Admitting these forces to be physical ; who or what uses them ? What guides their operation so as to answer a preconceived design ? Admitting muscular power to be physical, what calls it into exer- cise at one time and not at another ; beginning, continuing, or suspending it, at pleasure ? It is plain that the facts adduced, are no solution either of vital or of voluntary phenomena. And when we come to thought, admitting that mental action is attended by a development of heat, does that prove that thought and heat are identical ? When ashamed we blush, when afraid we become pale ; do these facts prove that shame and fear and their bodily effects are one and the same thing ? Does concomitancy prove identity ? In proving the former, do you establish the latter ? Do the facts adduced prove that shame is heat and heat shame, and that the one may be converted into the other ? All the world knows tliat sorrow produces tears ; but no one infers from this coincidence that sorrow and salt water are identical. ' Even Professor Tyndall, one of " the advanced thinkers," tells the Materialists, that when they have proved everything they claim to prove, they have proved nothing. They leave the connection between mind and body pre- cisely where it was before.^
Direct Arguments against the Theory of the Correlation of Phys- ical, and Vital, and 3fental Forces.
1. They are heterogeneous. All physical forces are alike. They all tend to produce motion. They all tend to equilibrium. They are all measurable, by weight, or velocity, or by their sensi- ble effects. They are all unintelligent. They act by necessity, without choice, without reference to an end. In all these respects mental forces are directly the reverse. They do not produce mo- tion, they only guide and control it. They resist a state of equi- librium. They counteract physical force. As soon as vitality is gone, the chemical forces come into play and the plant or animal decays. They cannot be measured. Forces which do not admit of measurement, do not admit of coi-relation, for correlation in- volves sameness in quantity. " Thought," says President Bar- nard, " cannot be a physical force, because thought admits of no measure. I think it will be conceded without controversy that there is no form of material substance, and no ' known force of a physical nature (and there are no other forces), of which we can- not in some form definitely express the quantity, by reference to 1 Athenceum for August 29, 1868, quoted in Hukean Lectures for 1868; Appendix, Note A.
292 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. in. — Anti-Theism.
some conventional measuring unit No such means of
measuring mental action has been suggested. No such means can
be conceived Now, I maintain that a thing which is
unsusceptible of measure cannot be a quantity ; and that a thing that is not even a quantity, cannot be a force." ^
Again, vital and mental force act with intelligence, with fore- thought, with freedom, and with design. Wherever the intelli- gence may reside, it is perfectly evident that all vital operations are carried on in execution of a purpose. Heat and electricity can no more fashion an eye than brass and steel can make a watch, or pen and paper write a book. Intelligent force, therefore, differs in kind from unintelligent force. They are not only different, but contra- dictory ; the affirmation of the one is the negation of the other.
Pi-ofessor Joseph Henry. Prof Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Institute, is admitted to be one of the most eminent naturalists of the age ; distinguished not only for the thoroughness of his researches, but for soundness of judgment, and for the rare gift of being able to appreciate dif- ferent kinds of evidence. He admits the correlation of physical forces, but protests against the obliteration of the distinction be- tween them and vitality and mind. "The body," he says, " has been called ' the house we live in,' but it may be more truly de- nominated the machine we employ, which, furnished with power, and all the appliances for its use, enables us to execute the inten- tions of our intelligence, to gratify our moral natures, and to com- mune with our fellow beings. This view of the nature of the body is the furthest removed possible from Materialism ; it requires a separate thinking pi-inciple. To illustrate this, let us suppose a locomotive engine equipped with steam, water, fuel, — in short, with the potential energy necessary to the exhibition of immense mechanical power ; the whole remains in a state of dynamic equi- librium, without motion, or signs of life or intelligence. Let the engineer now open a valve which is so poised as to move with the slightest touch, and almost with a volition, to let on the power to the piston ; the machine now awakes, as it were, into life. It rushes forward with tremendous poAver ; it stops instantly, it returns again, it may be, at the command of the master of the train ; in short, it exhibits signs of life and intelligence. Its power is now
1 The Recent Proriress of Science, with an Exmninniion of the asserted identity of the Mental Powers with Physical Forces. An Address before the American Association for the Advancement of Science. August, 1868. By Frederick A. P. Barnard, S. T. D., LL. D., pp. 41, 42.