28 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON 



or power of the material world, why not also for the 

 origin of man ? It is impossible for us to picture such 

 action and agency, because the requisite anterior ex- 

 perience is lacking to us, and we cannot imagine what 

 we have never had any experience of Whatever mental 

 picture we frame for ourselves of such action and agency 

 must, our reason assures us, be unreal and false ; but 

 that is no ground for our not accepting the real existence 

 of an action and agency which we cannot picture. It has 

 been objected, by Professor Tyndall, against such con- 

 ceptions, that they cannot be " mentally visualized ; " 

 but so far is this condition from being a proof of 

 delusion, that we may rather say, whatever in such 

 matters can be " mentally visualized " is necessarily 

 untrue, and it is often the more untrue the better it can 

 be so " visualized." 



If such a prejudice, such a gross and manifest delu- 

 sion of the mere imagination, thus possesses the mind 

 of a distinguished physicist, a general commander in 

 science, it is no wonder that it besets the rank and file 

 of the scientific regiments. When we say that reason 

 indicates the existence of an immaterial principle as 

 forming that in every material existence which is 

 active and dynamical (so that in each organism it is 

 rather that principle than any combination of matter, 

 which may be said to constitute such organism),* we 

 are met by the protest, " Such teaching is not science." 

 But the protest is an unreasonable one, and directly 

 contradictory of the truth. For what is science } It is 

 and must be the highest and most certain knowledge 

 * See " On Truth,' p. 432. 



