ON THE MATERIALISM OF ATOMS AND FORCES. 297 



list of energies, for two main reasons : First, because, if 

 thought alone could act directly upon or move mechani- 

 cally a single atom of matter, it might have been the 

 first principle of movement at the beginning of things, as 

 it might still be the final sustaining and moving power 

 in the universe. But there is a second and a stronger 

 reason. Our modern materialists, in their anxiety to 

 reduce all in man to physical and in particular to 

 mechanical laws, are compelled to ignore all that is not 

 a physical, and in the last analysis a mechanical or 

 moving, energy. For energy of motion is the final one 

 to which heat, electricity, chemical affinity, nerve force, 

 and all others, if there be others, must be reduced ; matter 

 in motion being the final explanation of the world. 

 Whatever cannot be so reduced is not a physical energy, 

 and thought clearly cannot be reduced. It cannot be 

 reduced, but it may be ignored as immaterial, as an 

 accidental surplus product of the real physical energies ; 

 and thus we reach the conception of the man-machine, 

 the final outcome of this view of things. 



The doctrine that man is an automaton, a most 

 perfectly constructed machine, would logically follow 

 from the denial of all other than physical energies. He 

 does not move himself, he has no power of self-direction, 

 no control over his actions, for all is determined by the 

 internal physical energies, and in particular by the latest 

 mysterious movement of the cerebral ato'ms, supplemented 

 by the executive muscular and nervous energy requisite 

 to carry out the mysterious mandates corresponding to a 

 particular position of the cerebral atoms. 



Man is a machine that can move about ; his move- 

 ments are the resultant of internal mechanical forces, as 

 the motion of a locomotive engine is of the expansive 

 force of steam generated in the boiler. He does not 



