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their ‘ladder is too short to cross. But they are under an 
illusion common in the case of those who limit their studies 
to physical nature. They place themselves, in idea, on the 
wrong side of the gap. They think they can approach the 
problems of mind from the side of m.atter, and try in vain to 
lay the plank across. But in reality they stand with the rest 
of us on the opposite edge of the chasm. 
We know less, I repeat, of matter than of mind, and always 
must do so, for the simple reason that we ourselves are minds. 
Of matter, whatever we may believe, we know directly nothing 
but its phenomena, — not the thing in itself. Here we may 
almost shake hands with the school of Hume. How far that 
school, generally held in reverence by Materialistic thinkers, 
can go in the direction of pure subjective idealism is shown by 
John Stuart Mill, who would resolve the external world into 
“ permanent possibilities of sensation."’"’ Huxley, too, has 
hinted at his own possible escape from the platform of 
Materialism through the same trap-door. 
It has been attempted to reform the hypothesis of 
Materialism in several ways with a view to evade the diffi- 
culties which have been pointed out in regard to the evolution 
of the sentient and intelligent from the non-sentient and non- 
intelligent. The course pursued has been essentially philo- 
sophical, namely, to import into the supposed cause the qualities 
known to appear in the effect. Mind and a thinking power 
have accordingly been assumed, either as qualities of the 
universe of matter as a whole, or of the constituent atoms. 
Upon the former hypothesis of the universal diffusion of soul 
in matter. Materialism merges in Pantheism. Such a notion, 
taught by Paracelsus and others, is well known as the doctrine 
of anima mundi. The other method is adopted by Priestley 
in his lectures on Matter and Spirit,^^ commended by Bain 
as one of the ablest expositions of Materialism in the last 
century. It has recently been revived in a new shape by the 
late Professor Clifford, in his doctrine on Mind- stuff, and 
has even found an expositor amongst ourselves in a pupil of 
that accomplished and admirable man. My objection to the 
doctrine, so far as it here concerns us, may easily be antici- 
pated from what has gone before. Ho theory which disperses 
sentiency and intellect amongst the atoms composing our 
bodily frame can account for that conscious unity which is the 
most intimate of our convictions. Mind as it exists in the 
atoms is of course to be supposed something less than human ; 
that being so, the summation, or fusion of their intellectual 
forces, or even the bringing of these forces to a focus, were any 
such processes imaginable, do not give us the required effects 
