General Objections to Materialism.         143
tain, is a statement which logic and common-sense alike condemn as absurd." — (P. 21.) Indeed! The affirmation of Locke which is here met with a " direct contradiction/' and pronounced " simply untrue," may not have been unexceptionably expressed, but it just means that every cause must be a sufficient cause, — that a weight of four pounds, for example, cannot balance one of ten pounds ; and he who meets it with a direct contradiction needs, of course, no contradiction, especially if he has failed to perceive that a cause is only a cause in so far as it displays actual power and perfection. It is curious, however, that the writer mentioned should be able to quote an argument to the same effect from Mr J. S. Mill's ' Essay on Theism/ We there read : " Apart from experience, and arguing on what is called reason —that is, on supposed self-evidence—the notion seems to be that no causes can give rise to products of a more precious or elevated kind than themselves. But this is at variance with the known analogies of nature. How vastly nobler and more precious, for instance, are the vegetables and animals than the soil and manure out of which, and by the properties of which, they are raised up ! The tendency of all recent speculation is towards the opinion that the development of inferior orders of existence into superior, the substitution of greater elaboration and higher organ-