3 1 2 THE NA TURE OF MIND. 



elusion untenable, and for many reasons, some of which I 

 have referred to in page 149. But I believe that many ac- 

 cepted generalizations, much more comprehensive than this, 

 will require to be greatly modified before general conclusions 

 which may have any chance of turning out to be correct, can 

 be arrived at. Much of what is asserted upon the nature of 

 mind is pure conjecture, but stated in fact form, and, in too 

 many instances statements, as I have shown, have been based 

 upon an interpretation of facts which cannot be justified. 

 The results of observation have been anticipated, and even 

 invented in the strangest manner, in order that some ex- 

 travagant generalizations might be put forward, and men 

 thus be induced to infer that modern physicists and 

 chemists had effectually disposed of or were about to 

 disprove the ancient idea of an Omnipotent Creator, 

 and at the same time to demonstrate that the facts of nature 

 might be accounted for and explained without a theistic hy- 

 pothesis of any kind. Laws, forces, properties, and ten- 

 dencies, are supposed to account for the past and present 

 order of things for mind and will, as well as for life and 

 growth* 



Observation has taught me very differently, and has led 

 me to adopt a very different conclusion. As I cannot admit 

 that the vital phenomena of the simplest living particle, 

 are in any way to be explained by the operation of any 

 form of ordinary force, it is of course not possible that I can 

 accept such a conclusion as regards mental action. So far 

 from mind being mechanical, I believe it to be the vital 

 power of a particular form of bioplasm, far indeed removed 

 from the vital power of one of the low simple organisms, but 

 infinitely nearer to this than it is to any chemical or physical 



