ces operant in the
brain, and which give rise to ideas, and those which move a steam-engine,
as there is between mind and matter as popularly defined. Both, as Mr
Germsell will admit, are conditioned manifestations of force; but the one
contains a vital element in its dynamism which the other does not. You
may apply as much physical force by means of a galvanic battery to a dead
brain as you please, but you can't strike an idea out of it; and this
vital force, while it is "conditioned force," like light and heat,
differs in its mode of manifestation from every other manifestation of
force, even more than they do from each other, in that it possesses a
potency inherent to it, which they have not, and this potency it is which
creates emotion and generates ideas. The fallacy which underlies the
whole of this system of philosophy is contained in the assumption that
there is only one description of physical force in nature.

_Germsell_. No more there is. Why, Mr Spencer says that the law of
metamorphosis which holds among the physical forces, holds equally
between them and the mental forces; but mark you, what is the grand
conclusion at which he arrives? I happen to remember the passage: "How
this metamorphosis takes place; how a force existing, as motion, heat, or
light, can become a mode of consciousness; how it is possible for aerial
vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound; or for the forces
liberated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotion,--these
are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom."

_Lord Fondleton_ [_aside to_ Mrs Gloring]. What a jolly easy way of
getting out of a difficulty!

_Drygull_. Of course, if you admit such gross ignorance as to how it is
possible for aerial vibrations "to generate the sensation we call sound,"
I don't wonder at your not hearing the tom-tom in the Himalayas we were
listening to just now. If you knew a little more about the astral law
under which aerial vibrations may be generated, you would not call things
impossible which you admit to be unfathomable mysteries. If it is an
unfathomable mystery how a sound is projected a mile, why do you refuse
to admit the possibility of its being projected two, or two hundred, or
two thousand? Under the laws which govern mysteries, which you say are
unfathomable, if the mystery is unfathomable, so is the law, and you have
no right to limit its action.

_Rollestone_. To come back to the question of a po