of the
perception of moral beauty to the perception of the heat of ginger. It
is the same thing with which we are again dealing now, only we are
approaching it from a slightly different point of view. What we saw
before, was that without an assent to the religious dogmas, the moral
dogmas can have no logical meaning. We have now seen that even were the
two logically independent, they yet belong both of them to the same
order of things; and that if our tests of truth prove the former to be
illusions, they will, with precisely the same force, prove the same
thing of the latter.

But the most crucial test of all we have still to come to, which will
put this conclusion in a yet clearer and a more unmistakable light. Thus
far what we have seen has amounted to only this--that if science can
take from man his religious faith, it leaves him a being without any
moral guidance. What we shall now see is that, by the same arguments,
it will prove him to be not a moral being at all; that it will prove not
only that he has no rule by which to direct his will, but also that he
has no will to direct.

To understand this we must return to physical science, and to the exact
results that have been accomplished by it. We have seen how completely,
from one point of view, it has connected mind with matter, and how
triumphantly it is supposed to have unified the apparent dualism of
things. It has revealed the brain to us as matter in a combination of
infinite complexity, which it has reached at last through its own
automatic workings; and it has revealed consciousness to us as a
function of this brain, and as altogether inseparable from it. But for
this, the old dualism now supposed to be obsolete would remain
undisturbed. Indeed, if this doctrine were denied, such a dualism would
be the only alternative. For every thought, then, that we think, and
every feeling or desire that we feel, there takes place in the brain
some definite material movement, on the force or figure of which the
thoughts and feelings are dependent. Now if physical observations are to
be the only things that guide us, one important fact will become at once
evident. Matter existed and fermented long before the evolution of mind;
mind is not an exhibition of new forces, but the outcome of a special
combination of old. Mental facts are therefore essentially dependent on
molecular facts; molecular facts are not dependent on mental. They may
seem to be so, but this is only s