184 
tries to direct Ins thought rightly. His choice only lies between 
being a good metaphysician and a bad. 
As to the more theological discursus of our authors weniy 
now spare them, as they do not wish to be th°ug i 
logians of any school whatever a wish which they perhaps 
succeed in gratifying. But we ask what won d they think of 
men who wrote about Science, and did not wish to be ” } 
cists of any school whatever”? Metaphysicians, however 
they really are, directly they enunciate the simplest of the 
propositions. Would that they would continue then meta 
physics, and think on ! • f 
69 Finally: the proposition connected with every view ot 
miracles and causation, that every phenomenon ™pl«» » 
« nower ” (p. 47), seems to concede all that theology demand . 
But the proposition that every finite intelligence must ua\c 
material -embodiment” (p. 47) equally concedes all that puic 
materialism needs. It is wonderful that the. two proposi- 
tions can be found in one page ; for a finite intelligence we 
suppose is a “ power,” of which phenomena may be results or 
to which phenomena may be known. r io say that evety hn 
intelligence connected with this universe has material em )o - 
meat is to assume at once the theory of Materialism as teat 
which alone is -conceivable” (p. 48) But our authors say 
they conceive of this “material embodiment as essential or 
a finite intelligence, though they afterwards own, that they 
have no conception of matter itself— except of the most hazy 
kind.” According to one fairly accredited theory, it may be 
nothing but a point between relations, (p. 102), and in another 
view it must “'probably come to an end ” ! In analyzing the 
embodiment of finite fconsciousness however, they admirab y 
confute the materialists’ theory of consciousness,— distinguish- 
ing between phosphorus in its common state, where it may be 
examined, and phosphorus in the brain, where it cannot * 
examined. Yet here also they are to us quite inconsistent, it 
they say that potential or latent consciousness requires ma- 
terial embodiment”; and this is what their argument needs, 
unless that consciousness may exist in the unembodied, or (ns 
they say) unconditioned finite intelligence. (Compare p. ot.) 
The paralogisms which abound in our authors pages cannot 
he unfelt bv themselves, when they contemplate and compare 
“ powers ” “ forces,” “ energies,” “ vis viva,” and “ inorganic 
agencies ” (p. 127), all so closely bordering on each other, ami 
so imperfectly distinguished. This may of itself account or the 
quick instinct with which they avoid metaphysics, — m other 
words, 1 persevering ami exact thmldng. Their entire in, aeon- 
