as to reduce the second to the first. To reduce one to the other, by way of affiliation or otherwise, there must first be discovered, then, an identity of nature which does not exist.
In the second place, when one examines closely the explanation materialism has imagined in order to derive thought from an action of matter, it is seen that this representation is rendered completely impossible by all we know of the nature of thought. For the materialist to suppose for one moment that thought is a cerebral function, he must evidently make an illusion for himself as to what thought is, and must juggle with concepts. Perhaps, could we penetrate into his own inmost thought, we should discover that at the moment he supposes a mere cell can manufacture the phenomena of consciousness, some vague image suggests itself to him whereby he identifies these phenomena with a light and subtle principle escaping from the nerve cell, something which resembles an electric effluve, or a will-of-the-wisp, or the flame from a punch-bowl.[1]
I cannot, of course, tell whether my supposition is correct. But what I assert, with the calmness
- ↑ I can quote two observations in support of this. M. Brieux, to whom I was relating this part of my argument, stopped me, saying, “You have guessed right; I represent to myself thought issuing from brain in the form of an electric gleam.” Dr. Simon also informed me, during the reading of my manuscript, that he saw “thought floating over the brain like an ignis fatuus.”
