nother. It is enough to have seen that
this able author undertakes to demonstrate the existence of a God, and that
his whole demonstration resolves itself into the unwarrantable inference,
that as we are unable to conceive how thought can be a property of matter,
therefore a property of matter thought cannot be. That such an erroneous
inference should occur in any writings of so old a date as those of Locke
is not in itself surprising. What is surprising is the fact, that in the
same writings, and in the course of the same discussion, the fallacy of
this very inference is repeatedly pointed out and insisted upon in a great
variety of ways; and it has been chiefly for the sake of showing the
pernicious influence which preformed opinion may exert--viz., even to
blinding the eyes of one of the most clear-sighted and thoughtful men that
ever lived to a glaring contradiction repeated over and over again in the
course of a few pages,--it has been chiefly for this reason that I have
extended this Appendix to so great a length. I shall now conclude it by
quoting some sentences which occur on the very next page after that from
which the last quoted sentences were taken. Our author here again returns
to his defence of the omnipotency of God; and as he now again thus
personifies the sum total of possibility, his mind abruptly reverts to all
its other class of associations. In this case the transition is
particularly interesting, not only on account of its suddenness, but also
because the correlations contemplated happen to be exactly the same in the
two cases--viz., matter as the cause of mind, and mind as the cause of
matter. Remember that on the last page this great philosopher supposed he
had demonstrated the abstract impossibility of matter being the cause of
mind on the ground of a causal connection being inconceivable, let us now
observe what he says upon this page regarding the abstract possibility of
mind being the cause of matter. "Nay, possibly, if we would emancipate
ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts as far as they would
reach to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim at some
dim and seeming conception how matter might at first be made and begin to
exist by the power of that eternal first being.... But you will say, Is it
not impossible to admit of the making anything out of nothing, since we
cannot possibly conceive it? I answer--No; because it is not reasonable to
deny the power of