334 
he calls laying bare the central difficulty of the Materialist/^ 
I am by no means content with his conclusion of the whole 
matter. If/^ he says, you consent to make your soul 
a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which, as I have taken 
more pains than anybody else to show you (!), refuses the yoke 
of ordinary physical laws, then I, for one, would not object to 
this exercise of ideality.-’^ It is impossible to accept as satis- 
factory this jaunty concession to the faith of mankind. We 
know what the Professor means when he relegates a belief to 
the ideal realm. It is to him, as to many other votaries of 
physical science, the world of unreality. Eather would I 
profess with Eobert Browning, God and the soul the only 
facts for me.-’^ 
“ Prove them facts ? — That they o’erpass my power of proving, proves 
them such,” 
“ Fact it is I hnow I know not something which is fact as much.” 
I content myself with this passing protest, for my present 
design is rather to expose the fallacies of Materialism than 
directly to vindicate a more rational creed. 
I have had more than once to fall back upon the general 
consciousness of mankind in proof of an assertion. Such 
appeals are not to be avoided in a discussion like the present, 
but are not always satisfactory. Some seem to find con- 
sciousness a blank, where to others it appears to render 
a clear verdict. But in regard to the distinction between 
mind and matter, so far as human knowledge goes, it happens 
that the question can be brought to a conclusive test. It is 
this : All material objects appear to occupy a certain space. 
In the language of metaphysics, extension is an attribute of 
matter. The mind, on the contrary, with its faculties and 
affections, cannot be thought of as extended. Neither long 
measure suits them, nor square, nor cubic ; love and hatred, 
hope and fear, honour and honesty, will and conscience, 
occupy no space ; have neither length, breadth, nor thickness. 
Weight, and other measures of material force, all of which 
have relations to space, are equally inapplicable. Mental 
powers are, as Tyndall puts it in the passage I just now cited, 
‘^Mnexpressible in terms of force and motion.-’^ So much is 
clear beyond all possibility of doubt or cavil. 
On this ground we are justified in treating the chasm 
between mind and matter as, to human conception, absolutely 
impassable, and that not merely in the present state of 
physical science, but for ever. In truth, we know more of 
mind than we do, or ever can, of matter. Men of TyndalFs 
way of thinking recognise this chasm, — this fissure, which 
