Hylo-Idealistn ? 
3i 7 
1884.] 
in all these discussions arises, as it appears to me, is the main- 
taining that there are states of consciousness. We are con- 
scious or we are not conscious. Consciousness is indivisible : 
there are states of mind, of thought, of intelligence, of 
sensation ; and unless mind, thought, intelligence, and 
sensation — which are each individual and distindt — mean 
consciousness, there can be no states of consciousness. 
Consciousness defines and represents the adtion of a some- 
thing which it makes apparent as an effedt or a cause, as 
the case may be. Man is made up of inorganic compounds 
energised by vital power, intelligence, sensation, and animal 
instindts, by the combination of which he has the conscious- 
ness of external phenomena ; he cognizes not only his own 
thought, the self, but the non-self also, — i.e., the Ego and 
the non-Ego : this is the practical illustration arising from 
the fusion of intelligence, sensation, and animal instindts, 
whatever metaphysical idealism and materialistic assump- 
tions may assert to the contrary. The external world is as 
much a part of man as his own Egoism, and this makes 
human life and human aspirations possible on the humani- 
tarian principle of communion with his fellows, whereby a 
common characteristic intrudes into phenomenal observance, 
and makes man one in the unity of consciousness. Nature 
is the general bond and the general instructor. The con- 
sciousness grasps phenomena, and man’s intelligence informs 
him of their meaning and use. In the analyses of pheno- 
mena man gets behind and within, and the enquiry is then 
as to causes. This is no question of “ thinks ” (imagina- 
tions), but a question of things conducted by a process of 
analytical dissection, observation, and experiment, ending in 
an intellectual synthesis which informs the mind : this is the 
only process by which Science is made possible. By this 
method of investigation, however, the solid phenomena 
vanish, we are landed in gases, and a something even 
beyond them : by this system we arrive at gases in layers 
only held in their places by the gravitation of their particles, 
the true equivalent of which is weight ; and thus, by reason 
of their inertia, they would ever remain but for an external 
something of which even the Materialist admits the neces- 
sity. All the grand processions of phenomena vanish, and 
there remains, so far as perception is concerned, an indis- 
tinguishable mass, without form, without impulse, without 
sensation. Perforce then we fall back on the origin of 
formation, — i.e., intelligence, or its grander and truer name, 
the first cause. To argue that intellect is the result of gases 
in strata (leaving out altogether the hypothesis of the fire 
