ere closed, and
the alteration of brain tissues were exceedingly slight (as it would be
if the brain were not working), it is nothing very extraordinary that
the man should resume thought and volition at the point where they
ceased.

The second "difficulty" raised, rather than discovered, by Sir G. G.
Stokes is this. "I am conscious of a power which I call will," he says,
"and when I hold up my hand I can choose whether I shall move it to the
right or to the left."

"Now, according to the materialistic hypothesis, everything about me is
determined simply by the ponderable molecules which constitute my body
acting simply and solely according to the very same laws according to
which matter destitute of life might act. Well then, if we follow up
this supposition to its full extent, we are obliged to suppose that,
whether I move at this particular moment of time--4.25, on the 30th of
March--my hand to the right or to the left, was determined by something
inevitable, something which could not have been otherwise, and must have
come down, in fact, from my ancestors."

Now Sir G. G. Stokes "confesses" that this seems to him to "fly
completely in the face of common sense." And so it does, if by
"determined" he means that _somebody_ settled the whole business, down
to the minutest details, a thousand, a million, or a thousand million
years ago. But if "determined" simply means that every phenomenon
is _caused_, in the philosophical--not the theological or
metaphysical--meaning of the word, it does not fly in the face of common
sense at all. Little as Sir G. G. Stokes may like it, he _does_--body
and brain, thought and feeling, volition and taste--come down from his
ancestors. That is the reason why he is an Englishman, a Whig, a bit of
a Philistine, an orthodox Christian, and a very indifferent reasoner.

After all, does not this objection come with an ill grace from a
Christian Theist? Has Sir G. G. Stokes never read St. Paul? Has he
never heard of John Calvin and Martin Luther? Has he never read the
Thirty-nine Articles of his own Church? All those authorities teach
predestination; which, indeed, logically follows the doctrine of an
all-wise and all-powerful God. Yet here is Sir G. G. Stokes, a Church of
England man, objecting to the "materialistic hypothesis" on the ground
that it makes things "determined."

Professor Stokes next refers to "something about us" which we call
"will." This he proceeds to treat as an indepe