xi Sensation, the iiltimatc Mystery. 207 



accepted as a fact, impossible to deny, but altogether 

 mysterious ; and it is true that the mysteriousness of 

 a fact is no reason for denying it. There is mystery 

 at the ground of all being whatever. 



All physiological research, however, tends to prove 

 that as sensation has no existence apart from the 

 nerves, so consciousness and thought have no exist- 

 ence apart from the brain. No doubt, as Dr. 

 Tyndall has said, the connection of thought with 

 molecular action in the brain is " unthinkable," or, 

 in common language, unintelligible; not only un- 

 known, but impossible to be known by such faculties 

 as ours. But the ultimate mystery is not the per- 

 fected evolution of Mind; the ultimate mystery is 

 the origin of sensation the fact of organic tissue 

 becoming sentient ; and the mysteriousness of this is 

 not lessened by the fact that there is no sharp separa- 

 tion between sentient and insentient life, similar to 

 that existing between life and the inorganic forces. 

 Given, however, the fact that living tissue becomes 

 sentient, the development of a brain out of primitive 

 ganglia and nerve fibres, and of thought out of 

 sensation, are mysterious only as all vital develop- 

 ment is mysterious ; but, to quote Tyndall's passage 

 on the relation of Mind to brain, with the change of 

 the words marked in italics " The passage from the 

 physics of the nerves to the corresponding facts of 

 sensation is unthinkable. Granted that a definite 

 sensation and a definite molecular action in the nerves 

 occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intel- 



