ii2 Life and Matter [chap. n. 



occur to a philosophic monist of the widest 

 kind. 



For that it may ultimately be discovered 

 that there is some intimate and necessary 

 connection between a generalised form of 

 matter and some lofty variety of mind is not 

 to be denied ; though also it cannot be 

 asserted. It has been surmised, for instance, 

 that just as the corpuscles and atoms of 

 matter, in their intricate movements and 

 relations, combine to form the brain cell of 

 a human being ; so the cosmic bodies, the 

 planets and suns and other groupings of the 

 ether, may perhaps combine to form some- 

 thing corresponding as it were to the brain 

 cell of some transcendent Mind. The idea 

 is to be found in Newton. The thing is a 

 mere guess, it is not an impossibility, and it 

 cannot be excluded from a philosophic system 

 by any negative statement based on scientific 

 fact. In some such sense as that, matter and 

 mind may be, for all we know, eternally and 

 necessarily connected ; they can be different 

 aspects of some fundamental unity ; and a 



