228 



Thoughts on Causality. 



that atheism with which I am sometimes so lightly charged, 

 would in my case be an impossible answer to this question" 

 (p. 102). 



The ethical bearing of scientific materalism is found fur- 

 ther set forth in an address delivered by the same speaker in 

 1868. After explaining the invariable relation of physics 

 to consciousness, and alleging that, "given the state of the 

 brain, the corresponding thought or feeling might be 

 inferred ; or given the thought or feeling, the corresponding 

 state of the brain might be inferred," he asks, " How 

 inferred? It would be at the bottom not a case of logical 

 inference at all, but of empirical association * * * The 

 passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding 

 facts of consciousness is unthinkable (p. 117). * * * In 

 affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that 

 thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics 

 of the brain, I think the position of the materialist is stated 

 as far as that position is a tenable one. I think the material- 

 ist will be able, finally, to maintain this position against all 

 attacks ; but I do not think, in the present condition of 

 the human mind, that he can pass beyond this position. 

 I do not think he is entitled to say that his molecular 

 groupings and his molecular motions explain everything. 

 In reality, they explain nothing. The utmost he can affirm 

 is the association of two classes of phenomena, of whose real 

 bond of union he is in absolute ignorance" (p. 118). 



The foregoing digest indicates that the celebrated Belfast 

 address is an attempt to show that the most penetrating 

 minds of all ages have felt themselves borne toward the 

 conviction that the ultimate datum of scientific and philo- 

 sophic investigation must be matter. It asserts that this 

 is the general, or at least the forming, conviction of men 

 of science at the present day ; that all activities in the realm 

 of life and mind, as well as in that of organization, spring 

 out of the interactions of the atoms, and that back of this 

 basis of phenomena, whatever we may feel impelled to 



