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I will not dwell on the many incongruities hence resulting, by asking how the “originating Mind” is to be thought of as having states produced by things objective to it; as discriminating among these states, and classing them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result to another. I will simply ask–What happens if we ascribe to the “originating Mind” the character absolutely essential to the conception of Mind, that it consists of a series of states of consciousness? Put a series of states of consciousness as cause, and the evolving Universe as effect, and then endeavor to see the last as flowing from the first. I find it possible to imagine in some dim way a series of states of consciousness serving as antecedent to any one of the movements I see going on; for my own states of consciousness are often indirectly the antecedents to such movements. But how if I attempt to think of such a series as antecedent to all actions throughout the Universe–to the motions of the multitudinous stars through space, to the revolutions of all their planets round them, to the gyrations of all these planets on their axes, to the infinitely-multiplied physical processes going on in each of these suns and planets? I cannot think of a single series of states of consciousness as causing even the relatively small group of actions going on over the Earth’s surface. I cannot think of it even as antecedent to all the various winds and the dissolving clouds they bear, to the currents of all the rivers, and the grinding actions of all the glaciers; still less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the plants that cover the globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded tropical palms, and in all the millions of quadrupeds that roam among them, and the millions of millions of insects that buzz about them. Even to a single small set of these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot conceive as antecedent a single series of states of consciousness–cannot, for instance, think of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at this instant curling over on the shores of England. How, then, is it possible for me to conceive an “originating Mind,” which I must represent to myself as a single series of states of consciousness, working the infinitely-multiplied sets of changes simultaneously going on in worlds too numerous to count, dispersed throughout a space that baffles imagination?

If, to account for this infinitude of physical changes everywhere going on, “Mind must be conceived as there” “under the guise of simple Dynamics,” then the reply is that, to be so conceived, Mind must be divested of all attributes by which it is distinguished; and that, when thus divested of its distinguishing attributes, the conception disappears–the word Mind stands for a blank. If Mr. Martineau takes refuge in the entirely different and, as it seems to me, incongruous hypothesis of something like a plurality of minds–if he accepts, as he seems to do, the doctrine that you cannot explain Evolution “unless among your primordial elements you scatter already the germs of Mind as well as the inferior elements”–if the insuperable difficulties I have just pointed out are to be met by assuming a local series of states of consciousness for each phenomenon, then we are obviously carried back to something like the alleged fetichistic notion, with the difference only, that the assumed spiritual agencies are indefinitely multiplied.

Clearly, therefore, the proposition that an “originating Mind” is the cause of Evolution, is a proposition that can be entertained so long only as no attempt is made to unite in thought its two terms in the alleged relation. That it should be accepted as a matter of faith, may be a defensible position, provided good cause is shown why it should be so accepted; but that it should be accepted as a matter of understanding–as a statement making the order of the universe comprehensible–is a quite indefensible position.