448 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. ul 



by its limits, they are thereby rendered foreign to it. Not 

 being incorporated with its activities, or linked with these 

 as they are with one another, consciousness cannot, as it 

 were, run through them ; and so they come to be figured as 

 unconscious — are symbolized as having the nature called 

 material as opposed to that called spiritual. While, how- 

 ever, it thus seems an imaginable possibility that units of 

 external Force may be identical in nature with units of the 

 force known as Feeling, yet we cannot by so representing 

 them get any nearer to a comprehension of external Force. 

 For . . , supposing all forms of Mind to be composed of 

 homogeneous units of feeling variously aggregated, the reso- 

 lution of them into such units leaves us as unable as before 

 to think of the substance of Mind as it exists in such units ; 

 and thus, even could we really figure to ourselves all units 

 of external Force as being essentially like units of the force 

 known as Feeling, and as so constituting a universal sen- 

 tiency, we should be as far as ever from forming a conception 

 of that which is universally sentient." ^ 



I do not know where we could find anything more ad- 

 mirable than this lucid statement, in which the most subtle 

 conclusion now within the ken of the scientific speculator is 

 reached without disregard of the canons prescribed by the 

 doctrine of relativity. From this masterly statement it 

 appears that while the Inscrutable Power manifested in the 

 world of phenomena cannot possibly be regarded as quasi- 

 material in its nature, it may nevertheless be possibly 

 regarded as quasi-psychical. Were we compelled to choose 

 between these two alternatives, the latter would be the one 

 which we must^ perforce adopt. For besides the general 

 reason here indicated for such preference, there would in 

 such case be presented the more special reason, that upon 

 no imaginable hypothesis of evolution (if the foregoing 

 analysis be correct) can units of Mind be regarded as pro* 

 * Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. i. pp. 159- -161. 



