? One of two things must
happen. Either the balls go on moving by exactly the same laws and
forces they have always moved by, and are in the grasp of the same
invincible necessity, or else there is some new and disturbing force in
the midst of them, with which we have to reckon. But if consciousness is
inseparable from matter, this cannot be. Do the billiard-balls when so
grouped as to represent consciousness generate some second motive power
distinct from, at variance with, and often stronger than, the original
impetus? Clearly no scientific thinker can admit this. To do so would be
to undermine the entire fabric of science, to contradict what is its
first axiom and its last conclusion. If then the motion of our six
billiard balls has anything, when it corresponds to consciousness,
distinct in kind from what it always had, it can only derive this from
one cause. That cause is a second cue, tampering with the balls and
interfering with them, or even more than this--a second hand taking them
up and arranging them arbitrarily in certain figures.

Science places the positive school on the horns of a dilemma. The mind
or spirit is either arranged entirely by the molecules it is connected
with, and these molecules move with the same automatic necessity that
the earth moves with; or else these molecules are, partially at least,
arranged by the mind or spirit. If we do not accept the former theory we
must accept the latter: there is no third course open to us. If man is
not an automaton, his consciousness is no mere function of any physical
organ. It is an alien and disturbing element. Its impress on physical
facts, its disturbance of physical laws, may be doubtless the only
things through which we can perceive its existence; but it is as
distinct from the things by which we can alone at present perceive it,
as a hand unseen in the dark, that should arrest or change the course of
a phosphorescent billiard-ball. Once let us deny even in the most
qualified way that the mind in the most absolute way is a material
machine, an automaton, and in that denial we are affirming a second and
immaterial universe, independent of the material, and obeying different
laws. But of this universe, if it exists, no natural proof can be given,
because _ex hypothesi_ it lies quite beyond the region of nature.

One theory then of man's life is that it is a union of two orders of
things; another, that it is single, and belongs to only one. And of
th