Dr. Lionel Beale, who uses the most powerful microscopes in 
the world, declares that no molecular force will account for the 
remarkable changes which occur in living matter. 
Even Tyndall believes in “a power of organizing experience 
furnished at the outset to each individual ” ,• “ possessed in dif- 
ferent degrees by different races and by different individuals of 
the same race.” “Were there not in the human brain” (he 
says) “ a potency antecedent to all experience, a dog or cat ought 
to be as capable of education as a man.”* 
In his most recent revision of his opinions f he tells us that 
“ when we endeavour to pass from the physics of the brain to 
the phenomena of consciousness, we meet a problem which 
transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers we now 
possess. We may think over the subject again and again, it 
eludes all intellectual presentation, — we stand at length face to 
face with the Incomprehensible . ” 
This is all very evidently true, but Herbert Spencer, as quoted 
by Tyndall, J is not content to leave us in our ignorance, with- 
out affording us an incomprehensible explanation of his own ; 
according to which “ the human brain is the organized register of 
infinitely numerous experiences received during the evolution of 
life, or rather during the evolution of that series of organisms 
through which the human organism has been reached. The 
effects of the most uniform and frequent of these experiences 
have been successively bequeathed, — principal and interest, and 
have slowly amounted to that high intelligence which lies latent 
in the brain of the infant; thus it happens that the European 
inherits from 20 to SO cubic inches more of brain than the 
Papuan.” 
Such latent intelligence , if made the subject of speculation 
at all, ought surely to be thought of in connection with the 
i/'i'X’t or soul; for it is impossible to conceive of such powers 
as attached to the atoms of which the brain is composed; which 
do not differ at all from those of the air which the man breathes 
or the dust on which he treads. 
If this materialism be the meaning of Spencer, he appears to 
have succeeded no better than his predecessors in lifting the veil 
of Nature ; and the assistance of this § “Apostle of the Under- 
standing ” is of no avail in extricating Tyndall from the difficult 
position in which, by his own confession, we find him placed 
above. 
If, however, our professor be compelled to admit that there is 
something more in man than atomic substance — that he is com- 
* Page 52. 
t Page 62. 
+ Preface, p. xxix. 
§ Page 49. 
