invisible substance which accompanies 

 what may prove after all to be the mere 

 shadow of things? Matter has two quali- 

 ties. The first is that it is indestructible ; 

 the second, that the senses of all men alike 

 point to the same quantity, quality, and col- 



