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If I consider the facts accessible to me in relation to a marble 
statue of a child, and compare them with those accessible facts 
that relate to a living child, I find it impossible to conclude 
that the perfect unconsciousness of the statue and the con- 
sciousness of the child are modes of existence indicating that 
both are the same as to substance. Both are substances, but 
they cannot be similar substances. That which exists as a 
feeling substance must be essentially different from that which 
never feels but exists as an insensible thing. I examine the 
statue millions of times, and may have the record of millions of 
millions of observations recorded by others, but no fact occurs 
indicating that one of its modes of being is consciousness. I 
examine the child as often and have the record of as many 
observations if you will, and every one of them indicates this 
consciousness. I infer that there is in the child a substance 
whose mode of existence, being thus essentially different from 
that which is in the marble, cannot be philosophically or 
rationally confounded with the material, and I call this sub- 
stance Mind while I call the other Matter. If the examination 
of facts may issue in the legitimate inference that an uncon- 
scious stone is not an intelligent man, because their character- 
istic modes of being are essentially different, so may the exam- 
ination of facts legitimately issue in the inference that the 
substances we call matter are essentially distinct from 
those substances which we call mind. If a man may legiti- 
mately infer that his hat is not his shoes, because it is adapted 
to his head and not to his feet, then much more may he surely 
legitimately infer that his thinking mind is not his material 
body — that substances so essentially distinct cannot be 
identical. 
Priestley may be regarded as the most prominent repre- 
sentative of materialism. He was preceded by Hartley, who 
resolved all the mysteries of thought on the principle of 
vibrations in the material nerves.* The materialism of 
Priestley is very decided. He says — “ The principle of per- 
ception and thought is not a substance distinct from the body, 
but the result of corporeal organisation.” He also says — “ That 
mechanism is the undoubted consequence of materialism ; ” 
•and again that — “ The self-determining power is altogether 
imaginary and impossible.” He has no wish to be understood 
within the limits of that which his language expresses. He 
* See Hartley on Man, vol. i., page 12, edition 1749. His words are — 
“External objects being corporeal can act upon the nerves and brain, which 
are also corporeal by nothing but impressing motion upon them.” 
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