MIND IN MATTER. 309 



You say you will admit that the earth exerts an active 

 power through a medium. What ground have you to claim 

 that any active power is possessed by the earth? Have you 

 ever known a stone or a stick or a chunk of ice to exert any 

 active agency except this hypothetical agency of attraction ? 

 You think you have often seen matter put forth activities of 

 its own; but really you have only seen activities exerted in 

 connection with matter just as you observe selection and 

 choice in the working organism. Now in reality, all you 

 know about the origin and seat of efficient power is given you | 

 in your own consciousness when you exert power ; and what 

 you infer from analogy when power seems to be exerted by 

 other persons. That is, you only know that efficiency origi- 

 nates in uritt your own will ; and when you see efficiency ^ 

 exerted anywhere, you can only affirm that some ivitt is acting j 



Now, are you prepared to ascribe such will to the earth, 

 to stones and mud and chunks of ice, when the so-called at- 

 traction seems to be exerted by them ? This is the same ques- 

 tion which has settled itself in the negative. The downward 

 pull on the apple comes, then, from some other source. This 

 is the other alternative. It means that power is exerted on 

 the apple, and on all things, causing them to tend together 

 in a certain fashion which we style the law of gravitation. 

 Now, power is an attribute. It belongs to something; as it 

 proceeds from will, power and will together are attributes of 

 beiug. Manifestly, that being is omnipresent, for attraction / 

 is omnipresent. It is the Omnipresent Being. 



Now let us glance at the principle of mechanical adapta- 

 tions. The heart has valves which open and close, and serve 

 the same ends as the valves in a pump. Do you think they 

 were intentionally so constructed and so placed, and so acted 

 on ? You have no doubt of it, you say ; neither have I. But 

 you perceive that if intention was present, mind was present to 

 understand the use and to perfect the adaptation. As before, 

 this implies a personal being, and a personal being present wher- 

 ever hearts are in process of formation, and wherever any 

 other design is going into effect. It must be, then, an Om- 



