to the revolutions of all their planets round therm, to the gyrations of all these planets on their axes, to the infinitely-multiplied physical processes going on in each of these suns and planets? I cannot even think of a series of states of consciousness as causing the relatively small group of actions going on over the earth's surface; I cannot even think of it as antecedent to all the various winds and the dissolving clouds they bear, to the currents of all the rivers, and the guiding actions of all the glaciers; still less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from tropical palms down to polar lichens, and in all the animals that roam among them, and the insects that buzz about them. Even to a single small set of these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot conceive as antecedent a series of states of consciousness—cannot, for instance, think of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at this instant curling over the shores of England. How, then, is it possible for me to conceive an "originating Mind," which I must represent to myself as a series of states of consciousness, being antecedent to the infinity of changes simultaneously going on in worlds too numerous to count, dispersed throughout a space that baffles imagination? If, to account for this infinitude of physical changes everywhere going on, "Mind must be conceived as there under the guise of simple Dynamics," then the reply is that, to be conceived as there, Mind must be divested of all attributes by which it Is distinguished; and that when thus divested of its distinguishing attributes, the conception disappears—the word Mind stands for a blank. If Mr. Martineau takes refuge in the entirely different and, as it seems to me, incongruous hypothesis of something like a plurality of minds—if he accepts, as he seems to do, the doctrine that you cannot explain Evolution "unless among your primordial elements you scatter already the germs of Mind as well as the inferior elements"—if the insuperable difficulties I have just pointed out are to be met by assuming a local series of states of consciousness for each phenomenon, then we are obviously carried back to something like the old fetichistic notion, with the difference only, that the assumed spiritual agencies are indefinitely multiplied. Clearly, therefore, the proposition that an "originating Mind" is the cause of Evolution is a proposition that can be entertained so long only as no attempt is made to unite in thought its two terms in the alleged relation. But when the attempt to unite them is made, the proposition turns out to be not simply unprovable, but unthinkable.
Here let me guard myself against a misinterpretation very likely to be put upon the foregoing arguments—especially by those who have read the Essay to which they reply. The statements of that Essay carry the implication that all who adhere to the hypothesis it combats imagine they have solved the mystery of things when they have explained the processes of Evolution as naturally caused. Mr. Martineau tacitly represents them as believing that, when every thing has 21
