242 Heredity. 



explained all when we have analysed all. In pyschology, analysis 

 is of service in making us acquainted with the emphatic conditions 

 of phenomena, which is nearly the whole extent of our science ; 

 but our science is not everything. 



IV. 



We can now arrive at a summary view of the general relations 

 of the physical and the moral. In the first place, all the foregoing 

 discussions and expositions are reducible to two essential pro- 

 positions : 



1. The phenomena which constitute physical and mental life, 

 taken in their totality, seem to form a continuous series of such a 

 nature that at the one extremity of the series all is unconscious 

 and purely physiological, and at the other end all is conscious and 

 purely psychological; and that the transition from the one extreme 

 to the other is performed by insensible gradations, whether it be 

 that the unconscious rises to the conscious, or that the conscious 

 returns to unconsciousness. 



2. The purely physiological phenomena appear to be reduced 

 in the last analysis to motion, and purely psychological phenomena 

 to sensation ; and thus we have the problem of the relations be- 

 tween the physical and the moral brought down to this question : 

 What is the relation between a nerve-vibration and a sensation ? 



Some, taking their stand in metaphysics, think the problem to 

 be resolvable; others, holding to experience, regard it as un- 

 solvable. 



If we examine the tendencies of contemporary metaphysics on 

 this point, we shall find two currents of doctrine quite distinct, 

 and both equally logical. Either we may regard motion as the 

 only reality, all else being but a modification of it, thought being 

 the maximum of motion ; or we may regard thought as the only 

 reality, of which all the rest is only a modification, motion being 

 the minimum of thought The former hypothesis might be called 

 mechanism, or, by a somewhat antiquated term, materialism. The 

 second hypothesis is idealism. It is enough for our purpose to 

 show briefly that neither of these hypotheses can be scientifically 

 established. 



i. The mechanical theory is very simple it starts from motion, 



