2o8 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



as Power, and conceived emotionally as a conscious 

 Power, as the Power that makes Beauty and Love — 

 what can it lead to but to that great causal concept, 

 God? 



No instinct is stronger than the instinct to 

 attribute cause ; and matter is simply a causal 

 concept, produced by forces which act on us and 

 give rise to sensation. Matter, as Schopenhauer 

 saw, is " pure causality," merely the Cause of the 

 actual ; and when we consider the One Cause of all 

 consciousness we reach the conception, God. 



Self-consciousness, so-called, thus becomes God- 

 consciousness, or Sense of God ; and the more 

 vivid and varied the phenomena of consciousness, 

 the more intense and alive the great connecting 

 Idea^ God. 



In the lower consciousnesses of animals no idea 

 " matter " is produced by the associated qualities, 

 hard or soft, white or black, cold or hot, etc. ; 

 matter, as an idea, belongs to the higher functions 

 of the mind. And so, in lesser consciousnesses of 

 man, the idea matter does not connote conscious 

 force, and does not lead to the idea, God. But as 

 the brain develops, men will more and more find 

 the divine emerge from the material. " By the aid 

 of philosophy, by the aid of poetry," writes Sir 

 Oliver Lodge, " a great deal can be accomplished. 

 Mind and matter may be then no longer two but 



