Feb. 27, 1885.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



179 



something in tho human constitution which does not suft'or disinte- 

 gration at death, that somethin!» must of necessity be the conscious 

 self. Were it otherwise, wliatever it was that canio into bein}^ at 

 death, must be something totally different from tho controlling 

 intelligence of this life. 



If the immortalisls will give a little thought to tho above iioints, 

 their cause will receive more attention. 



Anent tho very pertinent question raised by " V. V>. 11." as to 

 what the soul does when unconscious, or what it can do ''without 

 eyes to see, eare to hear," Ac, I think that, providing its existence 

 can be proved, or reasonably inferred, there must be corresponding 

 " soul senses," and that, like the conscious musician when his in- 

 strument is undergoing repair, we may reasonably infer that it is 

 conscious of what is going on, but that on again using its instru- 

 ment it fails, in the majority of cases, to impress the physical with 

 what has taken place in the interval. 1 say in the majority of 

 cases advisedly, for there are instances where this appears to have 

 been done after the lapse of years. If the existence of the soul can 

 be prored, then the above inference is admissible. 



One cannot help wishing for an immortality, were it only to 

 give an opportunity for amplification of the work entered into here, 

 but which, for want of time, we have to leave only just entered 

 upon. But who will solve the problem and for ever set tho mind at 

 rest? A. K. V. 



THE FALLACY OF MATERL4.LISM. 



[1613] — Your Hylo-Idealists, llylozoists, do not, as it would 

 appear to me, quite comprehend Berkeley's standpoint in philo- 

 sophy. It is this, that our outer and material universe is but an 

 ideation of whose real, substantive existence we have no positive 

 proof. We may, and do, believe that such exists, but belief is not 

 certainty; nevertheless, we are compelled to attribute our concep- 

 tions of an external universe to external causation. Berkeley 

 differed from his predecessors in assuming that this causation was 

 spiritual instead of material. Berkeley's philosophy was essentially 

 " animistic," and cannot be hybridised with materialism, call tho 

 attempt to do this by what name you will. Berkeley, however, takes 

 his stand in an impregnable redoubt against the positivism of the 

 materialists, for he convincingly demonstrates that the existence of 

 xn external, material universe cannot be proved, and that the belief 

 in its existence is as much a belief as the belief the materialists 

 would undermine. It is, therefore, on a belief, and not on an abso- 

 lute certainty, the belief in the existence of an external, material 

 nniverse, that yonr very positive science is built. In the becoming, 

 or gradual formation of this belief, we have been led to doubt the 

 veracity of our senses — whether our senses do always correctly 

 report external things. It is difficult, even in these scientific times, 

 to correct the misleading^ of sense, as, for example, in the instances 

 of colour and sound, and to convince people that these have 

 no externality whatever, as colour and sound. It is per- 

 fectly true, however, as your correspondent, " C. N.," observes, 

 that we do form our conceptions of external things from their 

 appearances in sense, but this is accomplished by very slow degrees, 

 and by correcting one kind of telegi-am from the outer world, by 

 another ; and though we cannot pass the pale of the laboratory of 

 our own consciousness, we do injerentiaUy transcend it, and obtain 

 knowledge of things supposed to be apart from, and beyond, it. 

 Independently, however, of these consitJerations, there is the im- 

 portant fact that our total consciousness is a icrtium quid, which is 

 neither the postulated ohjectiic, material things, nor the subjective 

 nerves. Assert, if you will, that this third conscious essence can- 

 not exist apart from matter, from "organisation in action" — 

 say, that matter is its necessary vehicle — nevertheless, there 

 it is, an essence superior to, and dominant over, matter ; 

 and, from this point of view, your materialism would 

 appear to be a perverse placement, to use a vulgar expression, 

 of the cart before tho horse. It is of this third existency, 

 essence, or life, of which the nature cannot be divined. And 

 jnst as science can formulate the laws of life, without being 

 able to divine what life and consciousness themselves are, so 

 likewise in cosmical phenomena we come upon that "animistic" 

 nttraction of which Newton could expound the laws, but of whose 

 power he — even he — could give no explanation. The earnest 

 inquirer is met at every point with some mystery he cannot by any 

 possibility solve. It is but the weakness of baffled science to sub- 

 stitute effects for causes. Does any of your automatic machinery 

 approach the inexplicablencss of the humblest form of life :■" 

 3Iateriali.sm, whilst repudiating ontological speculation, is itself 

 ontological in its tendency, and does but substitute materialism for 

 "animism" as a first cause, though at the same time admitting 

 that its boasted matter is but an idealistic conception. 



Is it some men's absoluteness, their desire for something 

 tangibly, and ponderably, matter-of-fact, that makes them prone 

 (O bow down to that fetish, "matter.-" And then — oh, incon- 



sistency !— when they find that tlie motion of matter won't work, 

 forthwith maintain that it is endowed with a fis rira. Endowed 

 by whom ? Ah, well! "endowed," they admit, is not tho right 

 word thev ought to have used. " Vis rim," they meant to say, 

 "is a property of matter." Why not matter a property of vis riva ? 

 But from this very fact that they are obliged to have recourse to a 

 ris vira shows that they are obliged to revert to ii dens in machiiiA, 

 and to bestow upon this di'Ksti new title. Say that this motion— 

 ris ii'rn, lite or spirit— is bound up— indissolubly hound up — with 

 matter in tho universe, why not bow to tho moving spirit rather 

 than to the matter moved ? 



This worship of matter is nothing more nor less than an intel- 

 lectual reversion to the barbaric worship of stocks and stones. 

 Keason for ever, anil, nevertheless, there will bo the great fact, tho 

 fact that can be neither gainsaid nor altered, that there is a Bower 

 competent to effect all that has been, is, or will bo. It is of com- 

 paratively little moment what name is given to that powi^r, for 

 that stupendous power, by any name, will remain eternally the: 

 same. Look where you will into tho civilisations of the past, and 

 you shall find, as they gradually apiiroached culmination, that rude 

 stocks :-,nd stones gave place to winged images. Man progressed, 

 and rose on spiritual iiinimis, and y<'t your ,ualcrialif'l , in tlio face 

 of all this evidence, would pluck' from him tho very plumes on 

 which ho soars. W. Cavk Tikohs. 



[The disputants on both sides in this discussion might with ad- 

 vantage read the article on Berkeley, in Lewes's " Biographical 

 Uistory of Philo-sophy." — Eu.] 



CROLL AXD TUE BEGINNING OF LIFE. 



[lOM.]— The table you give on p. 123 is the result, as you say, 

 " of mathematical computations not open to doubt or question." 



Exactly so; and, canscquenthj — whatever may bo the bearing on 

 " The Beginning of Life "—I must first beg to observe that, conse- 

 quently, not one figure of the table can have tho faintest chance of 

 approximate verity (beyond the well-known -CIIOS of present eccen- 

 tricity), or the remotest shadow of connection with any knowledge. 

 On referring to Croll's "Climate and Time," it is plain that this 

 table merely repeats the last third of his 3,0CH),000-year table. 

 Y'ou have either not seen the source of the formuho he used, as 

 given on his p. 312, or not noted the data there given, or not looked 

 into the nature of them. 



Leverrier first published them, it seems, in the "Connaissance 

 des Temps" for 18-13 ; but also separately in 1845. The tit-le of his 

 pamphlet is "Metnoire sur les Variations Seculairca des Elements 

 des Orbites, pour les Hcpt Blanetes I'rincipales." Of course, only 

 seven were then known ; and he showed that whatever the number 

 of planets to be taken into account, the eccentricity of each one of 

 them is subject to that same number of inequalities, each having 

 its own magnitude and period, dependent (each one) on the elements 

 and masses of all the planets. That is to say, supposing seven 

 acting planets (as he then did), the centre of each of their orbits 

 must be describing a curve compounded of seven different circular 

 motions, all of different radii, and different angular rates (or 

 periods of turning). We must not (in any case, as that of tho 

 earth) associate any one of the seven inequalities with any par- 

 ticular planet, for each depends on nil tho planets. Now, 1 must 

 beg your attention to the rates of angular motion of the seven 

 arguments Leverrier then found for the earth's seven inetjualities. 

 Instead of copying each rate, I shall make it clearer by giving the 

 number of revolutions and twelfths of a revolution that each 

 argument had to make in a million years, the duration of your 

 table, or rather of the last third of t'roU's. 

 The argument of the biggest inequality, 



(which is -0189) makes 5 revolutiims 10 signs 

 The next (OlOl)) „ 13 „ '• „ 



„ third (-0106) ,. 2 „ 13 „ 



„ fourth (OllS) „ 13 „ 3 „ 



„ fifth (-010(1) „ 4 ,, 1 „ 



„ sixth (-0021) ., 17 ,, 4 „ 



„ last (-000.5) „ 1 „ „ 



These correspond, you will find, with Croll's figures, on his p. 

 312, and are the numbers uf turns that he or his computers have 

 supposed each of the arguments to make in one million years. 



Leverrier took the trouble to reckon and give, in elaborate 

 tables, the change that any small correction to the then supposed 

 masses of any of those seven planets would make in both the 

 magnitude of each of his i'J inequalities, and tho rate of its 

 argument's motion (consequently its period). No such correction 

 has been applied, though the estimates of all the masses but 

 Jupiter have had to be amended, since 1843, far more than he 

 probably thought possible. But now just imagine faintly the efiect 

 on your precious list cf maxima and minima by such a slight niicro- 

 I scopic amendment in, say, the second biggest inequality's rate of 



