PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN. 180 



to admit such a distinction in the nature of things is to admit 

 all that the most ardent idealist would ask for. The truth is 

 that no matter how accurately the physical antecedents of 

 thought may be determined, this fact must always remain ; 

 there is a great gulf fixed between thought and motion, over 

 which we shall never be able to throw a bridge. The word 

 motion, as I have indicated already, has no meaning except 

 for a mind : and so to explain thought as a mere process of 

 movement is to be guilty of a circulus in probando. 



(b.) Let us examine this last position from another point of 

 view, that we may see not only the logical inadequacy but the 

 logical impossibility of materialism as a philosophical creed. 

 Plato makes the assertion, and it has never been refuted, that 

 motion is only appreciable through rest. Now if this be true, 

 it is plain that any theory which would reduce everything in 

 the universe to a modification of motion, must be untrue. If 

 motion cannot be appreciated except by something not itself 

 subject to the laws of motion, it does not give us a complete 

 solution of the problems of nature. Take a fanciful illustra- 

 tion — a borrowed one — but which was originally used (by 

 Prof. W. K. ClhTord) to illustrate something quite different. 

 Suppose the case of a worm living inside a perfectly smooth 

 circular tube so uniformly constructed that at no point could 

 there be any sensible difference of bending from any other 

 point, a tube inside which there were no landmarks, so to 

 speak. Is it not plain that the worm — no matter how philo- 

 sophical a worm he might be— would never know that the 

 tube in which he lived was circular ? Suppose him constantly 

 to move round and round, he would never know that he had 

 returned to the same point, and he would not regard the 

 bending of his body as due to anything else than the con- 

 figuration of the space in which he lived ? He would not knoio 

 that he lived in a circular space. How do we know it ? Simply 

 because we are not confined within the tube ourselves ; we 

 see the worm's limits, and so are beyond, and independent of 

 them, 



Mutato nomine, de te fabida narratur. If we reflect upon 

 our own mental experience, we shall at once perceive that 

 we regard everything that happens to us, every action in 

 which we are concerned either directly or indirectly, as 

 occurring in space and in time. We are not like the worm 

 of our fable, for we are conscious of the limits within which 

 our activity is exercised : and we have seen that such 

 consciousness of limitatiou implies that the limits are viewed 



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