point in which the potency of matter demonstrably fails lets in the deluge.

I will now offer a few remarks on the subject of motion, which may tend to illustrate and confirm the conclusions to which we have already been led by the consideration of matter.

It is an accepted principle in science. that every body, or particle, or mass of matter perseveres in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it is made to change that state by external forces. This is Newton's first law of motion; and if there is a law of which the truth is undoubted, it is this.

Now, conceive a mass of material particles all subject to this law, and also all gravitating toward each other according to the law which we know to be that of attraction. The question is, The question is, whether, with no other agency than that which we recognize as natural, the existing order of nature could have come into existence. If we can conceive of any original arrangement of the particles at all, it would seem that, excluding all consideration of an exterior cause, the arrangement would be that of uniform distribution but with uniform distribution the tendency could be only to run into one lump an irregular configura tion, such as that which we actually witness in the heavens, would have been impossible. There, however, the irregular configuration is; and the configuration is constantly changing, and each condition of configuration is the result of that which preceded it: go back as far as you please, and you have still a state of things, a state of motion, which does not result from the normal laws by which matter is governed: you are compelled to postulate a cause of motion outside matter.

Here, again, it will be observed that I am not using the argument from design; I am not appealing to the beauty of the mechanism, and inferring the existence of a skilful workman, as might be done in the case of a locomotive engine or of a clock: I am only alleging that the actual motion which exists in the universe does not result from though I will grant that it can be maintained by the natural laws which govern matter and motion, and that therefore we are compelled to assume

some cause of motion outside matter. in other words, mind must have existed before motion, not motion before mind.

The manner in which thought is connected with material organs in living creatures is undoubtedly apt to suggest the opposite conclusion to that which I am advocating. The organ of thought in men may without inaccuracy be said to be the brain; and such facts as the connection of idiocy with an imperfect brain-formation, and the destruction of mental power by cerebral injury, favor the opinion that thought is as impossible without brain as sound is impossible without air: but it is manifestly illogical to conclude that thought, because in the case of material creatures like ourselves it is producible through the action of the brain, though we know not how, can only be so produced. And, in reality, to any one who thinks at all below the surface of things, it is more easy to conceive of thought as apart from matter, than to regard the two as uniformly and without any exception bound together the difficulty is rather to believe that thought can ever result from a material organization than to conceive of matter and mind as existing separately. Man, a material creature, does think to very good purpose; there is no possibility of denying this familiar fact: but the mystery is how he does it.

The powers of mind and the forces which may be admitted to be essentially material are so different in kind, that it may be impossible to bring one into proper comparison with the other. Nevertheless, it will be useful to observe that the forces of nature are of a very subtle kind, and that the agents which are the most effective are generally the most impalpable. The roughest notion of force is that which is implied by the expressions push and pull. A billiard-ball has its direction of motion and its velocity changed by the impact of another ball: a bullet is projected from the barrel of a gun by the explo sion of gunpowder, and the velocity acquired is diminished by the pressure of the air, and is finally destroyed by impact against a target. Friction, the tension of strings, the pressure of the hand or foot, and hundreds of other common causes, may be mentioned as

generators or destroyers of velocity. It It was late in history that mankind discovered that the almost impalpable vapor of water could be made to do work more easily and more effectually than horses or water-power. Air had already been used for this purpose in the case of the windmill; but I will confine my remarks to steam. And I observe that in passing from horse-power to steampower we seem distinctly to have taken a step in the discovery that almost impalpable agents can produce greater results than those which are of a more palpable kind. St. James uses vapor as the symbol of all that is transitory and vain, and therefore compares it with human life: had he known what we know, he might have used the same comparison to indicate the incomparable power and energy of life when rightly applied to the doing of work, and not permitted to run to waste.

Steam, however, subtle as it is compared with more commonplace agents, still requires contact with the matter in which it is to generate velocity. It is an immense step from steam to gravitation. Here we have a force acting throughout the whole universe, requiring no contact, and only weakened according to a fixed rate, never destroyed, by distance. Nothing can be more certain than the existence of this force, and few things can be more mysterious. Newton, with that wonderful scientific caution which belonged to him, having demonstrated the law and, so far as was then possible, the universality of gravitation, refrained in his Principia" from even speculating upon the cause, and only indulged in a few queries at the end of his treatise on Optics." And no one since the time of the great master has been able to advance any farther: no one, at least, has been able to arrive at any conclusion which can be regarded as satisfactory.

66

Putting aside, however, all question of cause, we have it in evidence that every particle of matter has an influence upon every other particle in the universe; that this influence depends not upon the specific qualities of the particle that is to say, is not different for iron, wood, air, or what not-but depends solely upon the mass. More

over, this force of gravitation, so far from needing contact, as in the case of air upon the sail of a windmill or steam upon the piston of an engine, is entirely unaffected by the interposition of any amount of matter: the effect of the sun, for example, upon a particle of the earth's surface immediately exposed to his influence is precisely the same, except so far as affected by distance, as it is upon a particle on the other side of the earth, which has a mass of matter eight thousand miles in thickness to shade it, if possible, from the sun's attraction, as it effectually does from his heat. The consideration of this fact, than which there is none more certain, will not only puzzle us as to what can be the cause, but will also lead to the conclusion that, whatever the the cause may be, all space, whether occupied by matter or not, is pervaded by an influence which is a necessary concomitant of matter, though it cannot be described as itself material: this influence is the cause of weight, but is itself imponderable. The most perfect vacuum may in a true sense be said to be full of this influence.

Here, then, we have an agent so subtle and impalpable that it needs the utmost effort of genius to demonstrate its existence and its laws, and which yet is a cause of motion compared with which all the more obvious causes, all terrestrial pushes and pulls, are as dust in the balance. Reflection upon this conclusion may lead us to favor the belief that the invisible is more potential than the visible, and that perhaps the influences which are brought to bear upon material or natural things are powerful and effective just in proportion as they rise above matter and nature, or as they are immaterial and supernatural. It is not possible to speak very positively, and it is difficult to speak perspicuously, upon a subject of this kind; but the reader may perhaps find in what I have said a guess at truth,' or at least a hint which may help him to guess for himself.

But we need not bound our speculation by conclusions based upon gravitation. There are other forces in nature which are more difficult of scientific treatment, and in some senses more powerful and more wonderful. I refer

44

*

to such forces as those of electricity and magnetism. Electricity appears, like light, to depend for its transmission upon a medium, concerning which "it is still extremely doubtful whether it is a gravitating substance, though it is certainly material, and has mass. Magnetism, like gravity, acts at a distance. and by means of no visible medium. You may place two magnets in vacuo, or even place a solid plate of glass or metal or wood between the magnets, and still we find that their mutual action depends simply on their relative position, and is not perceptibly modified by placing any substance between them, unless that substance is one of the magnetic metals." Whence we obtain a confirmation of the conclusion at which we have already arrived in favor of invisible impalpable agents as among the most potential in the material universe. Here let me quote a few sentences from that interesting but difficult book, the "Unseen Universe.' I think I may fairly claim this book as supporting the views propounded in this essay, though the actual argument and the conclusion drawn are not the same. "We do not hesitate," write the authors,+ to assert that the visible universe cannot comprehend the whole works of God, because it had its beginning in time, and will also come to an end. Perhaps, indeed, it forms only an infinitesimal portion of that stupendous whole which is alone entitled to be called the universe." I quote this because it is an assertion of the existence of something besides matter based upon the existence of matter itself. But the following passage is still more to my purpose: "It is only within the last thirty or forty years that there has gradually dawned upon the minds of scientific men the conviction that there is something besides matter or stuff in the physical universe, which has at least as much claim as matter to recognition as an objective reality, though, of course, far less directly obvious to our senses as such, and therefore much later in being detected."§ Reference is here

made to such agents as light, heat, electricity, etc.

These passages, and the whole tenor of the book which contains them, seem, as I have intimated, to point in the same direction as this essay; but, however that may be, my own design is to lead up from the seen to the unseen, from the palpable to the impalpable, from matter to mind. And although it may be asserted that we are not safe from materialism unless mind be regarded as belonging to so different a category of existence from matter that no conclusion can be drawn from one to the other, still I think it may help us to conceive of mind as existing altogether apart from matter if we observe that material powers and influences appear to be more powerful and influential as they become more subtle and more nearly immaterial. We may conceive, in fact, of a heirarchy of powers in which the lowest grade contains the commonest push and pull forces of ordinary human experience; higher grades may contain the invisible forces of nature; and the highest of all may contain pure mind, unmixed with baser matter" altogether.

..

All this, however, must be regarded as speculative illustration of the general design of this essay. I claim to have proved by a simple demonstration, depending upon the recognized conclusions of physico-mathematical science, that there is some cause independent of and outside matter, by which certain conditions of matter, which might conceivably have been otherwise than they are, have been settled and determined. This cause, if independent of and outside matter, can only properly be described as mind. Therefore I claim to have proved that mind is before matter, not matter before mind; and it is plain that this proposition affords the basis of a theology, and that it altogether forbids atheism. I do not intend to pursue this thought; but I indicate it in order to show that the purpose which I have had in view has been most serious, and much higher than the mere selfish pleasure of indulging in ingenious speculation.

I will only further remark that it is probable that the line of argument followed in this essay may be applied in

many other cases. For example, the absolute force of gravity is a quantity depending, so far as we know, upon no physical cause. There would seem to be no reason why the acceleration of a particle due to gravity at the earth's surface should be measured by 32.2, rather than by any other larger or smaller quantity. Or again, among the prettiest of theorems connected with planetary motion is that of the stability of the eccentricities of the planetary orbits, which assures us that, if the eccentricities are small at any epoch, they will forever remain small. It might be fairly argued that some cause outside matter must have determined the smallness of these eccentricities. In fact, there is a whole class of physical truths

concerning which it might be argued that they indicate a determining power outside the region of matter. But I have avoided all illustrations in which even a plausible argument might be raised against me, or in which it might be said that we did not know enough of the conditions of the question to come to any absolute conclusion; and I have restricted myself to two or three simple cases, in which the premises are quite certain and the cogency of the argument complete. I have done so all the more readily because I know that one sound argument is as good as a thousand, and that the addition of what is doubtful is apt to throw suspicion upon the best course of reasoning. The Nineteenth Century.

To the tourist who flees from the fogs of London in search of regions where the average duration of sunshine exceeds half an hour per diem, the choice of country and climate is often a matter for consideration. So it was with the writer of the present article, who, however, was fortunate in having the momentous question, "Where shall I go to ?'' decided for him by a timely suggestion from a friend to try Morocco. There was an old-world flavor about his description of the place that was very much to my taste so without more ado I packed up my traps, took a berth on board the first P. & O., and in six days found myself at Gibraltar. I will not attempt to describe the Rock" and its well-known surroundings; its blue bay, and evervarying hues of mountain, sea, and cloud; its wonderful galleries (not picture-galleries, or the repository of old masters, as a friend of mine imagined them to be!)-but confine myself strictly to my subject, and make my way with all speed across the Straits to Tangier. Suffice it to say that, after four days, I had had enough of that uncomfortable fortress, where, every way the traveller turns, he finds a hill, and a different temperature at every corner of its stuffy streets. Accordingly, I availed myself of the first steamer advertised, and after a moderate passage

of some four hours through the choppy seas of the Gut," found myself for the first time on the shores of Africa.

I can never forget my first sight of Tangier. The spectacle could hardly fail to strike the oldest traveller it is doubly impressive when, as in my case, it forms one's first introduction to the manners and customs of the East. The transition is so complete from all that exists on the other side of the Straits, that one hardly realizes the proximity of Europe. You cross ten miles of sea, and find yourself, as it were, in a new world, where all the modes and conditions of life are changed; and here, in the year 1882, westward of Piccadilly, one can be transported in imagination to the far East of bygone centuries. Perhaps the impression conveyed by the utter novelty of the scene was best expressed by an American gentleman, who guessed he felt as though he had been taken up by the scruff of the neck and set down in the Old Testament !" It is a common subject of remark how few people visit Morocco; and it is indeed difficult to conceive how this primitive simplicity can have been maintained so long within such easy reach of civilization. In Tangier there are no roads or vehicles-not a wheel to be found in the place-the only method of locomotion, besides your own legs, being by camel,

166

horse, donkey, or mule. Drainage, it need hardly be said, there is none, except in a few European houses; yet the place is healthy enough. Perhaps, after all, our modern system of sewage is a blunder! All their appliances are of the rudest description-the very ploughs with which they till the earth being of the same pattern as what Abraham must have used. Harrows do not exist; for it would be an unwarranted interference with the workings of nature not to leave the seed in the ground to shift for itself so the Arab husbandman scratches the surface of the soil with his apology for a plough, throws in the seed, and lets it lie. Allah will provide.' If the elements are propitious, and there is a bounteous harvest-well. If, on the contrary, the crop should fail, and famine ensue, he will not complain, but bear his sufferings with the characteristic patience of his race. Why it should be in accordance with the laws of Kismet to use a plough, but not a harrow, it boots not to inquire, for fatalism seldom concerns itself with logic.

on

But to resume. Our steamer, heaving to in the bay, was surrounded by the usual crowd of Arabs, gibbering, and gesticulating for a fare; and the tourist who is new to it all, feels somewhat embarrassed. After awhile, one begins to perceive that the appalling energy a Moor throws into all he says is only his habitual method of conversing; and that, when you think he is threatening to cut your throat, he is probably only wishing you good-morning, or remarking on the fineness of the weather.

My baggage was put on the backs of various porters, and myself in a boat, and we were landed together at what at the time appeared to be the embouchure of the main drain. Once on shore, we were, of course, beset by fresh touts, beggars, porters, etc., gibbering at us like lunatics; and I could do nothing but stand still, and swear impartially at every one, till at last a fatherly old a fatherly old Arab, with a green cotton umbrella, and a slight smattering of English, introduced himself as the commissionaire of M. Bruzeaud's hotel, and took me in tow. I was first conducted to the receipt of custom, where a number of

grave officials, sitting cross-legged in a row, took stock of my baggage, and passed the things one by one. This done, we left the port by a large gate, and after passing through an ill-paved, and worse-smelling alley, ascended the main street of the town. It was market-day, and we made our way with difficulty through the throng of women and slaves, Moors, negroes, Jews, and Europeans-the motly crowd of various nationalities which make up the population of Tangier. The extraordinary variety of types and shades of complexion. even among the indigenous population, cannot fail to impress the traveller first setting foot in the place. He sees purebred Moors, with fine-chiselled features, and skins as white as his own; olivecomplexioned Arabs; half-casts of every shade; negroes from Timbuctoo and the Soudan; Riffians, from their mountain-fastnesses to the east of Tetuan, resembling North American Indians, with their shaven crowns and long scalp-locks, by which, it is said, Azrael, the Angel of Death, is to pull them up to heaven on the last day. These Riffians are a division of the old Berber race, the original inhabitants of Morocco, or who, at any rate, must be historically regarded as the aborigines of the country. They are a turbulent, warlike race, and have never been thoroughly subdued.

Arriving at the upper extremity of the town, we passed out into the soko, or market-place-a large open space filled with camels and other beasts of burden, muffled women waiting for their lords, and a buzzing crowd of country people, engaged in barter, or else lying idly about in picturesque groups. M. Bruzeaud's hotel, to which I was recommended, is built on rising ground, a few hundred yards outside the town, commanding a grand view over the bay, with its yellow fringe of sand, and the straits, bounded by Gibraltar and the purple hills of Spain.

As I arrived the sun was setting in a wondrous blaze of green and gold, the whole landscape being bathed in the glorious light. I began to fancy this was the average sort of Eastern sunset, and that we should be entertained in a similar manner every evening; but it was not so to be, for I have never seen