188 ALFEED T. SCHOFIELD, ESQ., M.J)., M.K.C.S., ON 



The moment you see a brick you see matter + mind, 

 ihuman mind — an artificial product. You know there is 

 mind in it, for its shapes and proportions betray a purpose, 

 and that purpose means mind is nowhere denied save in 

 nature. Not all the philosophers or scientists that ever lived 

 could persuade you that clay could shape itself and bake 

 itself into bricks. 



Walk down an old river bed, or hunt in a heap of drift. 

 You pick up two flint stones, both chipped; one you say is a 

 natural product, the other artificial ; for in the latter you 

 notice the chips have a purpose you can grasp, forming the 

 stone into a rude arrow head. You are as quick as light- 

 ning to discern the faintest trace of human mind on matter; 

 rude scratchings on bones, sherds of broken pottery, bits of 

 battered bronze are all eloquent with what we delight to 

 honor — the great mind of man — they are all artificial. 



How we glorify this mind, and rightly enough too ! We 

 wonder at iSt, Paul's, and St. Peter s, at the Parthenon and 

 the Colisseum, and honor the great minds that created 

 them. 



A watch, a steam engine, a type writer, all excite our 

 admiration of the mind that is stamped upon the brass, steel, 

 and iron, in such large capitals : and were anyone so idiotic 

 as to attempt to show that such were self-made, or the 

 result of the interaction of blind forces, or of that mysterious 

 variety — molecular force — we should promptly put them in 

 an asylum under the care of Her Majesty's Commissioners. 



And yet all these artificial products are clearly evolved. 

 A cathedral was not the first building— nor a watch the 

 first timepiece made by the mind of man. Through long 

 centuries the evolution of the watch dragged on, and indeed 

 is still progressing, and so with every artificial product, 

 down to the very pen that writes these words and the paper 

 on which they are inscribed. We find no difficulty here in the 

 Tuiion of evolution and purpose, indeed we cannot conceive 

 the one without the other. So clear are we as to the artificial 

 and as to any imprint of the mind of man, that to us in these 

 matters fortuitous or spontaneous evolution is the most 

 •drivelling folly ; and Ave are prepared to stake our reason on 

 the statement that in all things artificial all evolution 

 implies an evolver, or in other words a directing mind. 



When, however, we consider our attitude towards the 

 natural and the artificial the contrast is striking. The very 

 philosopher who sees mind in the three chips of an arro'W' head 



