1882.] Editors' Table. 225 



consciousness to be a form of force ; but they differ in that the 

 first authority thinks it is all dissipated, while the other holds it to 

 be a link in a continuous chain of metamorphoses equivalent to 

 every other link. If this be so, and the continuity be unbroken, 

 what iron-clad fingers must these doughty soldiers have, who by 

 merely putting pen to paper open the mouths of so many cannon, 

 inaugurate so many conflagrations, and explode so many maga- 

 zines. Verily we should have a new anatomy of this five-barreled 

 mitrailleuse, through whose chambers flash such world-moving 

 forces. As to the source of all this power, well says Drysdale, 

 that if the brain of man contains stored such tremendous potency, 

 its escape should, on his leaving this earthly abode, blow the top 

 of his head entirely off. 



As usual, truth lies between these extremes; furthermore, a 

 very fundamental truth has been neglected by both sides of the 

 question. Says Raymond, ** More temperate heads betrayed the 

 weakness of their dialectics in that they could not grasp the dif- 

 ference between the view which I opposed, that consciousness 

 can be explained upon a mechanical basis, and the view which 

 I did not question, but supported with new arguments, that con- 

 sciousness is bound to material antecedents." This position has 

 been maintained by various writers, among them Professor All- 

 man, 1 and some of the editors of this journal. But Professor 

 Raymond has not found it to be acceptable to his nearest cotem- 

 poraries. He says, " The opposition which has been offered to my 

 assertion of the incomprehensibility of consciousness on a me- 

 chanical theory, shows how mistaken is theidea of the later phil- 

 osophy, that that imcomprehensibility is self-evident. It appears 

 rather, that all philosophizing upon the mind must begin with 

 the statement of this point." In stating this point some years 

 ago, we used the following language : 2 " It will doubtless become 

 possible to exhibit a parallel scale of relations between stimuli on 

 the one hand and the degrees of consciousness on the other. Yet 

 for all this it will be impossible to express self-knowledge in 

 terms of force." And again, 3 "An unprejudiced "scrutiny of the 

 nature of consciousness, no matter how limited that scrutiny 

 necessarily is, shows that it is qualitatively comparable to nothing 

 else. * * From this standpoint it is looked upon as a state of 

 matter which is coeternul with it, but net coextensive." 



A second self-evident proposition is the following: There is no 

 equivalency or correlation, between the force expended in the 

 maintenance of conscious states, with the energy displayed in 

 those acts which result from those conscious states. Parallel re- 

 lations between ordinary forces are seen in cases of release. 



