t the
otoliths and Corti's fibres in motion; I can also visualise the waves
of aether as they cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay more, I am
able to pursue to the central organ the motion thus imparted at the
periphery, and to see in idea the very molecules of the brain thrown
into tremors. My insight is not baffled by these physical processes.
What baffles and bewilders me is the notion that from those physical
tremors things so utterly incongruous with them as sensation, thought,
and emotion can be derived. You may say, or think, that this issue of
consciousness from the clash of atoms is not more incongruous than the
flash of light from the union of oxygen and hydrogen. But I beg to
say that it is. For such incongruity as the flash possesses is that
which I now force upon your attention. The 'flash' is an affair of
consciousness, the objective counterpart of which is a vibration. It
is a flash only by your interpretation. You are the cause of the
apparent incongruity; and you are the thing that puzzles me. I need
not remind you that the great Leibnitz felt the difficulty which I
feel; and that to get rid of this monstrous deduction of life from
death he displaced your atoms by his monads, which were more or less
perfect mirrors of the universe, and out of the summation and
integration of which he supposed all the phenomena of life--sentient,
intellectual, and emotional--to arise.

'Your difficulty, then, as I see you are ready to admit, is quite as
great as mine. You cannot satisfy the human understanding in its
demand for logical continuity between molecular processes and the
phenomena of consciousness. This is a rock on which Materialism must
inevitably split whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of
life. What is the moral, my Lucretian? You and I are not likely to
indulge in ill-temper in the discussion of these great topics, where
we see so much room for honest differences of opinion. But there are
people of less wit or more bigotry (I say it with humility), on both
sides, who are ever ready to mingle anger and vituperation with such
discussions. There are, for example, writers of note and influence at
the present day, who are not ashamed publicly to assume the "deep
personal sin" of a great logician to be the cause of his unbelief in a
theologic dogma. [Footnote: This is the aspect under which the late
Editor of the 'Dublin Review' presented to his readers the memory of
John Stuart M