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Hylo-Idealism ? 383 
in manner as a conductor, cannot be disputed ;) but that 
it is the originator of intelligence, being itself matter, is but 
an assumption, because a thing can be no more than the 
product of its particles. We do not say the letters in a book 
are the intelligence, — they are only the forms of its con- 
duction ; so the watercourse is only the conductor of the 
river. These facts are admitted, because we are cognisant 
of their whole action. To say that sensation, intelligence, 
vitality, and consciousness are brain creations arises from 
the inability of physiologists to find the animating principle. 
All that interferes with perfect conduction in electrical experi- 
ments interferes with the result, and so it is with brain action : 
cut the nerve of sensation (motor), and the power of move- 
ment ceases ; vitiate the substance of the brain by disease, 
we have then an imperfect receiver, and intellectual defini- 
tion is destroyed. All effects result from causes : galvanise 
a substance, a frog’s leg, and action is apparent, showing 
that an extraneous something is necessary for movement ; 
and so no doubt it is with conscious intelligence, — an im- 
petus, not of the substance by which it is manifested, is 
needed to excite its action, and the more free and perfect 
the apparatus through which it is manifested the greater 
power there is for its display. If intelligence were but a 
material consequent, it could not become greater than its 
source ; there would be no such things as religious senti- 
ments, moral aspirations, and abstract conceptions, but if 
all these principles are indued into matter it then becomes 
the manifestation of the intelligence of the Creator, en- 
larging in power as the receptacle becomes equal to its 
display. “ To understand the Cosmos we can only conceive 
an embodied intelligence as its commencement, its object, 
and its end,” and the “ living and visible garment of God ” 
but as the expression of his thought. 
In old world thought Theology was all in all, but the 
methods have changed with the genius of the thinker; but 
now, “ whether he has proceeded from the idea to infinite 
reality” (Descartes), or “from the contingency of the Uni- 
verse to its necessary source ” (Wolff), or “ from the skill 
and beauty of Nature to its intellectual inventor ” (Paley), 
or “ from the moral law to its righteous legislator ” (Kant), 
or “ from records of past revelations to the character of the 
revealer ” (Chalmers), (Dr. Mar tine aids Ideal Substitutes for 
God), we have the true cognition of a God, whether it 
arises in an idea, or in its formative originator, or in its 
cosmic realities as presented in design, or moral instigations, 
or revelations ; all tend to the same end. 
