120 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the 

 organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of rea- 

 soning, from 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 corresponding 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 " Ma- 

 terialist" is stated, as far as that position is a tenable 

 one. I think the materialist will be able finally to main- 

 tain 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 his molecular 

 motions explain every thing. In reality, they explain 

 nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association of 

 two classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union 

 he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the con- 

 nection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern 

 form as it was in the prescientific ages. Phosphorus is 



