98 EVIDENCES AND LIMITATIONS 



purely physical antecedents and causes, but require the 

 coming in of superphysical factors and of supernatural 

 causation. If man belongs to the superphysical as well 

 as to the physical order, his physical evolution must 

 have been attended by superphysical involution. He 

 must have ov^ed his distinctive and higher attributes to 

 other sources than his animal ancestry. 



That human nature is partly superphysical is a 

 necessary premise of the whole argument. It is a 

 premise that none but materialists can consistently 

 repudiate. Even an agnostic naturalist like the late 

 Professor Huxley, in the midst of an assertion of his 

 belief that physical and mental phenomena are capable 

 of being expressed by each other, honestly says, "I 

 really know nothing whatever, and never hope to know 

 anything, of the steps by which the passage from 

 molecular movement to states of consciousness is 

 effected." ^ His conviction that such a passage actually 

 occurs by means of purely physical processes is there- 

 fore nothing more than a purely conjectural inference 

 from the correlation of brain action and mental phe- 

 nomena, expressed in the form of dogmatic asser- 

 tion. This correlation is a mysterious result of the 

 union of body and soul in man. It in no sense con- 

 stitutes proof that these two are the same, or of the 

 same order of being; nor does it require us to infer 

 that psychical functions are functions of man's physi- 

 cal organism, and results of its natural evolution.- 



1 Darwiniana, p. 162. 



2 See O. Lodge, Life and Matter, pp. 93-101; J. Orr, Christian 



