Nature and the Su'per natural. ~ 77 



The verifications now before us do not, indeed, suppose a costly 

 apparatus, excessively difficult experiments, with results requir- 

 ing most delicate powers of observation. Or if the question lay 

 between different hypotheses in accounting for the same fact, ex- 

 amination by scientific experts might be deemed a sine qua non. 

 But the facts submitted to us by testimony are simply observa- 

 tions of our senses in which all men are equal ; while on the other 

 hand the fact that free spirit is concerned, and moral conditions 

 therefore requisite, may make the coincidence of antecedents 

 excessively rare, while yet the results, when they do occur, will 

 be patent to every man of common sense who has the eyes and 

 ears that belong to the whole human race. Repeated failures of 

 " spiritualists," therefore, cannot negative any well-attested obser- 

 vation, if it be justly deemed above suspicion. 



(2) In the second place, inductive science ascends along a chain of, 

 physical antecedents which is, practically, of an infinite number of 

 links, and which has no place for mind anyiohere in the series. Its 

 end is never reached, possibly, never can be reached ; if, indeed, 

 it should not eventually be found to be a circular chain, which 

 consequently has no end at all. 



But mind, if you grant its existence, is known to modify re- 

 sults, without entering as one link in this chain. The very freedom 

 of mind renders it impossible that it should so enter. Hoiu this 

 can be no one, I believe, has thus far explained. The fact is one 

 of observation. You may, observing my body as an object ex- 

 ternal to yourself, see the motion of my finger, and then proceed 

 inductively to contraction of the muscles which you cannot see, to 

 nerve-power, brain stimulus, nutrition of brain, blood, chyle, 

 bread and beef, grass and carbonic acid, — equal energy in all 

 these — and you may end no one knows where. You cannot in- 

 sert mind anywhere in that chain, nor find physical force aug- 

 mented or diminished by it. You cannot know what I know in 

 my own consciousness, that I freely willed to move my finger. 

 If there is no such thing as free mind, cadit qucestio once more ; 

 but it was my postulate. 



I am not concerned with the explanation of the apparent para- 

 dox, nor with the question which Kant asks and thinks that 



