302 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



the pressure upon an old sore. But what makes the 

 pressure ? Not the atoms themselves, but the fact of 

 memory on its conscious side. When our past troubles 

 and sorrows are revived in consciousness, our brooding 

 over them, that is, our conscious thought of them, still 

 reacts upon the atoms, and thus thought, thus conscious- 

 ness, is still an efficient power or energy. 



But, says the thorough-going materialist, to cut the 

 matter short, thought, emotion, cannot act on the atoms 

 of the brain, because, in fact, thought is only made 

 possible by the atoms, and is no more than a conscious 

 symbol of a particular position of them. It is always 

 an effect of some arrangement of them ; and when you 

 affirm that thought, or volition, or emotion acts upon 

 them, what really takes place is action amongst the 

 atoms themselves, of which action, thought, or volition, 

 is but a symbol, or expression, or result. When you 

 say that painful memories meditated upon affect them, 

 the brooding over the painful memories is itself only a 

 painful position of particular brain particles, a persistent 

 and unnatural pressure on them. 



We reply, all this may be true, and yet thoughts from 

 without and even from within may and do move men, 

 and consequently must move the molecules of the brain. 

 The}' r must be the first causes of the brain agitation 

 which is not self-produced. Ideas from without move 

 men mightily ; and they move the world ; consequently 

 they must move the brain atoms into the new position 

 which may serve to express them. In like manner, 

 volitions act upon the cerebral corpuscles. A strong- 

 determination is borne in upon us from the outside 

 from counsel, example, experience, and this also compels 

 the atoms into the requisite physical places. But it- 

 makes the atoms obedient servants instead of being blind 



