Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 255 



be neither spiritualistic nor materialistic, for those at least who 

 care for the preciseness of the terms they employ. 1 



But not to dwell upon a problem which cannot be incidentally 

 discussed, we will endeavour to deduce a conclusion from all that 

 has been said, which shall be based, so far as possible, on experience. 

 It appears that all contemporary schools, when we eliminate that 

 which appertains to the exclusive point of view of each, tend more 

 and more to consider physical and moral phenomena as identical. 

 This conclusion seems perfectly natural, especially to those who 

 take the ground of experience ; so that we may say at least, so far 

 as current language will enable us to express ideas which are 

 opposed to current opinions that the physical is the moral looked 



1 We may cite, in confirmation of what we have said, some remarkable reflec- 

 tions of the great English physicist, Tyndall. 'Granted/ says he, 'that a 

 definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simulta 

 neously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment 

 of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from 

 the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were 

 our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable 

 us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we capable of following 

 all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there 

 be ; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought 

 and feeling, we should be as far as ever from, the solution of the problem, 

 " How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness? " 

 The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectu- 

 ally impassable. Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated with 

 a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness 

 of hate with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we love 

 that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that the motion is in the 

 other; but the "why " would remain as unanswerable as before. 



' In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that thought, as 

 exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the .brain, I think the 

 position of the " materialist " is stated, as far as that position is a tenable one. 

 I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all 

 attacks ; but I do not think, in the present condition of the human mind, that 

 he can pass beyond this position. I do not think he is entitled to say that his 

 molecular groupings, and his molecular motions, explain everything. In reality 

 they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm is the association of two 

 classes of phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance. 

 The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern 

 form as it was in the prescientific ages. ' Fragments of Science, vi. 

 12 



