V ANIMAL AUTOMATISM 245 



justify us in testing with extra care the reasoning 

 process from which they result. 



So that if the view I have taken did really and 

 logically lead to fatalism, materialism, and atheism, 

 I should profess myself a fatalist, materialist, and 

 atheist ; and I should look upon those who, while 

 they believed in my honesty of purpose and intel- 

 lectual competency, should raise a hue and cry 

 against me, as people who by their own admis- 

 sion preferred lying to truth, and whose opinions 

 therefore were unworthy of the smallest at- 

 tention. 



But, as I have endeavoured to explain on other 

 occasions, I really have no claim to rank myself 

 among fatalistic, materialistic, or atheistic philoso- 

 phers. Not among fatalists, for I take the con- 

 ception of necessity to have a logical, and not a 

 physical foundation ; not among materialists, for 

 I am utterly incapable of conceiving the existence 

 of matter if there is no mind in which to picture 

 that existence ; not among atheists, for the problem 

 of the ultimate cause of existence is one which 

 seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my 

 poor powers. Of all the senseless babble I have 

 ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of 

 these philosophers who undertake to tell us all 

 about the nature of God would be the worst, if they 

 were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities 

 of the philosophers who try to prove that there is 

 no God. 



