520 FHAQMUNT8 Off SCIENCE. 
Compare this with the answer which Mr. Martineau puts 
into tlie mouth of his physicist, and with which I am 
generally credited by Mr Martineau's readers, both in Eng- 
land and America: " ' It [the problem of consciousness] 
does not daunt me at all. Of course you understand that 
all along my atoms have been affected by gravitation and 
polarity; and now I have only to insist with Fechner on a 
difference amoifg molecules: there are the inorganic, 
which can change only their place, like the particles in an 
undulation; and there are the organic, which can change 
their order, as in a globule that turns itself inside out. 
With an adequate number of these our problem will be 
manageable/ 'Likely enough/ we may say ['entirely 
unlikely/ say I], ' seeing how careful you are to provide 
for all emergencies; and if any hitch should occur in the 
next step, where you will have to pass from mere sentiency 
to thought and will, you can again look in upon your 
atoms, and fling among them a handful of Leibnitz's 
monads, to serve as souls in little, and be ready, in a latent 
form, with that Vorstellungs-fahigkeit which our pictur- 
esque interpreters of nature so much prize/" 
"But surely," continues Mr. Martineau, "you must 
observe that this 'matter 'of yours alters its style with 
every change of service: starting as a beggar with scarce a 
rag of 'property' to cover its bones, it turns up as a 
prince when large undertakings are wanted. 'We must 
radically change our notions of matter/ says Professor 
Tyndall; and then, he ventures to believe, it will answer 
all demands, carrying ' the promise and potency of all 
terrestrial life.' If the measure of the required ' change 
iu our notions' had been specified, the proposition would 
have had a real meaning, and been susceptible of a test. 
It is easy traveling through the stages of such an 
hypothesis; you deposit at your bank a round sum ere you 
start, and, drawing on it piecemeal at every pause, com- 
plete your grand tour without a debt." 
The last paragraph of this argument is forcibly and ably 
stated. On it I am willing to try conclusions with Mr. 
Martineau.; I may say, in parsing, that I share his con- 
tempt for the picturesque interpretation of nature, if 
accuracy of vision be thereby impaired. But the term 
Vorstellungs-fahigkeit, as used by me, means the power of 
definite mental presentation, of attaching to words the 
