138 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a human pattern of thought." This is very beautiful, and mainly so 

 because the man who utters it obviously brings it all out of the treas- 

 ury of his own heart. But the " hue " and " j)attern " here so finely 

 spoken of are neither more nor less than that "emotion" and that 

 "objective knowledge" which have drawn this suicidal fire from JMr. 

 Martineau's battery. 



I now come to one of the most serious portions of Mr. Martineau's 

 pamphlet serious far less on account of its "personal errors," than 

 of its intrinsic gravity, though its author has thought fit to give it a 

 witty and sarcastic tone. He analyzes and criticises "the materialist 

 doctrine, which, in our time, is proclaimed with so much pomp, and 

 resisted with so much passion. 'Matter is all I want,' says the 

 physicist ; ' give me its atoms alone, and I will explain the universe.' " 

 It is thouglit, even by Mr. Martineau's intimate friends, that in this 

 pamphlet he is answering me. I must therefore ask the reader to con- 

 trast the foregoing travesty with what I really do say regarding 

 atoms: "I do not think that he (the materialist) is entitled to say 

 that his molecular groupings and motions explain every thing. In 

 reality, tliey explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the asso- 

 ciation of two classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he 

 is in absolute ignorance." This is very different from saying, " Give 

 me its atoms alone, and I will explain the universe." Mr. Martineau 

 continues his dialogue with the physicist: "'Good,' he says; 'take 

 as many atoms as you please. See that they have all that is requisite 

 to Body' [a metaphysical B], 'being homogeneous extended solids.' 

 ' That is not enough,' he replies ; ' it might do for Democritus and 

 the mathematicians, but I must have something more. The atoms 

 must not only be in motion, and of various shapes, but also of as 

 many kinds as there are cliemical elements; for how could I ever get 

 water if I had only hydrogen elements to work with ? ' 'So be it,' 

 Mr. Martineau consents to rej^ly, 'only this is a considerable enlarge- 

 ment of your specified datum ' [where, and by whom specified?] 'in 

 fact, a conversion of it into severiil ; yet, even at the cost of its mon- 

 ism' [put into it by Mr. Martineau] ' your scheme seems hardly to gain 

 its end; for by what^manipulation of your resources will you, for ex- 

 ample, educe consciousness ? ' " 



This reads like pleasantry, but it deals with serious things. For 

 the last seven years the question proposed by Mr. Martineau and my 

 answer to it have been accessible to all. Here, briefly, is the ques- 

 tion : " A man can say ' I feel, I think, I love,' but hoAV does con- 

 sciousness infuse itself into the problem ? " And here is the answer : 

 " The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding 

 facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought 

 and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we 

 do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of 

 the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, 



