PRIMITIVE MAN. 81-7 



lie who shows us that electrical discharges are con- 

 cerned in muscular contraction, has just as much 

 proved that there is no need of life or spirit, as the 

 electrician who has explained the mysteries of the 

 telegraph has shown that there can be no need of an 

 operator. Or we may, turning to the opposite extreme, 

 trust to the metaphysical fallacy of those who affirm 

 that neither matter, nor force, nor spirit, need concern 

 them, for that all are merely states of consciousness in 

 ourselves. But what of the conscious self — this self 

 which thinks, and which is in relation with surround- 

 ings which it did not create, and which presumably 

 did not create it ? and what is the unknown third term 

 which must have been the means of setting up these 

 relations ? Here again our blind guides involve us in 

 an absolute self-contradiction. 



Thus we are thrown back on the grand old truth 

 that man, heathen and savage, or Christian and scien- 

 tific, opens his eyes on nature and reads therein 

 both the physical and the spiritual, and in connection 

 with both of these the power and divinity of an 

 Almighty Creator. He may at first have many wrong 

 views both of God and of His works, but as he pene- 

 trates further into the laws of matter and mind, he 

 attains more just conceptions of their relations to the 

 Great Centre and Source of all, and instead of being 

 able to dispense with creation, he hopes to be able at 

 length to understand its laws and methods. If un- 

 happily he abandons this high ambition, and con- 

 tents himself with mere matter and physical force, he 



