ON THE MATEEIALISM OF ATOMS AND FORCES. 303 



and arbitrary masters an important difference. It 

 delivers the will from mechanical necessity and random 

 chance, and gives it a practical freedom by allowing 

 conscious motives to determine our volitions and govern 

 our actions, instead of the last chance or self-determined 

 position of unintelligent atoms. In a word, thought acts 

 on the atoms as well as these on it. Thought remains 

 an energy which can act not merely on our own cerebral 

 atoms, but, what is more directly to our purpose, on the 

 thoughts and acts and feelings of others. The law of 

 the conservation of physical energy is not perhaps 

 defeated ; but it is inapplicable here. It is inapplicable, 

 or it must receive a new extension. For physical energy- 

 is not all energy ; there is spiritual energy also, however 

 little the extreme materialist may be disposed to accept 

 the fact. There is spiritual energy, which is conserved 

 like the physical, but which, unlike it, is ever on the 

 increase. The thoughts of great minds live after them, 

 and by producing ever new thought, are a constant and 

 inexhaustible source of ever new energy. 



Their echoes roll from soul to soul, 

 And grow for ever and for ever. 



The only question remaining is whether this unique 

 and indestructible and increasing energy can be ex- 

 plained completely and solely as a product of the due 

 position of cerebral particles a question to which all 

 thinkers, except the most extreme materialists, will, we 

 think, still give as decided a negative in our days as in 

 the days of Descartes and Kant. 



3. Let us now assume, what all men believe, what 

 Kant and Spencer have tried to establish on philo- 

 sophical grounds, what even materialists such as Lange 

 and Huxley are driven to admit, that there is something 



