THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS 



recent discovery, as every one knows, has cracked 

 the clay feet of materialism, and we are now at a 

 loss for a word until people shall become familiar 

 with the appropriate substitute, which is, I suppose, 

 energism. Let us admit that everything that is 

 not mind may be resolved into energy ignoring 

 the palpably derivative concept of motion and 

 let us then inquire into the contention that mind 

 may be resolved into energy. 



From our author we may take the very crudest 

 conceivable form of the doctrine which explains 

 mind in terms of not -mind. In words which this 

 pen is too feeble to characterize, Mr. Perrin gives, 

 as "the modern scientific definition of mind" 

 " that part of the sensorium capable of the greatest 

 molecular activity" a definition which is almost 

 enough to make one forswear science forever and 

 go in for black magic or the hell - fire theology or 

 the Baconian theory. But admitting that the mat- 

 ter of which the human sensorium is composed 

 is really like all matter, a manifestation of that 

 form of energy which we call electricity, let us 

 consider it in relation to our author's theory of 

 mind. 



Now ere we consider the teaching of the evolu- 

 tionary philosophy, which is one of those that 

 regard the question of questions as unanswerable, 

 we may notice the most popular and therefore the 

 most important of the proposed answers. This is 

 the philosophy which, in one form or another, 

 regards mind as an attribute or function or occa- 

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