386 Feeling and Energy. [J uly, 
logical gull, and accorded with the laws ol continuity and 
causation in all their manifestations. 
Anticipating some objections that might be urged against 
the view I had taken, I briefly stated and endeavoured to 
refute them. The importance of the subject, however, de- 
mands a closer examination of its bearings ; and the objeCt 
of this paper is to deal with some of the more salient objec- 
tions liable to be urged by a careful critic. 
At the outset I would desire to be distinctly understood as 
making no claim to prove the existence of feeling in any 
objeCt, organised or not organised. We infer feeling to exist 
in our fellow-creatures, by observing actions performed by 
them which in ourselves seem to he the outcome of feeling. 
The inference may be a correct one, but it rests on analogical 
reasoning which is liable to error. Neither the denial of 
feeling, on the one hand, nor its affirmation, on the other, 
are valid in establishing a faCt which from its very nature is 
incapable of absolute proof. 
But while admitting this much, I am not precluded from 
submitting the question to a philosophical examination in 
view of discovering truth, which, though not self-evident 
nor perfectly demonstrable, may yet be supported by fair 
deduction. 
Starting, then, with the assumption that matter in an 
organised form and possessed of life has the quality, or 
affeCtion, or property of Feeling, I think it is only the first 
step towards consistency to admit that feeling being found 
in that form of matter must have previously existed as a 
fundamental property in matter before it became organised, 
and must remain in matter after disorganisation has occurred. 
For it is utterly out of keeping with all scientific teaching to 
believe that an entirely new thing like feeling, a state believed 
by many to be unique, or without parallel in any other 
aspeCf of Nature, should be the mere product of organisa- 
tion. What is organisation ? Unless we change the 
meaning of the term it implies hut the combination, in an 
orderly connection, of elements which — with all their indi- 
vidual properties — existed before organisation. It is there- 
fore as illogical to regard matter not organised as devoid of 
feeling, as it is illogical to attempt theoretically to evolve it, 
after a creational fashion, as a “ something out of nothing, ” 
— a something created by organisation, — called into being 
out of nothing, by a mere process of orderly arrangement ! 
Feeling, being; found in organised matter, must exist funda- 
mentally as an affeCtion of matter in ail its forms. 
A superficial objection to this conclusion, not likely to be 
