668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



as they cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay, more, I am able to fol- 

 low up to the central organ the motion thus imparted at the periphery, 

 and to see in idea the very molecules of the brain thrown into tremors. 

 My insight is not baffled by these physical processes. What baffles 

 me, what I find unimaginable, transcending every faculty I possess — 

 transcending, I humbly submit, every faculty you possess — is the 

 notion that out of those physical tremors you can extract things so 

 utterly incongruous" with them as sensation, thought, and emotion. 

 You may say, or think, that this issue of consciousness from the clash 

 of atoms is not more incongruous than the flash of light from the union 

 of oxygen and hydrogen. But I beg to say that it is. For such in- 

 congruity as the flash possesses is that which I now force upon your 

 attention. The flash is an afiair of consciousness, the objective coun- 

 terpart of which is a vibration. It is a flash only by our interpreta- 

 tion. You are the cause of the apparent incongruity ; and you are 

 the thing that puzzles me. I need not remind you that the great Leib- 

 nitz felt the difficulty which I feel, and that to get rid of this monstrous 

 deduction of life from death he displaced your atoms by his monads, 

 and which were more or less perfect mirrors of the universe, and out 

 of the summation and integration of which he supposed all the phe- 

 nomena of life — sentient, intellectual, and emotional — to arise. 



" Your difficulty, then, as I see you are ready to admit, is quite as 

 great as mine. You cannot satisfy the human understanding in its 

 demand for logical continuity between molecular processes and the 

 phenomena of consciousness. This is a rock on which materialism 

 must inevitably split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy 

 of life. What is the moral, my Lucretian ? You and I are not likely 

 to indulge in ill-temper in the discussion of these great topics, where 

 we see so much room for honest differences of opinion. But there are 

 people of less wit, or more bigotry (I say it with humility), on both 

 sides, who are ever ready to mingle anger and vituperation with such 

 discussions. There are, for example, writers of note and influence at 

 the present day who are not ashamed to assume the ' deep personal 

 sin' of a great logician to be the cause of his unbelief in a theologic 

 dogma. And there are others who hold that we, who cherish our 

 noble Bible, wrought as it has been into the constitution of our fore- 

 fathers, and by inheritance into us, must necessarily be hypocritical 

 and insincere. Let us disavow and discountenance such people, cher- 

 ishing the unswerving faith that what is good and true in both our 

 arguments will be preserved for the benefit of humanity, while all that 

 is bad or false will disappear." 



It is worth remarking that in one respect the bishop was a product 

 of his age. Long previous to his day the nature of the soul had been 

 so favorite and general a topic of discussion that, when the students, 

 of the University of Paris wished to know the leanings of a new pro- 

 fessor, they at once requested him to lecture upon the soul. About 



