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that the seed does not do any one thing of itself as the animal does. We call 
the changes through which it passes life, because they resemble the changes 
of the truly living creature more nearly than those of inorganic matter, but 
there is nothing in any or all of these changes of the nature of that self- 
moving or self-acting which is observed in the animal. It is, I humbly 
think, in this self-acting , and not in intelligence, that we discover the essen- 
tial quality of true mind. If there is a substance which may be called force, 
and which is neither matter nor mind, it must be something essentially 
distinct from all that is merely moved, and also from all that wills, or origi- 
nates motion, in living entities having the power of volition. It must not be 
like the seed, which is only moved in the streams of agitations by which it is 
surrounded when placed where these agitations prevail ; and it must not be 
like the force of will, which is the essential characteristic of the true mind, 
whether intelligent or non-intelligent. Can we form a conception of this 
substance for which so many philosophers contend, and of which a particular 
school make such an extravagant use ? 
Mr. Mitchell says truly, that “ the purely physical reasoner has a distinct 
conception of force and matter as two very different existences.” But may 
I not ask whether his conception of “ force ” is not in very many cases merely 
a conception of “ motion,” which he mistakes for force ? Was it not this 
mistake which misled Boscovich and Faraday, and which misleads a host of 
such men as Professor Tyndall, who follow in the wake of original thinkers 
more readily in error than in truth ? What Mr. Mitchell says of light may 
help us here. He asks whether it is “a force or a substance.” It is neither 
the one nor the other, but simply motion. Were you to adopt the now 
abandoned idea of a luminiferous ether, it is the “ shiver” of tnat ether which 
constitutes light. A shiver is not a force but a motion produced by a force. 
As Mr. Mitchell rightly says, “ Something must cause it (that is the ether) 
to vibrate, which is not matter and which is force. Is this something,” he 
asks, “ necessarily mind?” Let us see. We must leave out the “neces- 
sarily,” as I am not trying to show what must he but only what is. Is the 
true cause of the agitation in a luminous substance actually mind ? We shall 
have help here from Grove’s “ Correlation of Forces.” I hold in my hand, we 
shall say, an ordinary match, and I stand amid perfect darkness ; I bring the 
match into contact with a suitable surface. Here is motion, but not sufficient 
motion to issue in light. I draw the end of the match quickly over the 
surface with which I had brought it into contact, and this motion passes into 
heat, and that into all those other motions which issue almost instantly in that 
which illuminates. Now we have matter and motion in that instance — one 
mode of motion passing into another mode— and we have force causing this 
train of motions— but that force is nothing more or less than the force of 
mind. The conception of the physicist who confounds this force with the 
motion which it produces may be clear, but it is not correct ; and we see the 
consequences of its incorrectness in the sad conclusions to which it leads 
those who follow it logically out. 
It is held, I think, by all sound thinkers as well as by many that are unsound, 
