EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



during the present life there is no consciousness 

 except where there is nerve-tissue. If it is 

 materialism to say that for every association of 

 ideas there is established a system of paths for 

 discharges between two or more groups of 

 nerve-cells, it is equally materialism to say that 

 a pint of Scotch whiskey will make a man 

 drunk. The former statement enters very much 

 more into detail than the latter, but there is no 

 other essential difference between them. I do 

 not wonder, however, that people's minds are 

 often vague and confused on these points, for 

 our every-day talk is full of materialistic impli- 

 cations. We say, for example, that grief makes 

 us weep, and the statement is true enough for 

 ordinary purposes ; but, in reality, it is not the 

 grief that acts upon the tear-glands. The grief 

 is something absolutely immaterial, something 

 absolutely outside the circuit of physical causa- 

 tion. How do we know this? How do we 

 reach such a conclusion ? We reach it by apply- 

 ing to the subject the conception of the correla- 

 tion of forces, and the conception of the atomic 

 constitution of matter, twin conceptions which 

 lie at the bottom of all our modern scientific 

 reasoning. The material world is all made up 

 of systems of atoms that are perpetually mov- 

 ing in relation to one another. In an ultimate 

 analysis, every material object is such a system 

 of moving atoms. Every living organism is a 

 254 



