Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 249 



posing matter without mind as mind without matter; subject and 

 object, external and internal, are correlative terms. If the object 

 is in the last analysis reduced to states of consciousness which 

 come from within, states of consciousness are reduced in the last 

 analysis to sensations which come from without. The object is 

 constituted by the aid of elements derived from the subject, and 

 the subject is constituted by the aid of elements derived from the 

 object. From this alternative there is no escape. 



Moreover, the radical weakness of these two rival doctrines, 

 mechanism and idealism, has been so well demonstrated in a 

 recent work by Herbert Spencer, that we cannot do better than 

 to give that author's remarks in his own words. 



1 Here, indeed, we arrive at the barrier which needs to be per- 

 petually pointed out, alike to those who seek materialistic expla- 

 nations of mental phenomena, and to those who are alarmed lest 

 such explanations may be found. The last class prove by their 

 fear almost as much as the first prove by their hope, that they 

 believe that mind may possibly be interpreted in terms of matter ; 

 whereas many whom they vituperate as materialists are profoundly 

 convinced that there is not the remotest possibility of so inter- 

 preting them. For those who, not deterred by foregone conclu- 

 sions, have pushed their analysis to the uttermost, see very clearly 

 that the concept we form to ourselves as matter, is but the symbol 

 of some form of power absolutely and for ever unknown to us ; 

 and a symbol which we cannot suppose to be like the reality 

 without involving ourselves in contradictions. They also see 

 that the representation of all objective activities in the terms of 

 motion is but a representation of them, and not a knowledge of 

 them ; and that we are immediately brought to alternative absur- 

 dities if we assume the power manifested to us as motion to be 

 in itself that which we conceive as motion. When, with these 

 conclusions that matter and motion, as we think them, are but 

 symbolic of unknowable forms of existence, we join the con- 

 clusion, lately reached, that mind also is unknowable, and that 

 the simplest form under which we can think of its substance is 

 but a symbol of something that can never be rendered into 

 thought ; we see that the whole question is at last nothing more 

 than the question whether these symbols should be expressed in 



