THE REV. JAMES MAHTINEATT. 519 



physicist: " ' Good/ lie says; ' take as many atoms as 

 you please. See that they have all that is requisite to body 

 [a metaphysical B], being homogeneous extended solids/ 

 * That is not enough/ his physicist replies; 'it might do 

 for Democritus and the mathematicians, but I must have 

 something more. The atoms miist not only be in motion, 

 and of various shapes, but also of as many kinds as there 

 are chemical elements; for how could I ever get water if I 

 had only hydrogen elements to work with?' 'So be it/ 

 Mr. Mart-mean consents to answer, ' only this is a con- 

 siderable enlargement of your specified datum [where, and 

 by whom specified?] in fact, a conversion of it into 

 several; yet, even at the cost of its monism [put into it by 

 Mr. Martineau], your scheme seems hardly to gain its end; 

 for by what manipulation of your resources will you, for 

 example, educe Consciousness? " 



This reads like pleasantry, but it deals with serious 

 things. For the last seven years the question here pro- 

 posed by Mr. Martineau, and my answer to it, have been 

 accessible to all. The question, in my words, is briefly 

 this: "A man can say, ' I feel, I think, I love/ but how 

 does consciousness infuse itself into the problem?" And 

 here is my answer: The passage from the physics of the 

 brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthink- 

 able. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molec- 

 ular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not 

 possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudi- 

 ment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a 

 process of reasoning, from the one to the other. They 

 appear together, but we do not know why. Were our 

 minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illumi- 

 nated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of 

 the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, 

 ;ill their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such 

 there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the cor- 

 responding states of thought and feeling, we should be as 

 far as ever from the solution of the problem, "How are 

 these physical processes connected with the facts of con- 

 sciousness?" The chasm between the two classes of 

 phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable."* 



* Bishop Butler's reply to tlie Lucretian in tlie "Belfast Address " is 

 all in the same strain. 



