tractive energies tending towards or from a certain point,but nothing at the point." These points are fictions without relations, solidity, extension, or colour. Nor is that all, physicist and metaphysicist both admit that we never touch matter, never see it, never hear it: our perceptions are symbols of the externals, but are not more like them, and have no more community of kind, than a numerical figure has to the form of the numbered objects; indeed, our sensations are merely mental affections which are called up by impulses on the nerves. Our notion of Matter, as well as of Mind, "is the notion of a perpetual something, contrasted with the perpetual flux of the sensations and other feelings or mental states which we refer to it; a something which we figure as remaining the same, while the particular feelings, through which it reveals its existence, change." On one side is the world of forms, of colours, of movements; on the other is a mirror which reflects their images; not in any respect a plain transcript, but an ideal picture of external order. Sensations, terror, hope, calculations, are psychical phenomena associated with molecular motions set up in a previously prepared brain; but we do not know the causal connection, if any, between the objective and subjective-between molecular motion and the state of consciousness. In astronomical speculations, likewise, we take into account dark stars, scattered through space, hidden from observation not being luminous; so, in everything around and within us, innumerable hidden factors are at work; and he is a rash man, no true philosopher, who asserts-" Matter is the beginning and end of all."

Indeed it may be demonstrated that the mechanical theory utterly fails to explain the origin of the world. The following experiment seems to have been made first of all by Prof. P. G. Tait:

Suppose that we have a wooden box: at one end is a large hole, we remove the wood from the opposite end, and in place of it affix a tightly stretched towel. To make the air visible, when expelled from the box, sprinkle the bottom of the box

1 An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 205: John Stuart

Mill.

with strong solution of ammonia; then put into the box a dish containing common salt, and over the salt pour sulphuric acid of commerce. We have now in the box ammoniacal gas and muriatic acid gas, they combine and form solid sal ammoniac; and whatever escapes, that is visible, from the box, consists of small particles of sal ammoniac; and they remain suspended like smoke in the air. Now give a sudden blow to the end that is opposite the hole in the box; and, at once, a circular vortex ring moves, as if it were an independent solid, through the room. Observe, when two vortex rings. impinge upon one another they vibrate like solid elastic rings. This vibration of a vortex ring can be produced, without any impact on another, by simply making an elliptical or even a square hole instead of the circular. The circle is the equilibrium form of a simple vortex, and if a simple vortex be produced of other than circular form, it will vibrate about the circular form as about a position of equilibrium.

The application of this experiment will yield important results.

It is a fact, discovered by Helmholzt's researches, that if the air was a perfect fluid-if there was no fluid-friction in it— that vortex-ring would go on moving for ever; and the portion of fluid containing the smoke would remain for ever the same set of particles; and could not be made by any process, except an act of creative power, to unite with the air in the room. Now if we adopt the supposition of Sir William Thomson, that the universe is full of this perfect fluid, something not like matter, but which really is matter, "this property of rotation may be the basis of all that appeals to our senses as matter;" indeed, that which we call matter" may be only rotating portions of something which fills spacevortex-motions of an everywhere present fluid; but nothing less than creative power could produce a vortex-ring in a perfect fluid; consequently no mechanical theory, apart from creative power, can explain that which appeals as matter to our senses; or sufficiently account for the origin of the world. In the whole of this process of reasoning concerning a perfect fluid and vortex-motion, we have been thinking of matter apart from its usual properties-putting ourselves outside of

it; or, as we may say, standing out of the body that we may look into the body so as to know the nature of it. We have been acting as if our spirit was an æolian harp thrilling to accordant tremors of the breath of life, apart from material touch,-learning of existence; and it is certain that by supposing a substance wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving subsist, we have as clear a notion of the substance of spirit, as we have of body. Now, if this be so, it is unwise to doubt as to the existence of spirit; seeing that, as philosophers, we can only know of other things by its means; and to doubt of that by which we know, and to believe in that which we should not know, were it not for the other, is in the highest degree unreasonable.

The case is not made better, as to Matter and Nature, by the assumption that vortex-motions have been from everlasting in the perfect fluid; for no mechanical theory can account for their existence. There is no help in the contrary assumption, that no perfect fluid exists: for, then, without continual restoration of energy, which no mechanical theory affords or sufficiently explains, the universe would long since have burnt out. We conclude, from the whole argument, that neither for primal origination, nor for successive restorations, does mechanical power yield the equivalent.

A similar process of investigation may be carried into the unwise assertion as to the physical intervention of the Deity in human affairs being to the scientific thinker, à priori, so improbable, that no amount of historic testimony suffices to make him entertain the hypothesis for an instant.

2

The fact that all sciences, specially that which concerns the Dissipation of Energy, points to a beginning, to a state of things incapable of being derived by means of any existing laws from any conceivable previous arrangement, is proof of physical intervention; therefore, that which is unwarrantably declared "à priori improbable," becomes a matter of actual science; there have been physical interventions, or all our knowledge is at fault.

1 "Locke on the Understanding," Book 2, ch. xxiii. § 5.

3

2 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii. pp. 379, 380: John Fiske.

"Recent Advances in Physical Science,” p. 26: Prof. P. G. Tait.

Existence of the Unknown.

433

We take outside things, either as materials for the scaffold of our argument; or, using them as a sort of algebraic symbol, submit them to the necessary operations for ascertaining the unknown quantity-whether of Divinity or miracle; and thus proceed :

The agency of light is wave-movement, but the moving agent we know not; the mode of operation by chemical affinity is known, chemical affinity is not known; the laws of motion seem to be laws of heat, we do not know what is moving nor how it moves; but our conviction of the existence of the unknown is verified by experiment.

We can now advance somewhat further-Do we know all Nature's combinations? Certainly not; for many of its operations are wrought by means of a complexity so extreme as to be an almost insuperable obstacle to our investigations. It is impossible, therefore, for men to have any evidence which can be accounted sufficient to enable a scientific thinker to conclude that miracles are, à priori, improbable.

a

We will now try another mode of investigation. Though human consciousness is brought into connection with material things only by means of nervous tremorsneural process, it is easy notwithstanding to conceive of a succession of sentiments, of consciousness eternally prolonged; indeed, our recollections are not limited to the present-they embrace the past, and our expectations take hold of the future. There is organic union throughout: our thoughts are not separate beads, but as a necklace; and the string is "organic union," so we continue to be ourselves. If we say the Mind is a series of feelings; we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future. Then we are brought to the alternative of saying that the Mind is something different from any series of feelings; or that a mere series of feelings can be aware of itself, as a series, which is absurd.

Now in all this, as philosophers who have most carefully studied it decide, "there is no need of substance, except

1 "Natural Philosophy," vol. i. p. 311: Thomson and Tait.

as the support and bond of phenomena; "1 but the ego, our own mind, is the real existence. As we proceed in investigation, the lines become finer and finer, and are concerned with new unimaginable elements, though the process is "thinkable;" until we are conscious that, go far as we may, an untried universe lies beyond; a region of

"The measures and the forms Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,

Whose kingdom is where Time and Space are not."

We may conveniently turn the argument. Our consciousness of existence may be thought of as pages of algebraic figures which the scientific student reads off into the splendour and variety of light, with untold gradation of blended colours; or as notes written on the mental tablet, which a musician stirs into sweetest and complex harmony. Hence, arguing on scientific principles, we have an actual revelation, directly or indirectly, in signs and symbols to our thoughts, concerning things material and immaterial; and the laws of thought are laws of our organism. Scientific truths, like spiritual, have for ever been descending from Heaven to men. They are waves of the universal flow of existence. Concretes and their abstractions are as the convex and concave of things, the outer and inner meaning, as body and soul, as sides to the tablets of our mind, and the matter and meaning of the stony leaves of history. All modes and all grades of knowledge, at all times and in all places, are only differentiations; therefore our intelligent consciousness, our reasoned faith as to the unknown, our convictions and experiences as to fine lines of intelligence and emotion extending beyond the world's material surface, claim a place within the domain of human intellect. Not only is Revelation to be found in Holy Scripture, it is an essential part of our consciousness concerning the Almighty's operations; it binds everything that is natural into one splendid unity; it is the bond of continuity in all existence, and renders the mind of man, in its concentrated view and comprehension of Nature, a symbol of the complexity and mystery of the universe.