444 COSMIC FEILOSOPHY. [pt. in. 



elements, — on the one hand a psychical shock as the basis 

 of all consciousness, on the other hand a physical pulsation 

 as the basis of all that molecular motion of which nervous 

 action is a species. It is now for consciousness to decide, 

 upon direct inspection, whether a psychical shock is so much 

 like a physical pulsation that in a given series of propositions 

 the one term might be substituted for the other. " Can we, 

 then, think of the subjective and objective activities as the 

 same ? Can the oscillation of a molecule be represented in 

 consciousness side by side with a [psychical] shock, and the 

 two be recognized as one ? No effort enables us to assimilate 

 them. That a unit of feeling has nothing in common with a 

 unit of motion, becomes more than ever manifest when we 

 bring the two into juxtaposition. And the immediate verdict 

 of consciousness thus given, might be analytically justified 

 were this a fit place for the needful analysis. For it might 

 he shovjn that the conception of an oscillating molecule is built 

 out of many units of feeling ; and that to identify it vAth a 

 \jpsychicaT\ shock would be to identify a whole congeries of units 

 with a single unit."^ 



Thus we were fully justified in stating that through no 

 imaginable future advance in molecular physics can the 

 materialists ever be enabled to realize tlieir desideratum of 

 translating mental phenomena in terms of matter and motion. 

 We were right in hinting that one grand result of the 



^ Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. I p. 158. I have taken the 

 liberty to alter Mr. Spencer's metaphorical phrase "nervous shock" into 

 the more literally accurate phrase "psychical shock." The term "nervous 

 shock," though partially justified by the colloquial use of the word " ner- 

 vous" in description of psychical states (as when we speak of feeling nervcus 

 or flighty), is nevertheless a bad term in an argument like the present, where 

 the stric',.,st accuracy is above all things desirable. For besides this psycho- 

 logical use of it, the term "nervous shock" is used in physiology in a sense 

 strictly synonymous with one kind of "physical pulsation." So that, to 

 those who pay more attention to an author's slips of expression than to his 

 manifest meaning, the term may seem to contain the materialistic implica- 

 tions which it is the express purpose of Mr. Spencer's argument to avoid. 

 Any such misapprehension is impossible if we substitute the term "psychical 

 shock." — (Mr. Spencer authorizes me to add that he thoroughly approve* «/ 

 this emeudadon.) 



