Force, Energy, and Will 237 



to respectful deference. The Professor brings forward from 

 Lange ^ (as an example) the case of a merchant who, on read- 

 ing a telegram, is aroused to immediate energetic and complex 

 action, and the author pronounces that the whole of the 

 activities thus aroused are phenomena ' produced by, or asso- 

 ( dated with, the molecular processes set up by waves of light 

 in a previously prepared brain.' His treatment of the subject 

 makes it evident that the Professor thinks a Christian 

 theologian must necessarily object to the sentence just 

 ([uoted, and he seems to consider that its acceptance would, 

 in some way, tell against the doctrine of the substantiality 

 and immortality of the soul of man. That the merchant's 

 knowledge was not a "mere accompaniment of his physical 

 state, but also a cause of subsequent actions, cannot of course 

 be known to a spectator save as an inference from what such 

 spectator knows concerning his own nature; but inasmuch 

 as all reasonable men (who have no eccentric thesis to main- 

 tain) know that knowledge is in themselves a cause of action,'' 

 they very properly infer that the same is the case in their 

 folio w-men also. Similarly it suffices to have realised in 

 one's-self the essential difference between a faint or ' revived 

 sensation ' and a ' thought,' to recognise the reasonableness 

 of explaining the merchant's activity by the spontaneity of 

 his mind or soul. 



It is interesting to observe all that Professor Tyndall has 

 to say against the hypothesis of a human sou! acting in 

 Lange's merchant. He tells us : — 



' Adequate reflection shows that instead of introducing light into 

 our minds, it increases our darkness. You do not in this case explain 

 the unknown in terms of the known, which, as stated above, is the 

 method of science, but you explain the unknown in terms of the more 

 unknown. Try to mentally visualise this soul as an entity distinct 

 from the body, and the difficulty immediately appears.' 



1 P. 605. 2 See ante, p. 219. 



