PARADOXICAL PHILOSOPHY. 761 



fancying, conscious, immaterial mind, which feels pleasure and pain, love, and hate; this one lies 

 outside of the mechanics of matter, and cares nothing for cause and effect." 



We might ask Prof. Du Bois-Reymond which of these it is that does right 

 or wrong, and knows that it is his act, and that he is responsible for it, but 

 we must go on to the other view of the case, which Dr Stoffkraft alludes to 

 at p. 78, although by some law of the Paradoxical, he is not allowed to pursue 

 a subject which might have afforded excellent sport to the Society. 



"I feel myself compelled to believe," says the learned Doctor, "that all 

 kinds of matter have their motions accompanied with certain simple sensations. 

 In a word, all matter is, in some occult sense, alive." 



This is what we may call the "levelling up" policy, and it has been 

 expounded with great clearness by Prof, von Niigeli in a lecture, of which a 

 translation was given in Nature, Vol. xvi. p. 531. 



He can draw no line across the chain of being, and say that sensation 

 and consciousness do not extend below that line. He cannot doubt that every 

 molecule possesses something related, though distantly, to sensation, " since each 

 one feels the presence, the particular condition, the peculiar forces of the other, 

 and, accordingly, has the inclination to move, and under circumstances really 

 begins to move becomes alive as it were;". . . "If, therefore, the molecules feel 

 something which is related to sensation, then this must be pleasure if they can 

 respond to attraction and repulsion, i.e. follow their inclination or disinclination ; 

 it must be displeasure if they are forced to execute some opposite movement, 

 and it must be neither pleasure nor displeasure if they remain at rest." 



Prof, von Niigeli must have forgotten his dynamics, or he would have 

 remembered that the molecules, like the planets, move along like blessed gods. 

 They cannot be disturbed from the path of their choice by the action of any 

 forces, for they have a constant and perpetual will to render to every force 

 precisely that amount of deflexion which is due to it. Their condition must, 

 therefore, be one of unmixed and unbroken pleasure. 



But even if a man were built up of thinking atoms would the thoughts 

 of the man have any relation to the thoughts of the atoms? Those who try 

 to account for mental processes by the combined action of atoms do so, not by 

 the thoughts of the atoms, but by their motions. 



Dr Stoffkraft explains the origin of consciousness at p. 77 and at p. 107. 

 We recommend to his attention Mr Herbert Spencer's statement in his Principles 

 of Psychology, 179, where he shews in a most triumphant manner how, under 



VOL. II. 96 



