296 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



On the other hand, if the materialist stands consist- 

 ently by his monism, and holds fast to phenomenal matter 

 and energy as the one reality which has produced thought 

 as well as all else, we may grant to him that conscious- 

 ness and thought are products of one form of energy, 

 namely, of cerebral activity; but a product only in 

 Hume's and Mill's sense, which is also the strict scientific 

 sense of the word, that is, a consequent having molecular 

 cerebral action for its invariable antecedent. Thought 

 cannot be said to be produced by molecular movement in 

 any other than this its only scientific sense, that is to 

 say, it is not really produced at all by it. There is 

 nothing more than a constant connection of two wholly 

 dissimilar things. Unless matter or energy is literally 

 transmuted into thought ; unless thought is finer matter 

 or energy an affirmation which the hardiest materialists 

 have scarcely dared to make materialism could not 

 establish itself as a monistic system. Finally, even if 

 thought, imagination, ratiocination, could be experiment- 

 ally exhibited to us as an energy which manifests itself 

 like electricity or heat, still this material objective thing 

 would be different from the subjective thought and 

 consciousness which would be necessary to cognize and 

 examine it, as the material organ of vision remains 

 different from the sensation of sight. 



It has, however, been granted by some materialists 

 that thought, though a product of physical energy, is not 

 itself properly to be reckoned amongst the list of energies ; 

 but this is in effect to surrender the materialist's position, 

 that there exist only in the universe matter and energy ; 

 for if thought is not included amongst these, it is an 

 independent existence, an irreducible entity, and we 

 return once more to the old dualism of matter and mind. 



Thought has been erased by the materialist from the 



