ese theories--opposite, and mutually exclusive, Dr. Tyndall, and
modern positivism with him, says '_I reject neither_.'[35]

Now this statement of their position, if taken as they state it, is of
course nonsense. It is impossible to consider matter as '_that
mysterious something by which all that is is accomplished;_' and then to
solve the one chief riddle of things by a second mysterious something
that is not material. Nor can we '_reject_,' as the positivists say they
do, an '_outside builder_' of the world, and then claim the assistance
of an _outside_ orderer of the brain. The positivists would probably
tell us that they do not do so, or that they do not mean to do so. And
we may well believe them. Their fault is that they do not know what they
mean. I will try to show them.

First, they mean something, with which, as I have said already, we may
all agree. They mean that matter moving under certain laws (which may
possibly be part and parcel of its own essence) combines after many
changes into the human brain, every motion of which has its definite
connection with consciousness, and its definite correspondence to some
state of it. And this fact is a mystery, though it may be questioned if
it be more mysterious why matter should think of itself, than why it
should move of itself. At any rate, thus far we are all agreed; and
whatever mystery we may be dealing with, it is one that leaves us in
ignorance but not in doubt. The doubt comes in at the next step. We have
then not to wonder at one fact, but, the mystery being in either case
the same, to choose between two hypotheses. The first is that there is
in consciousness one order of forces only, the second is that there are
two. And when the positive school say that they reject neither of these,
what they really mean to say is that as to the second they neither dare
openly do one thing or the other--to deny it or accept it, but that they
remain like an awkward child when offered some more pudding, blushing
and looking down, and utterly unable to say either yes or no.

Now the question to ask the positive school is this. Why are they in
this state of suspense? '_There is an iron strength in the logic_,' as
Dr. Tyndall himself says, that rejects the second order altogether. The
hypothesis of its existence explains no fact of observation. The scheme
of nature, if it cannot be wholly explained without it, can, at any
rate, be explained better without it than with it. Inde