116 
different from machines which have simple contact ; (mechanism 
in motion itself needs an agent). 
It is pure assumption, if we at once suppose that there is me- 
chanical contact in the case of agency from that unseen world of 
which, by the hypothesis, we Ttnow nothing. The VisibleUniverse, 
and the necessary inferences from it, may oblige us here to assert 
contiguity of some kind. But the beginnings of life and con- 
scious action lie, it is admitted, in the Invisible, and no argu- 
ment can possibly conduct us to the conclusion, that the Visible 
World, which we have ascertained, and the Invisible World, 
we have not ascertained, are subject to the same law of touch. 
Our authors are so mechanical as to speak of “bridges” be- 
tween the Invisible and the Visible; and it is at those bridges, 
see Ap. as they are termed, that the weak points of this 
pendix. “scientific” statement of Continuity will be found. 
Perhaps, too, in considering the transmission of force, unknown 
“bridges” are necessary to connect transitions, even within 
the phenomenal. 
39. The argument of the work before us so depends on these 
“bridges,” that the authors ultimately and logically deny, iu 
express terms, all real distinction between the “stuff” 
The Visible 
and Invisible 
world are, 
however, sup- 
posed to be of 
the same sub- 
stance. 
of the world of sense, and of the worlds or 
uni- 
verses beyond sense. This, in truth, (as making “will, 
which acts from the unseen, a “stuff” entirely sub- 
ject to mechanical laws), would be a denial of all re- 
sponsible Causation. Denying the distinction between 
the substance of the Seen and the Unseen, it also denies that 
there are really two kinds of worlds ; and the argument becomes 
logomachy, and is found in plain self-contradiction. “ Invisible ” 
has here no definition except the vulgar one, of that which lies be- 
yond our actual sight. This, however, is the case of much which 
our authors W'ould call the visible Universe. If all must be me- 
chanical, there is no power of alternative action in any conscious 
agent or “ cause,” and religion ceases, instead of finding life from 
such an argument. Even a wish for immortality is nothing then 
but an attraction of what we must call a mechanical kind ! 
Thus also, the prospect itself of immortality, on any such 
theory of eternal and mechanical continuity, is fundamentally 
changed from that of a promise, a hope, an aspira- 
tion for the individual, to that of a physical, or 
transphysical certainty of a consecutive order of per- 
petual transitions, in which Personality, (which is, 
now supposed for all of us), need not, perhaps could not, survive. 
To know that after the present life we, and all other existences, 
necessarily pass into another and differently conditioned Ulli- 
And the 
idea of immor- 
tality is 
changed. 
