THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 169 



admit that you can build crystalline forms out of this 

 play of molecular force ; that the diamond, amethyst, 

 and snow-star are truly wonderful structures which are 

 thus produced. I will go farther and acknowledge that 

 even a tree or flower might in this way be organised. 

 Nay, if you can show me an animal without sensation, 

 I will concede to you that it also might be put together 

 by the suitable play of molecular force. 



' Thus far our way is clear, but now comes my diffi- 

 culty. Your atoms are individually without sensation, 

 much more are they without intelligence. May I ask 

 you, then, to try your hand upon this problem. Take 

 your dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen atoms, 

 your dead carbon atoms, your dead nitrogen atoms, your 

 dead phosphorus atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as 

 grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. Imagine 

 them separate and sensatiouless ; observe them running 

 together and forming all imaginable combinations. 

 This, as a purely mechanical process, is seeable by the 

 mind. But can you see, or dream, or in any way 

 imagine, how out of that mechanical act, and from these 

 individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion 

 are to rise ? Are you likely to extract Homer out of 

 the rattling of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of 

 the clash of billiard-balls ? I am not all bereft of this 

 Vorstellungs-Kraft of which you speak, nor am I, like 

 so many of my brethren, a mere vacuum as regards 

 scientific knowledge. I can follow a particle of musk 

 until it reaches the olfactory nerve ; I can follow the 

 waves of sound until their tremors reach the water of 

 the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti's fibres in 

 motion ; I can also visualise the waves of aether as they 

 cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay more, I am able 

 to pursue to the central organ the motion thus imparted 

 at the periphery, and to see in idea the very molecules 



