ON THE MATERIALISM OF ATOMS AND FORCES. 299 



Consciousness is thus, according to the automatonists, 

 an accident ; but at least we may add it was a fortunate 

 accident, a very happy hit, however the forces blindly at 

 work turned it up. For, according to all, including the 

 materialists themselves, according to Huxley, to Haeckel, 

 according to the author of the History of Materialism, 

 this accidental product is the sole source of all our know- 

 ledge, the sole means of our reading and interpreting the 

 universe, and of finding its laws, including the law of the 

 conservation of these very energies themselves; and in 

 the long run, these very energies are only known as 

 modes of this consciousness, which, though nothing as a 

 physical energy, yet knows, and in a certain important 

 sense, as the idealist maintains, creates and conserves all 

 things. In fact, the author of the History of Materialism 

 admits as much where he says, "We are justified in 

 assuming physical conditions for everything, even the 

 mechanism of thought ; but we are equally justified in con- 

 sidering not only the external world, but the organs also 

 with which we perceive it, as mere images of that which 

 actually exists." In fact, consciousness, which is not 

 force, or energy, and consequently not matter nor capable 

 of acting on matter, stands declared as a wholly distinct 

 thing from matter, divided from it by an impassable 

 gulf; and we thus return to the old dualism of Descartes, 

 while the materialist is aiming at monism. But if, as 

 this passage from Lange allows, the external world and 

 the organs with which we perceive it, including, of course, 

 all forms of energy, be " mere images of that which 

 actually exists," then we have here shadowed forth two 

 systems, both different from materialism. For these 

 images are each and all pictured on the canvas of con- 

 sciousness, and are never produced elsewhere, and so far 

 as the images are said to make up our universe, as they 



