Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 246 



ations of matter and force are, so to speak, concentrations of the 

 same within a less space. One equivalent of chemical force cor- 

 responds to several equivalents of a lower force, and one equivalent 

 of vital force to several equivalents of chemical. The same holds 

 good for the various tissues. . . If we suppose a higher tissue to 

 undergo a decomposition, or a retrograde metamorphosis, which 

 shall necessarily coincide with the resolution of its energies into 

 lower modes, we may say that a simple monad of the higher tissue, 

 or one equivalent of its force, is equal to several monads of the 

 lower kind of tissue, or to several equivalents of its force. The 

 characteristic of living matter is that it is a complexity of combina- 

 tions, and a variety of elements so brought together in a small 

 space that we cannot trace them; and in nervous structure this 

 concentration and this complication are carried to the utmost 

 degree. . . The highest energy of nature is, in fact, the most 

 dependent. The reason of the powerful influence it is capable of 

 exerting on the lower forces which serve in its evolution is, that it 

 implicitly contains the essence of all lower kinds of energy. As 

 the man of genius implicitly comprises humanity, so the nervous 

 element implicitly comprises nature.' In another place, the author 

 adds the following remark, which can hardly be reconciled with 

 mechanism : ' What is this progress, this nisus, which is so evident 

 when we take all nature into account ? Is it not a striving of 

 nature to attain consciousness, to attain the possession of itself? 

 In the series of manifold productions, man, says Goethe, was the 

 first wherein nature held converse with God.' 



We shall not attempt, in this place, the discussion of the mechan- 

 ical theory. We shall hereafter submit both it and its opposite, 

 idealism, to criticism. We would only remark for the present 

 that, from the standpoint of experience, we may object to it that it 

 is an excessive abuse of hypothesis, which it exalts to reality. 1 While 



1 Those who occupy the metaphysical point of view refute mechanism by 

 saying that from the less it deduces the greater. 



Taken by itself, this axiom is incontestable, for it is only another form of the 

 plain truth that the whole is greater than a part, but we must here be careful. 

 The terms greater and less are quantitative expressions, and hence they have no 

 value. except in the domain of the measurable, the homogeneous, the mathe- 

 matical. To employ them aright, the two terms must be comparable and 



