ing across
a path, may rejoice, saying, "This will guide me home." A materialist,
if he were consistent, should laugh such a traveller to scorn, saying,
"What guidance or purpose can there be in a material object? there is
no guidance or purpose in the universe; things _are_ because they
cannot be otherwise, not because of any intention underlying them. How
can a path, which is little better than the absence of grass or the
wearing down of stones, know where you live or guide you to any desired
destination? Moreover, whatever knowledge or purpose the path exhibits
must be _in the path_, must be a property of the atoms of which it is
composed. To them some fraction of will, of power, of knowledge, and
of feeling _may_ perhaps be attributed, and from their aggregation
something of the same kind may perhaps be deduced. If the traveller can
decipher that, he may utilise the material object to his advantage; but
if he conceives the path to have been made with any teleological object
or intelligent purpose, he is abandoning himself to superstition, and
is as likely to be led by it to the edge of a precipice as to anywhere
else. Let him follow his superstition at his peril!"

This is not a quotation, of course: but it is a parable.

Matter is the instrument and vehicle of mind; incarnation is the mode
by which mind interacts with the present scheme of things, and thereby
the element of guidance is supplied; it can, in fact, be embodied in an
intelligent arrangement of inert inorganic matter. Even a mountain path
exhibits the property of guidance, and has direction: it is an
incorporation of intelligence, though itself inert.

Direction is not a function of energy. The energy of sound from an
organ is supplied by the blower of the bellows, which may be worked by
a mechanical engine; but the melody and harmony, the sequence and
co-existence of notes, are determined by the dominating mind of the
musician: not necessarily of the executant alone, for the composer's
mind may be evoked to some extent even by a pianola. The music may be
said to be incarnate in the roll of paper which is ready to be passed
through the instrument. So also can the conception of any artist
receive material embodiment in his work, and if a picture or a
beautiful building is destroyed it can be made to rise again from its
ashes provided the painter or the architect still lives: in other
words, his thought can receive a fresh incarnation; and a perception