31 



keep them from offending God. It is enough for him, therefore, that the 

 will should be uncontrolled, either by sinful propensities on the one hand, 

 or by spiritual influences on the other. This conceded, it is a matter of 

 indifference to him whether, as a metaphysical tenet, the relation of the will 

 to the brain- molecules be held to be that of master or slave. He denies 

 original sin. To the metaphysician of Mr. Spencer's school it is a matter of 

 no importance whether he does or no. It is a question into which the latter 

 does not enter. He considers us mere machines, unable to direct or control 

 our wills, which are the slaves of mechanical law ; and it is nothing to him 

 whether the impelling power is terrestrial or celestial. 



REMARKS BY THE REV. CANON SAUMAREZ SMITH, B.D. 



(Principal of St. Aidan's College.) 



Thanks for sending me proof of Mr. Ground's paper. I wish I could be 

 present at the discussion of it. It seems to me most important that the 

 tendencies of Determinism current in some of the philosophical and scientific 

 literature of the day should be strenuously opposed by philosophical argu- 

 ments as well as by theological teaching. 



I think that Mr. Ground has shown, clearly and temperately, the 

 thoroughly unsatisfactory nature of Mr. H. Spencer's reasoning, in the 

 extracts quoted. 



Mr. Spencer refuses to take into account one side of the dual deliverance 

 of consciousness. He reduces all his calculations to the standard of Matter, 

 for, in spite of his language about Mind, he does in effect make Mind a pro- 

 duct of Matter. He regards man as a bundle of transitory psychical con- 

 ditions with no ego, as the subject of the mental phenomena, and yet he 

 regards the phenomena as real. 



He seems to treat of our consciousness as if it were not inseparable from 

 self- consciousness. He argues, in fact, that this self- consciousness (by which 

 surely we must mean consciousness of a freedom to will in a certain measure) 

 is an " illusion "; and that instead of an individual power to choose, or refuse, 

 certain lines of action, our "composite psychical state," in which we only 

 imagine that we are exercising any personal volition, is a predetermined 

 product of an "infinitude of previous experiences registered in (man's) 

 nervous structure, co-operating with the immediate impressions on his 

 senses." 



Mr. Ground has clearly shown how Mr. Spencer contradicts himself in 

 speaking of " the subject " of psychical changes, while he practically denies 

 that there is any such subject. 



No one can make a thorough philosophical estimate of human nature who 

 ignores the personal side of the original " deliverance of consciousness." The 

 "Jam "of man lies at the root of all conscious exercise of intelligence, 



