Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/426

410 what is generally regarded as its own sphere, but that it also produces all mental phenomena. At the same time, while admitting the consciousness—the intelligence—of man and brutes, he denies to them the faculty of will, thus virtually denying to them any power.

He thus raises the question as to the power of matter, and also as to that of intelligent beings; at least of beings of no higher grade than man. It is not very clear whether or not he denies all intelligent power. In saying he has with him "Père Malebranche, who saw all things in God," he seems to recognize a supreme power; but then this power in his system might logically be but a deification of material forces, ignoring intelligent activity.

Against attributing power to matter, we may urge that its existence as a distinct entity has never been proved, and is seriously questioned. To assume that so important a quality inheres, and especially to assume that it inheres only in something, the existence of which is doubtful, when it may, with equal reason, be attributed to something, the existence of which is admitted, would be a grave philosophical and logical mistake.

Prof. Huxley admits the existence of intelligent (conscious) beings, but perhaps does not admit that power may, with equal reason, be attributed to them, nor perhaps that there is any reasonable doubt as to the existence of matter as a distinct entity; leaving these two questions open to discussion. In regard to the latter, he will probably admit that there is no decisive proof, and that the existence of matter is only an inference from the sensations which we attribute to its agency. But all the phenomena of these sensations are as well accounted for on the hypothesis that they are directly produced in our minds by some intelligent power as that they are the effects of matter.

If the material universe is regarded as the work of an intelligent Creator, working with design to produce a certain effect, then, upon either hypothesis, it is the expression of a conception of this Creator, existing as thought and imagery in his mind before he gave it palpable, tangible existence in ours, and the only question between the two modes is, whether, in making it palpable to us, he transfers this thought and imagery directly to our minds, or first paints, moulds, or carves them in a distinct material substance. The external universe would not, in the first of these modes, be any the less real. The sensations, which are all that under either hypothesis concern us, or that we know any thing about, would be the same in both cases. But we can no more impute power to such imagery than to an image in a mirror, and under this hypothesis material sensation would have no existence.

One consideration favoring the ideal theory is, that, under it, creation becomes more conceivable to us. We can, any of us, conceive or imagine a landscape, and vary its features at will. This is an incipient creation which, if we could impress it upon the mind of another, would