408 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it 

 runs into frost-ferns upon a window pane? If not, 

 why should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked 

 to this mysterious companion consciousness? We can 

 form a coherent picture of all the purely physical 

 processes the stirring of the brain, the thrilling of the 

 nerves, the discharging of the muscles, and all the sub- 

 sequent motions of the organism. We are here dealing 

 with mechanical problems which are mentally present- 

 able. But we can form no picture of the process where- 

 by consciousness emerges, either as a necessary link, or 

 as an accidental by-product, of this series of actions. 

 The reverse process of the production of motion by con- 

 sciousness is equally unpresentable to the mind. We 

 are here in fact on the boundary line of the intellect, 

 where the ordinary canons of science fail to extricate 

 us. If we are true to these canons, we must deny to 

 subjective phenomena all influence on physical pro- 

 cesses. The mechanical philosopher, as such., will never 

 place a state of consciousness and a group of molecules 

 in the relation of mover and moved. Observation 

 proves them to interact; but, in passing from the one 

 to the other, we meet a blank which the logic of deduc- 

 tion is unable to fill. This, the reader will remember, 

 is the conclusion at which I had arrived more than 

 twenty years ago. I lay bare unsparingly the central 

 difficulty of the materialist, and tell him that the facts 

 of observation which he considers so simple are ' almost 

 as difficult to be seized mentally as the idea of a soul/ 

 I go further, and say, in effect, to those who wish to re- 

 tain this idea, ' If you abandon the interpretations of 

 grosser minds, who image the soul as a Psyche which 

 could be thrown out of the window an entity which is 

 usually occupied, we know not how, among the mole- 

 cules of the brain, but which on due occasion, such as 



