. Apart from all that I have said,
is it not in itself a strikingly suggestive fact that consciousness
only, yet always, appears upon the scene when the adjustive actions of
any animal body rise above the certain level of intricacy to which I
have alluded? Surely this large and general fact points with
irresistible force to the conclusion, that in the performance of these
more complex adjustments, consciousness--or the power of feeling and the
power of willing--is of some _use_. Assuredly on the principles of
evolution, which materialists at all events cannot afford to disregard,
it would be a wholly anomalous fact that so wide and important a class
of faculties as those of mind should have become developed in constantly
ascending degrees throughout the animal kingdom, if they were entirely
without use to animals. And, be it observed, this consideration holds
good whatever views we may happen to entertain upon the special theory
of natural selection. For the consideration stands upon the general fact
that all the organs and functions of animals are of use to animals: we
never meet, on any large or general scale, with organs and functions
which are wholly adventitious. Is it to be supposed that this general
principle fails just where its presence is most required, and that the
highest functions of the highest organs of the highest animals stand out
of analogy with all other functions in being themselves functionless? To
this question I, for one, can only answer, and answer unequivocally,
No. As a rational being who waits to take a wider view of the facts than
that which is open to the one line of research pursued by the
physiologist, I am forced to conclude that not without a reason does
mind exist in the frame of things; and that apart from the activity of
mind, whereby motion is related to that which is not motion, this planet
could never have held the wonderful being, who in multiplying has
replenished the earth and subdued it--holding dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that
moveth.

What, then, shall we say touching this mysterious union of mind and
motion? Having found it physically impossible that there should be a
causal connexion proceeding from motion to mind, shall we try to reverse
the terms, and suppose a causal connexion proceeding from mind to
motion? This is the oldest and still the most popular theory--the theory
of spiritualism. And, no doubt, in