ON THE MATERIALISM OF ATOMS AND FORCES. 301 



The objective thought expressed in the law of natural 

 selection, in the drama of Faust or of Hamlet, or even in 

 the law of the transformation and conservation of energy 

 itself, has produced a great commotion in the cerebral 

 atoms of many the first time that they were put into 

 nerve-communication with it. But it was not the 

 thought, it was the atoms themselves which produced 

 the agitation on receiving an external material stimulant, 

 replies the materialist. At least, we reply, the stimulant 

 was due to the thought, which was the occasion, the pro- 

 ducing cause of it. When an orator produces excitement 

 in his audience, does not thought move the atoms from 

 their quiescent state and customary paths ? Or is it 

 only the cerebral atoms of the orator acting on those of 

 his audience ? But this, at least, we cannot suppose in 

 the case instanced of our being moved by the reading of 

 Hamlet. Here the original producing atoms have long 

 been scattered, and yet the spiritual energy, which, in 

 association with the material atoms, once gave birth to 

 this marvellous product is still here in this book, arrested, 

 crystallized, and most potent to stir our brain and thrill 

 our nerves. For, as Milton has pertinently observed, 

 " books are not dead things, but do contain as in a phial 

 the potent efficacy of the spirit that bred them." 



Again, may not joyful news exalt the state of the 

 atoms, sad thoughts depress them, steady thought and 

 brain labour quiet and compose them ? May not even 

 the " written troubles of the brain," revived and read by 

 the light and power of memory, strongly move the very 

 molecules themselves which, nevertheless, must be em- 

 ployed, as we grant, to produce the painful impression ? 

 No, the materialist retorts, these written troubles are 

 merely persistent painful positions of the atoms; their 

 revival by memory is merely a fresh agitation of them, 



