From this digression I return to the fact that it is in his "soul" or "spirit" that man peculiarly bears the Divine image. In a threefold respect is man the personal image of his Maker.

1. He bears first of all the rational image of God. We have a proof of this in the fact formerly referred to, that man can understand the world God has made. How is science possible, except on the assumption that the reason we find in ourselves is the same in kind as the reason which expresses itself in the universe? The argument is the same as if we were set to translate a book written in a foreign language. The first condition of success in that attempt--the postulate with which we set out--is similarity of intelligence between the man who wrote the book, and ourselves who seek to decipher its meaning. If his reason were of a totally different kind from ours, the attempt to understand him would be hopeless. Precisely the same condition applies to the possibility of our knowledge of the world. Reason in man and the reason expressed in nature must be the same in kind, or no relation between them could be established. Christian theology expresses this by saying that the world is created by the Logos, a term which means at once reason and word.

2. Man bears God's moral image, not now in the possession of actual righteousness, but in the possession of the indestructible elements of a moral nature. (1) He is a being with the power of moral knowledge; reason, in other words, is the source to him, not only of principles of knowledge, but of laws of duty. The idea of the good, and with it the moral "ought" or ethical imperative, is part of his constitution. His moral ideal may vary with the degree of his development and culture; but, throughout, man is a being who distinguishes good and evil, and who recognises the obligation to obey the good and to eschew the evil. In this he proclaims himself a subject of moral law, and a being with a moral destiny. (2) He is a free, spiritual cause, i.e. he has moral freedom. I speak again not of man as at present he actually is, with his freedom sadly impaired through sin, but of man in the constitutive elements of his nature. And as a free, spiritual, self-determining cause, standing at the summit of nature, man is again in a very marked sense the image of his Maker. It is this power of will and self-decision in man which most of all constitutes him a person. Through it he stands out of and above nature's sequences, and can react on and modify them. He is, as some have chosen to regard him, a supernatural cause in the order of nature.1 It is surely of little use to deny the possibility of miracle, when every human volition is a species of miracle--a new, hyperphysical cause interpolated in the chain of physical events, and giving them a hew direction. (3) Man is a being with moral affections. Without these he would not be a true image of the God who is love. Summing up these points, we recognise in man a conscience which reveals moral law, a will which can execute moral purposes, and affections which create a capacity for moral love. This relates only to formal attributes; but it is now to be remarked that the bearing of God's moral image in the full sense implies not only the possession of these attributes, but an actual resemblance to God in character, in holiness and love. In the primeval state--the status integritatis of the Biblical account2--this possession of the image of God by man can only be viewed as potentiality, though a pure potentiality, for the perfected image could not be gained except as the result of self-decision and a long process of development, if even then without the appearance of the second Adam from heaven.3 It is Christ, not the first Adam who is the ideal here, the model after which we are to be renewed in the image of Him who created us. Only in Christ do we see what a humanity perfectly conformed to the Divine idea of it is.

3. Man bears the image of God in his deputed sovereignty over the creatures, a sovereignty which naturally belongs to him in virtue of the attributes just enumerated, and of his place at the head of creation already adverted to. To the reality of this sovereignty, all man's conquests over material conditions, his achievements in art and civilisation, his employment of nature's laws and forces for his own ends, his use of the lower creatures for service and food, etc., abundantly testify.1

I might add one other mark of the possession of the Divine image by man, likewise involved in his self-conscious personality. I refer to what may be called the potential infinitude of his nature. It has often been remarked that man could not even know himself to be finite, if he were not able in thought to transcend the finite, and frame an idea of the Infinite. It is the strange thing about him, yet not strange once we realise what is implied in the possession of a thinking nature, that though finite, hedged round on every side by the limitations of the finite, he yet shows a constant impulse to transcend these limitations, and ally himself with the Infinite. Through this peculiarity of his nature, there is none of God's infinite attributes which does not find a shadow in his soul How else could Carlyle, e.g., fill his pages with references to the eternities, the immensities, etc., in which man's spirit finds its awful home? Is a being who can form the idea of eternity not already in affinity with the Eternal, in a sense His image? Man is not omnipresent, but is there not a shadow of God's omnipresence in those thoughts of his that roam through space, and find a satisfaction in the contemplation of its boundlessness? He is not omniscient, but is not his desire for knowledge insatiable? The same spurning of bounds, the same illimitableness, is seen in all his desires, aims, ideals, hopes, and aspirations. This shows the folly of the contention that because man is finite, he is cut off from the knowledge of the Infinite. The objection seems to turn on the thought that there is a physical bigness in the idea of infinity which prevents the mind from holding it. It might as well be contended that because the mind is cooped up within the limits of a cranium only a few inches in diameter, it cannot take account of the space occupied, say by the solar system, or of the distance between the earth and the sun!

In thus affirming the spiritual nature and dignity of man, and a sonship to God founded thereon, it was inevitable that the Christian view should meet with keen opposition from the modern anti-supernaturalistic tendency, which regards with extreme disfavour any attempt to lift man out of the ranks of nature, and the prevailing bias of which is strongly towards Materialism. In this spirit Professor Huxley has told us that "anyone who is acquainted with the history of science will admit that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity."1 The materialistic hypothesis has wide currency at the present day, though it is difficult to see how any sober mind, reflecting on the patent difference between mental and physical phenomena, could ever suppose that it was adequate, or could imagine that by its aid it had got rid of "spirit." As involving the denial of the existence of a spiritual principle in man, distinct from the body, this hypothesis is manifestly in contradiction with the Biblical doctrine just explained, and on this account claims a brief consideration.

The great fact on which every theory of Materialism strikes is, of course, the fact of consciousness. Life, unattended by sensation, presents a great enough difficulty to the theorist who would explain everything on mechanical principles,2 but when consciousness enters the difficulty is insuperable.3 It is, at the same time, no easy matter to bind down the advocates of the materialistic theory to a clear and consistent view.

1. There is the crass, thorough going Materialism which literally identifies brain with mind, and the movements of the brain with the thoughts and feelings of which we are aware in consciousness. Brain action, on this hypothesis, is thought and feeling. "The brain," says Cabanis, "secretes thought, as the liver secretes bile." This is the crude theory of writers like Moleschott, Vogt, and Buchner, but it is too manifestly absurd--it too palpably ignores the striking differences between mental and physiological facts--to be accepted by more cautious scientists without qualification. Brain movements are but changes of place and relation on the part of material atoms, and, however caused, are never more than motions; they have nothing of the nature of thought about them. "It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable," says the distinguished German physiologist, Du Bois-Reymond, "that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms should be otherwise than indifferent to their own positions or motions, past, present, or future. It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness should result from their joint action."1 There is, accordingly, general agreement among scientific thinkers that the physical changes and the mental phenomena which accompany them are two distinct sets of facts, which require to be carefully kept apart. "The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness," says Professor Tyndall, "is unthinkable."2 "I know nothing, and never hope to know anything," says Professor Huxley, "of the steps by which the passage from molecular movement to states of consciousness is3 "The two things are on two utterly different platforms," says Professor Clifford; "the physical facts go along by themselves, and the mental facts go along by themselves."4 So far as this goes, it is clearly in favour of spiritualism, and would seem in consistency to require the abandonment of Materialism.1

2. An escape, however, may seem to be afforded from this dilemma, by consenting to regard matter as itself but the phenomenal manifestation of some unknown power, as therefore not the ultimate reality, but only a form or appearance of it to our senses. This is the view held by Strauss, Lange, Haeckel, Spencer, and the scientific professors whose words I have just quoted. "I have always," says Strauss, "tacitly regarded the so loudly proclaimed contrast between Materialism and Idealism (or by whatever terms one may designate the view opposed to the former) as a mere quarrel about words. They have a common foe in the dualism which has pervaded the view of the world (Weltansicht), through the whole Christian era, dividing man into body and soul, his existence into time and eternity, and opposing an eternal Creator to a created and perishable universe."2 But whatever the change in the theoretic groundwork, this view in practice comes to very much the same thing as the other. It will not be disputed that it does so with Strauss and his German allies, whose Materialism is most pronounced.3 But our English savants also, while disclaiming the name "materialists," while maintaining in words the distinction between the two classes of facts (mental and physical), while careful to show that a strict interpretation of the data would land us rather in a subjective Idealism than in Materialism,4 none the less proceed constantly upon the hypothesis that mental facts admit of being translated (as they call it) into terms of matter, and that thus only are they capable of being treated by science.5 Thus, Professor Huxley speaks of our thoughts as "the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena,"1 of consciousness as "a function of nervous matter, when that matter has attained a certain degree of organisation."2 This is carried out so far as to deny the existence of any freedom in volition, or indeed of any influence exercised by consciousness at all upon the train of physical events.

One advantage of this materialistic-idealistic form of the theory is, that it enables the theorist to play fast and loose with language on matter and mind, and yet, when called to account, to preserve an appearance of consistency by putting as much or as little meaning into the term "matter" as he pleases. Professor Tyndall is eloquent on the "opprobrium" which we, in our ignorance, have heaped on matter, in which he prefers to discern "the promise and potency of every form of life."3 But lie has to admit that, before he can do this, he has to make a change in all ordinarily received notions of matter. "Two courses and two only are possible," he says. "Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of matter."4 To which Dr. Martineau very justly replies, "Such extremely clever matter, matter that is up to everything, even to writing Hamlet, and finding out its own evolution, and substituting a moral plebiscite for a Divine government of the world, may fairly be regarded as a little too modest in its disclaimer of the attributes of mind."5 My chief objection to Dr. Tyndall, however, is that practically he does not change his notion of matter, but, ignoring his own admission of the "chasm intellectually impassable"6 between the two classes of phenomena, persists in treating mind as if it were capable of being adequately represented by molecular changes of matter, in the ordinary acceptation of the word. Instead, however, of supporting the view that molecular changes and mental functions are convertible terms, science, with its doctrine of the "conservation of energy," has furnished, as we shall now see, a demonstration of the opposite.

There are three points at which, in the light of modern science and philosophy, the argument for Materialism is seen utterly to break down.

1. The first is that which I have just alluded to, the impossibility of accounting for the phenomena of consciousness in consistency with the scientific doctrine of the "conservation of energy." As already remarked, none but the very crassest materialists will maintain that the molecular changes in the brain are themselves the thoughts and feelings which we are aware of in consciousness. What the physicist will say is, that these changes are attended by certain conscious phenomena as their concomitants. You have the motions, and you have the conscious fact--the thought or feeling--alongside of it. This is the way in which the matter is put by writers like Huxley and Tyndall, who frankly confess, as we have seen, the unbridgeable gulf between the two classes of phenomena. But, once this is admitted, the assertion that mental phenomena are products of cerebral changes is seen to come into collision with the scientific law of conservation. If mental phenomena are produced by material causes, it can only be at the expense of some measure of energy. This, indeed, is what is affirmed. Physical energy, it is supposed, is transformed into vital energy, this again into thought and feeling. But this, it can be shown to demonstration, is precisely what does not take place. Every scientific man admits that energy in all its active forms is simply some kind of motion; and that what is called "transformation of energy" (heat into light or electricity, etc.) is merely change from one kind of motion into another. What, then, becomes of the energy which is used when some change takes place in the matter of the brain, accompanied by a fact of sensation? It is all accounted for in the physical changes. No scientific man will hold that any part of it disappears, passes over into an "unseen universe." With keen enough senses you could track that energy through every one of its changes, and see its results in some physical effect produced. The circuit is closed within the physical. Motions have produced motions, nothing more, and every particle of energy present at the beginning is accounted for in the physical state of the brain at the end. There has been no withdrawal of any portion of it, even temporarily, to account for the conscious phenomenon.1 This is a new outside fact, lying beyond the circle of the physical changes, a surplusage in the effect, which there is nothing in the expenditure of energy to explain. It is a fact of a new order, quite distinct from physical motions, and apprehended through a distinct faculty, self-consciousness. But, apart from the nature of the fact, there is, as I say, no energy available to account for it. What energy there is, is used up in the brain's own motions and changes, and none is left to be carried over for the production of this new conscious phenomenon. If this is true of the simplest fact of consciousness, that of sensation, much more is it true of the higher and complex activities of self-conscious life.2

2. The second point on which Materialism breaks down is the impossibility of establishing any relation between the two sets of phenomena in respect of the laws of their succession. The mental facts and the physical facts, we are told, go along together. But it is not held that there is no relation between them. And the relation is, according to Professor Huxley, that the mental order is wholly determined by the physical order; while, conversely, consciousness is not allowed to exercise the slightest influence on the physical series. Consciousness he thinks, in men as in brutes, to be "related to the mechanism of the body simply as a collateral product of its working, and to be as completely without any power of modifying that working as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery."1 The physical changes, in other words, would go on precisely as they do, in obedience to their own laws, were there no such thing as consciousness in existence; and consciousness is simply a byeproduct or reflex of them without any counter-influence. Similarly, Mr. Spencer says, "Impossible as it is to get immediate proof that feeling and nervous action are the outer and inner faces of the same change, yet the hypothesis that they are so harmonises with all the observed facts";2 and again, "While the nature of that which is manifested under either form proves to be inscrutable, the order of its manifestations throughout all mental phenomena proves to be the same as the order of its manifestations throughout all material phenomena."3 The one point clear in these statements is that in the materialistic hypothesis the order of mental phenomena is identical with an order of physical phenomena, determined by purely mechanical conditions.4 Is this according to fact, or is it not precisely the point where a materialistic explanation of mind must for ever break down? On the hypothesis, the one set of phenomena follow purely physical (mechanical, chemical, vital) laws; but the other set, or a large part of the other set (the mental), follow laws of rational or logical connection. Suppose a mind, for example, following out the train of reasoning in one of the propositions in Euclid--or, better still, think of this demonstration as it was first wrought out in the discoverer s own mind. What is the o der of connection here? Is it not one in which every step is determined by the perception of its logical and rationally necessary connection with the step that went before? Turn now to the other series. The laws which operate in the molecular changes in the brain are purely physical--mechanical, chemical, vital. They are physical causes, operating to produce physical effects, without any reference to consciousness. What possible connection can there be between two orders so distinct, between an order determined solely by the physical laws, and the foregoing process of rational demonstration? The two orders are, on the face of them, distinct and separate; and not the least light is cast by the one on the other. To suppose that the physical laws are so adjusted as to turn out a product exactly parallel to the steps of a rational demonstration in consciousness, is an assumption of design so stupendous that it would cast all other proof of teleology into the shade. I am far, however, from admitting that, as the materialistic hypothesis supposes, every change in the brain is determined solely by mechanical, chemical, and vital laws. Granting that cerebral changes accompany thought, I believe, if we could see into the heart of the process, it would be found that the changes are determined quite as much by mental causes as by material. I do not believe, for example, that an act of will is wholly without influence on the material sequence. Our mental acts, indeed, neither add to nor take from the energy stored up in the brain, but they may have much to do with the direction and distribution of that energy.1

3. A third point on which the materialistic hypothesis breaks down is its irreconcilability with what is seen to be implied in self-consciousness, and with the fact of moral freedom. To constitute self-consciousness, it is not enough that there should be a stream or succession of separate impressions, feelings, or sensations; it is necessary that there should be a principle which apprehends these impressions, and relates them (as resembling, different, co-existent, successive, etc.) to one another and to itself, a principle which not only remains one and the same throughout the changes, but is conscious of its self-identity through them. It is not merely the mental changes that need to be explained, but the consciousness of a persistent self amidst these changes. And this ego or self in consciousness is no hyperphysical figment which admits of being explained away as subjective illusion. It is only through such a persistent, identical self, that knowledge or thought is possible to us; it is implied in the simplest analysis of an act of knowledge. Were we simply part of the stream, we could never know it.2 As another fact of our conscious life incompatible with subjection to mechanical conditions, I need only refer to the consciousness of moral freedom. In principle, Materialism is the denial of moral freedom, or of freedom of any kind, and with its triumph moral life would disappear.1

These considerations are sufficient of themselves to refute Materialism, but the final refutation is that which is given by the general philosophical analysis of the relation of thought to existence, a subject on which I do not enter further than I have already done in the previous Lecture. Thought, as I tried to show there, is itself the prius of all things; and in attempting to explain thought out of matter, we are trying to account for it by that which itself requires thought for its explanation. Matter, which seems to some the simplest of all conceptions to work with, is really one of the most difficult; and the deeper its nature is probed, whether on the physical or on the metaphysical side, the more does it tend to disappear into something different from itself; the more, at any rate, is it seen to need for its explanation facts that are spiritual. It was remarked above how, even in the hands of Professors Huxley and Tyndall, matter tends to disappear in a subjective Idealism; the only escape from this is a rational theory of knowledge, which again explains the constitution of the world through rational categories. To explain thought out of matter is, from a philosophical point of view, the crowning instance of a hysteron proteron.2