SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM* 8? 



corresponding facts of consciousness is inconceivable as 

 a result of mechanics. Granted that a definite thought, 

 and a definite molecular action in the brain, occur 

 simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual 

 organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which 

 would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from 



ji the one to the other. They appear together, but we 

 do not know why. Were our minds and senses so 

 expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable 

 us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; 

 were we capable of following all their motions, all their 

 groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there 

 be ; and were we intimately acquainted with the corre- 

 sponding 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 

 consciousness?' The chasm between the two classes of 

 phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. 

 Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated 

 with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of 

 the brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left- 

 handed spiral motion. We should then know, when 

 we love, that the motion is in one direction, and, when 

 we hate, that the motion is in the other ; but the 

 * WHY ? ' would remain as unanswerable as before. 



In affirming that the growth of the body is 

 mechanical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has 



' its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the 

 position of the ' Materialist ' is stated, as far as that 

 position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will 

 be able finally to maintain this position against all 

 attacks ; but I do not think, in the present condition 

 of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this 

 position. I do not think he is entitled to say that his 

 molecular groupings, and motions, explain everything. 



