THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE. Thomas Troward

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      obtain a permanent footing in a sane and healthy community. There is

      nothing wrong in the evidence conveyed to a healthy mind by the senses of a

      healthy body, but the point where error creeps in is when we come to judge

      of the meaning of this testimony. We are accustomed to judge only by

      external appearances and by certain limited significances which we attach

      to words; but when we begin to enquire into the real meaning of our words

      and to analyse the causes which give rise to the appearances, we find our

      old notions gradually falling off from us, until at last we wake up to the

      fact that we are living in an entirely different world to that we formerly

      recognized. The old limited mode of thought has imperceptibly slipped away,

      and we discover that we have stepped out into a new order of things where

      all is liberty and life. This is the work of an enlightened intelligence

      resulting from persistent determination to discover what truth really is

      irrespective of any preconceived notions from whatever source derived, the

      determination to think honestly for ourselves instead of endeavouring to

      get our thinking done for us. Let us then commence by enquiring what we

      really mean by the livingness which we attribute to spirit and the deadness

      which we attribute to matter.

      At first we may be disposed to say that livingness consists in the power of

      motion and deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into the most

      recent researches of science will soon show us that this distinction does

      not go deep enough. It is now one of the fully-established facts of

      physical science that no atom of what we call "dead matter" is without

      motion. On the table before me lies a solid lump of steel, but in the light

      of up-to-date science I know that the atoms of that seemingly inert mass

      are vibrating with the most intense energy, continually dashing hither and

      thither, impinging upon and rebounding from one another, or circling round

      like miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex

      activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may

      lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element of

      motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with

      a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It is,

      therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the

      distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must

      go deeper than that. The solution of the problem will never be found by

      comparing Life with what we call deadness, and the reason for this will

      become apparent later on; but the true key is to be found by comparing one

      degree of livingness with another. There is, of course, one sense in which

      the quality of livingness does not admit of degrees; but there is another

      sense in which it is entirely a question of degree. We have no doubt as to

      the livingness of a plant, but we realize that it is something very

      different from the livingness of an animal. Again, what average boy would

      not prefer a fox-terrier to a goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it that

      the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the dog,

      and the boy are all equally _alive_; but there is a difference in the

      quality of their livingness about which no one can have any doubt, and no

      one would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of

      intelligence. In whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find that

      what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately measured

      by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater intelligence that

      places the animal higher in the scale of being than the plant, the man

      higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher than the savage. The

      increased intelligence calls into activity modes of motion of a higher

      order corresponding to itself. The higher the intelligence, the more

      completely the mode of motion is under its control: and as we descend in

      the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding

      increase in _automatic_ motion not subject to the control of a

      self-conscious intelligence. This descent is gradual from the expanded

      self-recognition of the highest human personality to that lowest order of

      visible forms which we speak of as "things," and from which

      self-recognition is entirely absent.

      We see, then, that the livingness of Life consists in intelligence--in

      other words, in the power of Thought; and we may therefore say that the

      distinctive quality of spirit is Thought, and, as the opposite to this, we

      may say that the distinctive quality of matter is Form. We cannot conceive

      of matter without form. Some form there must be, even though invisible to

      the physical eye; for matter, to be matter at all, must occupy space, and

      to occupy any particular space necessarily implies a corresponding form.

      For these reasons we may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the

      distinctive quality of spirit is Thought and the distinctive quality of

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