i8S 
Energy and Feeling. 
[April, 
precedence of discharging energy, as is very obvious, since no 
force originates spontaneously. That the affedtion of matter 
in the receiving stage is somewhat different from that in the 
discharging stage is implied by the very term “ receiving,” 
being suggestive of passivity in contrast with the discharging 
stage, which latter stage alone answers to our notion of 
activity or energy. 
Thus the fadt of precedence in time between receiving and 
discharging energy removes the objedtion of apparent con- 
comitance of feeling with energising states of matter, leaving 
time for the fadf of alternation to transpire. Then the dif- 
ference in nature between receiving and giving helps us to 
recognise affedtions of matter differing as much as do our 
ideas of the nature of feeling and adting respectively ; while 
the possession by ourselves of powers to feel and adt alter- 
nately as characteristic living powers helps us to understand 
how Nature, in part and in whole, may be endowed through- 
out, and perpetually manifest these twofold affections of 
feeling and energising in continuous alternation. 
Let us consider what are the advantages of this theory of 
alternation of feeling and energising affections of matter. 
First. — It agrees with human experience and language. 
Secondly. — It seems logically more consistent than the 
theory of concomitance. 
Thirdly. — It preserves the doctrine of conservation of 
energy, and agrees with the great laws of continuity and 
causation in all their manifestations. 
Fourthly. — It requires no exclusive confinement of con- 
sciousness to ganglionic matter, to a central nervous 
sensorium, or even to organised matter at all, but places 
feeling in all matter at the stage of receiving energy. 
Fifthly. — It does not involve intelligence while predicating 
sensibility of all matter, for the terms feeling and intelligence 
are far from synonymous, the former being simple and 
elementary, while the latter is compound or complex. But 
it teaches us to search for intelligence elsewhere than in 
man and animals : for wherever groups of force channels 
are organised, there groups of feelings are to be inferred, — 
therefore intelligence ; for intelligence is the product of 
groups of feelings in one organised whole. 
Sixthly. — In the event of discovering intelligence higher 
than man’s the old polytheistic notions may not revive, inas- 
much as those superior intelligences, equally with ourselves, 
must be subject to the great law of causation. 
Seventhly. — Much of the mystery of adaptation in things, 
many of them removed distantly in time and space, seems 
