possible.

Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative, and,
therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really
is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and effect than
a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we have a
knowledge of the necessity of that succession,--and hence, of necessary
laws,--and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from utter
materialism and necessarianism. For it is obvious that our knowledge of
what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least as certain and
definite as that of the spiritual world, and that our acquaintance with
law is of as old a date as our knowledge of spontaneity. Further, I take
it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to prove that anything
whatever may not be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that
human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any act is really
spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the assumption, has
no cause; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face
of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility
to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material
cause, anyone who is acquainted with the history of science will admit,
that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever, means,
the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and
the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of
what we call spirit and spontaneity.

I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a
conception of the direction in which modern physiology is tending; and I
ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as the
product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion
of an Archaeus governing and directing blind matter within each living
body, except this--that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have devoured
spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out of past
and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the
realm of matter and law until it is coextensive with knowledge, with
feeling, and with action.

The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe,
upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive
to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as