146 



but simply traced the de facto residence of the higher conscious- 

 ness, and the instrument of its action. 



21. In reply to certain physiologists who wished to resolve 

 intelhgence itself into animal heat, Fernard Papillon, if we may 



And the trust the writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 

 ^ervous system dcuics that thcrc is any such assimilation of the 

 nervous and muscular system as this vs^ould imply. 

 He urges that the nerve has a kind of self-action, almost spon- 

 taneity, which the muscle has not. The muscular fibre never 

 contracts of itself, — it needs to be stirred. The nervous cellule, 

 on the contrary, has an active power of its own. Thus the 

 muscular action may be calculated; and not so the nervous. We 

 seem to be here on the very borders of something beyond deter- 

 minate, mechanical materialism. At times, indeed, the nervous 

 vitality rules the whole animal power, interrupts, suspends, or 

 otherwise influences changes of heat and motion, and seems 

 to defy all attempt to reduce cerebral life to mechanism. With- 

 out supposing this diagnosis to be final, we cannot help feeling 

 that it suggests enough of the unknown to restrain the theories 

 of a hard, all-comprehending materialism, such as Dr. Tyndall 

 needs (p. 92). 



22. Thus much, then, is abundantly clear ; that in the great 

 kosmos, as well as in the microcosm of the human organization, 



The doctrine ^herc are countless points where other and unseen 

 of prayer may agcncies arc at work, and that we know of nothinoj 



even have its ° , . ^ , ^ . . , . . ,° 



true place in to hmdcr the caluug into new action those invisible 

 science. powcrs to thc cxistcnce of which, in some form, science 

 itself bears witness almost as a necessity of reason. It discovers 

 but a superficial view of facts, then, to reason from the uniformity 

 of certain natural laws against the spontaneity of the genesis, 

 not of one, but even of countless beginnings of action. And 

 this suffices for the whole " theory of prayer.^' Of course 

 prayer implies a moral world acting on the physical, under the 

 rule of a Moral Governor, and that no doubt is at the bottom of 

 the objections raised. But prayer does not necessarily imply the 

 least change in the elements or the laws of the kosmos, but only 

 the change of primary direction by the Ruler of all, or by the 

 manifold powers or forms of originate life ordered by Him."^ It 

 contradicts, then, no law, it absolutely requires the intervention 

 of no miracle, to affirm in the universe a place for prayer, so 

 that it need be no fanaticism to assert that even universally the 

 eye of the Lord is over the righteous, and His ear is open to 

 their prayer.^' 



* See the address on Darwinism, delivered to this Institute in May last, 

 Sections xvi. to xx., &c. 



