491 



rtrg it lias been pointed out. He knows that I have repeatedly and 

 emphatically asserted that our conceptions of Matter and Motion 

 are but symbols of an Unknowable Reality ; that this Reality cannot 

 be that which we symbolize it to be ; and that as manifested beyond 

 consciousness under the forms of Matter and Motion, it is the same 

 as that which, in consciousness, is manifested as Feeling and Thought. 

 Yet he continues to describe me as reducing everything to dead 

 mechanism. If his statement on pp. 383-4 has any meaning at all, 

 it means that there exists some ''force operating ab extra^' some 

 '* external power " distinguished by him as " mechanical," which is 

 not included in that immanent force of which the universe is a mani- 

 festation; though whence it comes he does not tell us. This con- 

 ception he speaks of as though it were mine ; making it seem that I 

 ascribe the moulding of organisms to the action of this " mechani- 

 cal" " external power," which is distinct from the Inscrutable Cause 

 of things. Yet he either knows, or has ample means of knowing, that 

 I deny every such second cause : indeed he has himself classed me as 

 an opponent of dualism. I recognize no forces within the organism, 

 or without the organism, but the variously-conditioned modes of the 

 universal immanent force ; and the whole process of organic evolu- 

 tion is everywhere attributed by me to the co-operation of its vari- 

 ously-conditioned modes, internal and external. That this has been 

 all along my general view, is clearly shown in the closing paragraph 

 of First Principles^ where I have said^ 



"A Power of which the nature remains for ever inconceivable, and 

 to which no limits in Time or Space can be imagined, v/orks in us certain 

 effects. These effects have certain likenesses of kind, the most general of 

 which we class together under the names of Matter, Motion, and Force ; 

 and between these effects there are likenesses of connection, the most 

 constant of which we class as laws of the highest certainty. Analysis 

 reduces these several kinds of effect to one kind of effect ; and these 

 several kinds of uniformity to one kind of uniformity. And the highest 

 achievement of Science is the interpretation of all orders of phenomena, 

 as differently-conditioned manifestations of this one kind of effect, under 

 differently-conditioned modes of this one kind of uniformity. But when 

 Science has done this, it has done nothing more than systematize our 

 experience ; and has in no degree extended the limits of our experience. 

 We can say no more than before, whether the uniformities are as 

 absolutely necessary, as they have become to our thought relatively 

 necessary. The utmost possibility for us, is an interpretation of the 

 rocess of things as it presents itself to our limited consciousness ; but 

 ow this process is related to the actual process, we are unable to 

 conceive, much less to know. Similarly, it must be remembered 



that while the connection between the phenomenal order and the 

 ontological order is for ever inscrutable ; so is the connection between the 

 conditioned forms of being and the unconditioned form of being for 

 ever inscrutable. The interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, 

 Motion, and Force, is nothing more than the reduction of our complex 

 symbols of thought, to the simplest symbols ; and when the equation has 

 been brought to its lowest terms the symbols remain symbols still. Hence 

 the reasonings contained in the foregoing pages, afford no sui^port to 

 either of the antagonist hypotheses respecting the ultimate nature of 



I 



