THE BELFAST ADDRESS 179 



jour 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 sensationless ; 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 olfac- 

 tory nerve; I can follow the waves of sound until their 

 tremors reach the water of the labyrinth, and set the oto- 

 liths and Corti's fibres in motion; I can also visualize the 

 waves of ether 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 of the brain thrown into tremors. My 

 insight is not baffled by these physical processes. What 

 baffles and bewilders me is the notion that from those 

 physical tremors things so utterly incongruous with them, 

 as sensation, thought, and emotion, can be derived. 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 incongruity as the flash 

 possesses is that which I now force upon your attention. 

 The "flash" is an affair of consciousness, the objective 



