28 report— 1879. 



regard muscular contraction as a property of the protoplasm of muscle ? 

 or is it really a property residing in something far different, but which 

 may yet need for its manifestation the activity of cerebral protoplasm ? 



If we could see any analogy between thought and any one of the 

 admitted phenomena of matter, we should "be bound to accept the first 

 of these conclusions as the simplest, and as affording a hypothesis most 

 in accordance with the comprehensiveness of natural laws ; but between 

 thought and the physical phenomena of matter there is not only no 

 analogy, but there is no conceivable analogy ; and the obvious and con- 

 tinuous path which we have hitherto followed up in our reasonings from 

 the phenomena of lifeless matter through those of living matter here 

 comes suddenly to an end. The chasm between unconscious life and 

 thought is deep and impassable, and no transitional phenomena can be 

 found by which as by a bridge we may span it over ; for even from 

 irritability, to which, on a superficial view, consciousness may seem 

 related, it is as absolutely distinct as it is from any of the ordinary 

 phenomena of matter. 



It has been argued that because physiological activity must be a pro- 

 perty of every living cell, psychical activity must be equally so, and the 

 language of the metaphysician has been carried into biology, and the ' cell 

 soul ' spoken of as a conception inseparable from that of life. 



That psychical phenomena however, characterised as they essentially 

 are by consciousness, are not necessarily coextensive with those of life, 

 there cannot be a doubt. How far back in the scale of life consciousness 

 may exist we have as yet no means of determining, nor is it necessary for 

 our argument that we should. Certain it is that many things, to all ap- 

 pearance the result of volition, are capable of being explained as abso- 

 lutely unconscious acts ; and when the swimming swarm-spore of an alga 

 avoids collision, and by a reversal of the stroke of its cilia backs from 

 an obstacle lying in its course, there is almost certainly in all this nothing 

 but a purely unconscious act. It is but a case in which we find expressed 

 the great law of the adaptation of living beings to the conditions which 

 surround them. The irritability of the protoplasm of the ciliated spore 

 responding to an external stimulus sets in motion a mechanism derived 

 by inheritance from its ancestors, and whose parts are correlated to a 

 common end — the preservation of the individual. 



But even admitting that every living cell were a conscious and think- 

 ing being, are we therefore justified in asserting that its consciousness like 

 its irritability is a property of the matter of which it is composed ? The 

 sole argument on which this view is made to rest is that from analogy. 

 It is argued that because the life phenomena, which are invariably found 

 in the cell, must be regarded as a property of the cell, the phenomena of 

 consciousness by which they are accompanied must be also so regarded. 

 The weak point in the argument is the absence of all analogy between the 

 things compared, and as the conclusion rests solely on the argument from 

 analogy, the two must fall to the ground together. 



