382 
What is Religion ? 
[July, 
II. WHAT IS RELIGION ? HYLO-IDEALISM ? 
By S. Billing. 
(Concluded from page 326.) 
S O resume remarks on the pamphlet immediately in 
question, “ What is Religion ?” We have the query, 
but not the answer. It is much more easy to under- 
stand that the world of phenomena originated from intelli- 
gent design than that matter so ordinated itself as to produce 
all phenomenal appearances, including life, consciousness, 
sensation, and intelligence. We are to condense all pheno- 
mena into “ thinks ” : such phrase can only be understand- 
able on the hypothesis that all phenomena are due to 
intelligent direction, and that phenomena are really thoughts 
made objective, i.e., the great positive intelligence of the 
Universe — God, presented his thought in an objective form ; 
in other words, that the thought of the Creator was made 
objective in substance, and thus the continuous presence or 
thought of God, presented as phenomena, informs by con- 
scious impression the intelligence of man, and thus man 
perceives phenomena and conceives (ratiocinates on) the 
intelligence which formed them : thus, for so much of the 
absurdity there is found a rational extrication, but then the 
unaided monism must be abandoned. There can .be no 
question but that phenomena have an absolute existence 
without the thinks or consciousness of man ; for it is pre- 
sumed these exceptionists do not deny the results of physical 
science. Geology and astronomy teach us that the Universe 
is an existence, and that our Earth was also an existence 
even before it could be cognised by an earthly intelligence, 
for it cannot be assumed that the lowest forms of animation 
had an intelligence such as could comprehend the relations 
of thing to thing ; hence the world existed, so far as finite 
thinks are concerned, even before these thinks had an exist- 
ence. If we are to adopt these thinks, the system should 
explain what and whence are life, consciousness, sensation, 
and intelligence (the adtors and interpreters of things as 
they be), and should show at the least how they could 
emerge from brute matter (Hume) and dominate it. If the 
brain per se thinks, why was not its adtion disturbed when 
Sir Charles Bell stirred the white substance of the brain of 
a living subjedt ? That the brain is the organ of the mind, 
