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certain separation and retnarshalling of the atoms of the 
brain.’' 
But if the atoms of the brain are really separated and re- 
marshalled in the course of every thought and feeling, they must 
be dissociated and reunited by a force more powerful than the 
ordinary chemical force which binds them together What, then, 
is this superior force, and wherein does it reside ? Not in 
matter, for we have seen that it acts upon matter and dissociates 
its particles. It is, then, an energy entirely unknown to Tyndall, 
and irreconcilable with all his ideas. It is and must be a tre- 
mendous force, such as that required to dissociate the atoms of 
water. He must have pondered over this question for fourteen 
years; and yet is no nearer to a solution than our Aryan an- 
cestors, when they inquired (as we have seen), “ Where is the 
soul ? ” 
We have seen that our Professor’s notions of matter were, in 
his youthful days, rather peculiar ; but he has now discovered 
that this said matter is our master, and that “ every meal we eat, 
and every cup we drink, illustrates the mysterious control of 
mind by matter.” * 
Moreover, matter is our god, which we must worship as the 
author and giver of life, for, “ abandoning all disguise, the con- 
fession I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the 
vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence , 
and discern in that matter, which we, in our ignorance , and 
notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have 
hitherto covered with opprobrium ” (!) “ the promise and potency 
of all forms of life." * 
To this, which he seems to think his “ good confession,” our 
author adheres in his preface to the seventh edition ; so that it 
is no exaggeration to say that we have from Ireland the extra- 
ordinary spectacle of a religious teacher of Pantheism ; and that 
not on the ground of experimental evidence, but on the internal 
light of the mind alone. “ Matter is raised to the level it ought to 
occupy, and from which timid ignorance would remove it.” + 
It so happened that almost at the same time at which religious 
Ireland was thus lending her ear to the advocacy of materialism, 
the assembly took place of the French Association for the 
Advancement of Science ; and in the introductory discourse, 
France — that country so often scourged by infidelity — did, 
greatly to her honour, and through one of her most illustrious 
* Preface, p. xxv. 
f Address, p. 5. 
