754 
Correspondence . 
[December, 
place this new seismograph at the bottom of a mine ; but can any 
assure us that even then no tremour of the earth shall there 
penetrate, and that the astronomer shall see nought, hear nought, 
feel nought, but the gentle influence of Astarte. This will surely 
prove a knotty point for the mathematician and mechanic. — I 
am, &c., 
A. H. Swinton. 
Binfield House, Guildford, November 15, 1881. 
HYLOZOISM versus ANIMISM. 
To the Editor of the Journal of Science. 
Communicated by Dr. Lewins. 
Sir, — x venture to request the insertion of a few observations 
upon Mr. Barker’s article in the Odtober number of this Journal. 
The motto “ God is light ” appears to me a suicidal one, since 
light, on either theory of its nature, is a purely material force. 
Plato, Socrates, &c., are quoted in support of Animism ; but it 
is well known that the existence of “ spirit ” as an immaterial 
entity was as yet undreamt of in ancient philosophy. I do not 
assert that Matter is “ what men in general call Mind,” but that 
mind is a function of matter, and surely the word “ function,” 
which signifies office, duty, or operation, is neither vague nor 
ambiguous. Hylozoism is independent of the Lucretians and of 
every other atomic theory, while it includes and completes the 
idealism of Berkeley, as implied in the sentence which Mr. 
Barker declares “ unintelligible.” The dodtrine of “ centres of 
force,” which places mental and vital energy on the same level 
with heat, light, and eledtricity, is only another mode of stating 
the same thesis. As Berkeley affirmed, all phenomena are the 
produdt of mind — i.e., of thought and sensation ; but these 
powers must belong to some conscious entity. The grey matter 
of the cerebral hemispheres (of whose noumenal nature we are 
of course entirely ignorant) has been proved by modern research 
to exercise mental fundtions, and to be, therefore, the proplasm 
of the mind, or “ subjedtive universe.” Farther we cannot pene- 
trate, but are fairly entitled to say — the Brain thinks, ergo it 
exists. The volitions of man are, in the last analysis, as purely 
due to physical causes as the fall of a stone. As regards my 
argument, the etymological signification of “ vis insita ” is totally 
unimportant. Pradtically it means immanent, innate, or inalien- 
able. No flippancy was intended by the phrase “ghostly 
Archeus;” ghostly being the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of “spiritual” 
and “Archeus,” the normal term in pre-scientific Physiology 
to denote the imaginary and occult adtive principle of the material 
