[Is Life Worth Living? by William Hurrell Mallock]@TWC D-Link book
Is Life Worth Living?

CHAPTER IX
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This he expressly says is '_the interpretation of_ grosser _minds_,' and science will not for a moment permit us to retain it.

The brain contains no '_entity usually occupied we know not how amongst its molecules_,' but at the same time separable from them.

According to him, this is a '_heathen_' notion, and, until we abandon it, '_no approach_,' he says, '_to the subject is possible_.' What does he mean, then, when he tells us he rejects neither result; when he tells us that he believes that molecular motion produces consciousness, and also that consciousness in its turn produces molecular motion ?--when he tells us distinctly of these two that '_observation proves them to interact_'?
If such language as this means anything, it must have reference to two distinct forces, one material and the other immaterial.

Indeed, does he not himself say so?
Does he not tell us that one of the beliefs he does not reject is the belief in '_states of consciousness_ interposed between _the molecules of the brain, and influencing the transference of motion among the molecules_'?
It is perfectly clear, then, that these states are not molecules; in other words, they are not material.

But if not material, what are they, acting on matter, and yet distinct from matter?
What can they belong to but that '_heathen_' thing the soul--that '_entity which could be thrown out of the window_,' and which, as Dr.Tyndall has said elsewhere, science forbids us to believe in?
Surely for an exact thinker this is thought in strange confusion.


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