156 
18. It may no doubt be said that we are uttering merely 
the result of a prejudice. But from whence does that so-called 
prejudice arise ? Our inner consciousness is as real as our 
eyesight. In that consciousness there is a distinction made, 
whether we will or not, between our volitions and our material 
movements. He who, for example, wills as usual to lift his 
arm, or to move his tongue, and finds he cannot, has a sad 
proof of the distinction. The will is left, but the muscular 
capacity is gone. It would be very difficult indeed to disabuse 
him of the thought that the willing substance is one and the 
contracting, or rather non-contracting muscles another Man 
is not all sense, and hence he is incapable of confining himself 
to what are called “phenomena.” It is only trifling to try 
so to confine him by calling the facts of his consciousness by 
bad names. It is not in our power to confound the movements 
which originate in our wills, or rather m ourselves as creatures 
capable of volition, with those that affect us independently or 
in spite of ourselves. So, neither is it possible for us to ex- 
plain similar movements in other creatures as caused m these 
from without, when we see them m those movements clear y 
self-moving. We repel the charge of prejudice and appeal -to 
the facts of consciousness. We conclude, therefore, that se 
motion, or life, resides in the immaterial, and is not to be ex- 
plained anymore than originated by mere molecular evolution 
F 19 It is here that nature conducts us to the world of true 
spirit, and lifts us above the material. True science will not 
allow us to stay among the molecules— it forces ^ beyond, 
unless we refuse altogether to be conducted by the truth. I his 
appears very clearly when we compare the most lifelike move- 
ments of inorganic matter with that which is really and pro- 
perly life. Take magnetism for an example. The motions of 
the needle of a magnetic telegraph look to the ordinary spec- 
tator wonderfully lifelike. And yet they are utterly ^dependent 
on the motions of the living hand which regulates them. Take the 
still more lifelike movements of elasticity seen in the pointers o 
the watch. These look automatic indeed, and y et they are P r ®' 
cisely what the living agency causes them to be by which the 
machinery has been fashioned and wound Take any of the 
wonderful combinations of chemistry, and the behaviour 
of certain substances is wonderfully lifelike, but all absolutely 
caused and modified as the manipulator determines The 
instant you come to real life, if it should be seen even in a 
molecule, there is self-determination. That self-determmatioi 
is limited, it is true, but it is real within its limits No powei 
of mine can order it as that power easily orders m its «te 
motions all other force. It is this which gives the problem 
