122 
a very close connection between mind and brain all allow : a 
certain condition of one may be always accompanied by a cer- 
tain condition of the other. Nay, more : a particular state of 
brain may condition a certain state of mind, or the reverse ; 
but that is all we can acknowledge. How this conditioning 
is accomplished we know not, any more than we know how 
any one phenomenon conditions any other. All here is mystery, 
and can only be referred to the will of Him who said, “ Let 
there he light ; and there was light/” 
44. The theory would also give to matter a power denied both 
to man and God. Man, we are told, cannot guide the forces of 
nature; neither can God, and therefore prayer to Him is 
asserted to be a folly ; but matter is perfectly competent for 
the task. We need not stay to show that this is an inference 
from the doctrine of which we have been speaking ; it is directly 
asserted by Professor Huxley in his “ Introduction to the 
Classification of Animals.” “This particle of jelly,” he says, 
“is capable of guiding physical forces,” so as to give rise to the 
wondrous structures of the animal world. Jelly guides— oh, 
wondrous jelly ! — that transcends the power of the highest intel- 
lect ! We would, if we dared, ask him for an explanation ; but 
as Dr. Beale well observes, “ He speaks so authoritatively about 
fact and law, that one scarcely dares to venture to beg for an 
explanation of anything Mr. Huxley has affirmed.” In reply 
to Professor Huxley's assertion, I cannot do better than again 
quote from the same well-known author, whose words on this 
subject must have far more weight than mine : — “1. Living 
matter is not jelly ; 2. Neither jelly nor matter is capable of 
guiding or directing forces of any kind ; 3. The capacity of jelly 
to guide forces, which Professor Huxley says is a fact of the 
profoundest significance to him, is not a fact at all, but merely 
an assertion.”* 
45. The strongest argument, however, against the theory is, 
that it is directly opposed to every utterance of conscious- 
ness. If consciousness assert one thing more definitely 
than another, it is the existence of self ; it is that we are not 
modes of motion, or of any force whatever; that we are not feel- 
ings, sensations, thoughts, but persons who feel, and think, and 
will. This is felt by our opponents, and consequently Mr. Bray 
does his best to dethrone the veracity of consciousness from its 
regal position in the mind.f I need scarcely say he does not 
succeed, and the very necessity of attempting to do it renders 
his system “ ab initio false, and unworthy of refutation.” 
* “ Protoplasm ,” by Lionel S. Beale, M.B., F.R.S., p. 72. 
t “ Force and its Correlates,” p. 27. 
