426 METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION. 



the following passage : '' It will be found excellent practice, in the 

 mental operations required by this doctrine, to imagine a train 

 the fore part of which is an engine and three carriages linked with 

 iron couplings, and the hind ]3art three other carriages linked 

 with iron couplings ; the bond between the two parts being made 

 out of the sentiments of amity subsisting between the stoker and 

 the guard."* This satire, whether intentionally or not on the 

 part of its learned author, expresses at once the distinctive char- 

 acter of consciousness in esse and the impossibility of dissociating 

 it from energy in posse. For it is sufficiently clear that while the 

 conscious feelings of the stoker and the guard could by themselves 

 do nothing for the train, such a state is essential to the energy 

 displayed by them when they are at work for its benefit. We all 

 understand the absurdity of such expressions as the equivalency 

 of force and matter, or the conversion of matter into force. They 

 are not, however, more absurd than the corresponding proposition 

 more frequently heard, that consciousness can be converted into 

 energy, and vice versa. 



The energetic side of consciousness, however, may be readily 

 perceived by a little attention to its operations. Acts performed 

 in consciousness involve a greater expenditure of energy than the 

 same acts unconsciously performed. The difficulty of a given 

 piece of labor is in direct proportion to its novelty ; that is, is in 

 direct proportion to the amount of endeavor we use in its per- 

 formance. This is another way of saying that the labor is direct- 

 ly as the consciousness involved. Another evidence of the dynam- 

 ic character of consciousness is its exclusive and therefore com- 

 plementary character. Two opposite emotions can not occupy 

 the mind at the same moment of time. An emotion excludes all 

 high intellectual work, and vice versa. 



But there is no fact with which we are more familiar than that 

 consciousness in some way determines the direction of the energy 

 which it characterizes. The stimuli which aifect the movements of 

 animals at first only produce their results by transmission through 

 the intermediation of consciousness. Without consciousness, edu- 

 cation, habits, and designed movements would be impossible. So 

 far as we know, tlie instinct of hunger, which is at the foundation 

 of animal being, is a state of consciousness in all animals. This in- 

 contestable fact is overlooked by the materialists properly so called. 



'Scientific Basis of Morals," Humboldt Library Ed., p. 21. 



