A FUNCTION OF MATERIAL BEINGS. 237 



ence teaches us that countless myriads of generations 

 of the lower animals, made up of certain complex 

 material compounds, live, and move, and display con- 

 scious thought in their day, and then as individuals, 

 perish utterly, like a rain-drop, a crystal, or a salt, 

 whose elements are dispersed; while their specific 

 powers depend as much on the matter they are com- 

 posed of as these simpler powers of a stone or an acid. 

 Who shall gainsay this ? Not, certainly, the physical 

 philosopher, who has no experience except with matter, 

 and knows nothing, and can know nothing, from ex- 

 perience of the existence of spirits. When, therefore, 

 Professor Tait applies the term " pernicious nonsense 

 of the materialist" to the deduction that volition and 

 consciousness depend on modes of being of matter, he 

 either commits the mistake exposed by Fletcher at the 

 beginning of this section, viz., that because inorganic 

 compounds of matter do not show life or mind, there- 

 fore no other mode of combination such as protoplasm 

 can; or else he falls into the common error of con- 

 founding the immortal soul granted to man alone, 

 with the life and mind of mere animals. This ques- 

 tion will be touched on more specially in the last 

 chapter of this work. 



We must not disguise the fact that the view of con- 

 sciousness as an incidental and passive phenomenon, 

 still further increases, in a physiological sense, the 

 difficulty of comprehending freedom of the will, for 

 how can the pleasing nature or the reverse of a feeling 

 take effect on the next step in the chain of actions 

 culminating in the discharge of nerve force to produce 

 voluntary or involuntary action ? Here Dr. Beale's 



