458 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XIV. 



like the planets, move along like blessed gods. They cannot 

 be disturbed from the path of their choice by the action of 

 any forces, for they have a constant and perpetual will to 

 render to every force precisely the amount of deflexion which 

 is due to it. They must therefore enjoy a perpetuity of the 

 highest and most unmixed pleasure, even when, as Professor 

 Nageli says, they are the cause of pain to us. 



To attribute life, sensation, and thought to objects in 

 which these attributes are not established by sufficient 

 evidence is nothing more than the good old figure of 

 Personification. 



If certain bodies, like the sun and stars, move in a 

 regular manner which we can predict, we may, if it pleases 

 us, suppose that then: nature is like that of the just man 

 whom nothing can turn from the path of rectitude. If the 

 motion of other bodies is less simple, so that we cannot 

 account for it, we may suppose their nature to be tainted 

 with that capriciousness which we observe in our fellow-men, 

 and of which we are occasionally conscious in ourselves. 



But the study of nature has always tended to show that 

 what we formerly attributed to the caprice of bodies is only 

 an instance of a regularity which is unbroken, but which 

 cannot be traced by us till we acquire the requisite skill. 



But granting that the mental powers of atoms may be, 

 for anything we know, of the very highest order, what step 

 have we made towards linking our own mental powers with 

 those of lower orders of being ? 



(3.) Let us suppose that a thinking man is built up of a 

 number of thinking atoms. Have the thoughts of the man 

 any relation to the thoughts of atoms or of one or more of 

 them ? Those who try to account by means of atoms for 

 mental processes do so not by the thoughts of the atoms, 

 but by their motions. 



Hobbes, in the frontispiece of his Zeviathan, shows us 

 a monster like the wicker images of our British antecessors 

 stuffed with men, and the whole method of his book is 



