ter, to be one of the many psychologic forgeries which he has substituted for the true reading. Inconceivability is an ambiguous term. Some statements violate the law of our reason, others transcend our reason. To the first class belong all contradictions, such as that a thing can be and not be at the same time. Here, too, belong denials of the law of causation. To the second class belong inquiries about the inner nature of things, such as the questions: How does matter attract? what constitutes existence? The first class only are strictly inconceivable. Violating, as they do, the fundamental intuitions of the mind, as long as we have any faith at all in reason, we must believe these inconceivables to be impossibles. The second class is merely incomprehensible. How matter is constituted, how motion is transmitted, how force is exercised: these are not inconceivable, but incomprehensible. We have not the data, if we have the faculties, for such inquiries as these. A denial based upon an inconceivable of the first class is founded upon mental power; one based upon an inconceivability of the second class is founded upon mental weakness. Because of what the mind is, we declare all that denies our mental intuitions to be inconceivable. Because of what it is not, we declare all that transcends our intuitions to be inconceivable; but the first inconceivable represents an impossible, the second represents an incomprehensible.

Now if we examine the alleged inconceivability of

the creation and destruction of matter, we shall see that it is really an incomprehensibility and nothing more. It does not violate, it transcends the laws of our thought. For who has such knowledge of the inmost nature of matter, that he can positively deny that things seen were made from things not appearing. Who can prove that matter is not the result of a spiritual activity in space, which will disappear when the activity ceases? Who has so possessed himself of the central secret of material existence as to be sure that the world abides forever? We call the hills everlasting, and speak of the eternal stars; yet who can bring any proof whatever that Shakspeare was not right when he wrote:

"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wreck behind?"

On the subject of causation, the mind has a very positive deliverance, but it has none whatever on this question; it is simply transcendental to our faculties. All we can say is, we cannot comprehend how creation or destruction is possible, but that they may be possible no one can deny. Yet Mr. Spencer uses this mental impotence as a sufficient test of objective reality. We cannot explain how a thing can be; hence, it cannot be. Part I loads our faculties with opprobrium; Part II constitutes them the measure, not merely of knowledge, but of existence. Part I

declares inconceivability worthless as a test of reality; Part II makes it the best of proofs.

But, leaving these contradictions to destroy each other, let us pass to the central point of this system, and indeed the central point of all, that styles itself the "New Philosophy "-the correlation of forces.

This doctrine necessarily holds the first place in every scheme of evolution; for if it cannot be maintained, there must be irreducible breaks in the reasoning. If the physical forces refuse to correlate with the vital, there would be no possibility of passing from the tossing whirlpool of flame, or the waste theater of rock and mud, which once constituted our earth, to organic existence. There would be an absolute necessity for some external power to introduce the new creation, or the inorganic would remain inorganic forever. In the same way, if the physical forces do not correlate with the mental, the evolutionist could not pass, by a continuous chain of cause and effect, from the ancient nebula to mind and its manifestations. But if, on the other hand, there should be such correlation, there would be a possibility of finding the present order potentially existent in the primeval mist. The possibility might be very slight indeed, but it would be sufficient to base an argument upon. When the earth cooled down to a temperature compatible with the existence of organization, the physical forces, in their restless and eternal

hide-and-seek, might chance upon organic combinations, and thus life, and finally mind, would be started upon their way; and when a beginning was once made, natural selection and time could be offered in explanation of all improvement. It is, then, of first importance to a philosophy which aims to educe life, mind, poetry, science, Milton, Plato, Newton, Raphael, every body and every thing, from a condensing mist, to make out this correlation. Let us see how the work is done.

In Mr. Spencer's proof of the correlation of the physical forces, the same ridiculous confusion of force and motion is apparent, which is so patent in all our works on this subject. Heat is a mode of motion and a mode of force, at the same time. Motion produces magnetism, magnetism is motion, magnetism is force, motion is force. The same is said of light and electricity: both are motions and both are forces. Yet the universal definition of force describes it as the hidden cause of motion or change. When pressed for a definition, there is no scientist who would view them in any other relation. cause and effect as interchangeable and identical, involves a most remarkable confusion of ideas. Mr. Spencer is not alone in this error. I do not know a single scientist who has maintained the proper distinction between force and motion. It would be easy to fill pages with quotations from the writings of the most prominent scientists, all illustrating the same confusion. In truth, the majority

To use

Yet

of scientific men do not understand the doctrine of correlation. Heat, light, electricity, etc., are not forces, but modes of motion, any one of which can produce all the rest. This passage of one mode of motion into another mode, is its correlation; but this correlation is a correlation of motions, and not of forces. Whether the hidden force or forces which manifest themselves in these several modes be one or more, is a question which no experiment can decide. To prove a true correlation of forces, it must be shown that the powers which maintain the chemical molecule and those which bind the members of the solar system together, are identical. The identity of cohesion, chemical affinity, and the force of gravitation, must be established-a thing which no one has done.

For the sake of progress, however, let us admit the unity of the physical forces. Do these correlate with the vital forces? What is the proof that vitality is a function of material forces? Mr. Spencer argues as follows:

"Plant life is all dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the heat and light of the sun-directly dependent in the immense majority of plants, and indirectly dependent in plants which, as the fungi, flourish in the dark; since these, growing as they do at the expense of decaying organic matter, mediately draw their forces. from the same original source. Each plant owes the carbon and hydrogen, of which it mainly consists, to the carbonic acid and water in the surrounding air