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be an eye that saw itself, an ear that heard itself. Mind is not such an organ. It reveals thought, not the nature of the thinking powers; its phenomenal, formal character, not the very essence of the act itself. All that we claim is, that there is no a priori impossibility discoverable by us, making a transfer of influence from mind to matter, from matter to mind, an absurdity, Our last traces of physical force in the movement inward are found in the brain, our first traces in the movement outward are also met with at the same point. Thus far only can the eye follow material changes; here is it first able to pick them up. How the last nervous impulse is linked to the play of consciousness, or how a pure volition breaks forth and liberates a physical force without itself becoming such a force, we cannot explain. We only affirm that our ignorance is so complete as to cut us off as perfectly from a denial of the possibility of such a transfer, as from an exposition of it. We simply do not see that the realms of space and consciousness anywhere over-lap, or even touch each other. We are profoundly ignorant of the nature of any connection between the two. We therefore satisfy ourselves with denying the existence of any a priori proof against such a dependence; while experience, under the spontaneous interpretation which the human mind everywhere gives it, constantly affirms it as a fact.

In the ideal world, the mind freely contemplates physical being and forces. It moves at liberty among them, regards them as modified by its own activity, and is, in turn, modified in its thinking by them. It thus far recognizes no incompatibility between the two realms; but is prepared to accept those actual relations which give occasion to these ideal ones. If an a priori necessity, ingrained in mind, divided the two fields, how could the mind so easily escape it in its own spontaneous movements? It does not, can not