Charles R. Darwin ESQ., F.R.S.
< A Philosophy of Materialisation (continued from page 11-340) >
appearance, but from the essential nature of effort itself, the healthy body being always supposed to be in a condition of equilibrium, with a mind to match, and cut off from all intrusive interference. When the animal machine is in motion its moving forces do positive work, and the resistances of the displaced points of application within the body having their elementary work negative, cannot present it as a sum to sense consciousness; but as a resultant in the external world is always the consequence of effort, resistance and inertia, the properties of formed matter go to the credit of the appearance, which is the manufactured article turned out from the laboratory of the senses. Action and reaction are therefore equal and opposite to the observer; work is done or wasted, and the laws of the phenomenal world are respected; but from the subjective side, effort is made consciously or subconsciously, and the possibility of its continuance or repetition is undertaken in a manner which, from the inner side of our nature, we are not yet able to grasp, but which from the objective standpoint we call the nutritive process from which on analysis we infer the existence of a system of continuity in accordance with the principles of which, in the unseen universe, there does exist that reverse stroke of our animal engine, the acknowledgment of the existence of which would out the ground from under the position at present occupied by gross materialism.
I have purposely used physical illustrations in speaking of the life process, for reference to physical principles will be frequent and much simpler than to physiological details, of which we know little, though their sum total and outcome are familiar enough to justify one in constructing a rough-hewn theory of mediumship on the assumption of uniformity of plan with variety of detail.
Editor's notes
- ↑ Charles R. Darwin ESQ., F.R.S. by unknown author