REV. J. MARTINEAU AND BELFAST ADDRESS. 227 



solutely and for ever inconceivable that a number of 

 carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms should 

 be otherwise than indifferent as to their own position 

 and motion, past, present, or future. It is utterly in- 

 conceivable how consciousness should result from their 

 joint action.' 



This language, which was spogen in 1872, Mr. Mar- 

 tineau ' freely ' translates, and quotes against me. The 

 act is due to misapprehension. Evidence is at hand 

 to prove that I employed similar language twenty 

 years ago. It is to be found in the t Saturday Review ' 

 for 1860; but a sufficient illustration of the agree- 

 ment between my friend Du Bois-Reymond and myself, 

 is furnished by the discourse on ' Scientific Material- 

 ism,' delivered in 1868, then widely circulated, and re- 

 printed here. The reader who compares the two dis- 

 courses will see that the same line of thought is pur- 

 sued in both, and that perfect agreement reigns be- 

 tween my friend and me. In the very Address he 

 criticises, Mr. Martineau might have seen that pre- 

 cisely the same position is maintained. A quotation 

 will prove this: 'Thus far/ I say, 'our way is clear, 

 but now comes my difficulty. Your atoms are indivi- 

 dually without sensation, much more are they without 

 intelligence. May I ask you, then, to try your hand 

 upon this problem? Take your dead hydrogen atoms, 

 your dead oxygen atoms, your dead carbon atoms, your 

 dead nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus atoms, and 

 all the other atoms, dead as grains of shot, of which 

 the brain is formed. Imagine them separate and sen- 

 sationless; observe them running together and forming 

 all imaginable combinations. This, as a purely me- 

 chanical process, is seeable by the mind. But can you 

 see, or dream or in any way imagine, how out of that 

 mechanical act, and from these individually dead 



