things at all times everywhere in sky and earth and sea; ever
changing, yet the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; the
ineffable contradiction in terms whose presence none can either ever
enter, or ever escape? Or rather, what convention would have been
more apt if it had not been lost sight of as a convention and come
to be regarded as an idea in actual correspondence with a more or
less knowable reality? A convention was converted into a fetish,
and now that its worthlessness as a fetish is being generally felt,
its great value as a hieroglyph or convention is in danger of being
lost sight of. No doubt the psalmist was seeking for Sir William
Grove's conception, if haply he might feel after it and find it, and
assuredly it is not far from every one of us. But the course of
true philosophy never did run smooth; no sooner have we fairly
grasped the conception of a single eternal and for ever unknowable
underlying substance, then we are faced by mind and matter. Long-
standing ideas and current language alike lead us to see these as
distinct things--mind being still commonly regarded as something
that acts on body from without as the wind blows upon a leaf, and as
no less an actual entity than the body. Neither body nor mind seems
less essential to our existence than the other; not only do we feel
this as regards our own existence, but we feel it also as pervading
the whole world of life; everywhere we see body and mind working
together towards results that must be ascribed equally to both; but
they are two, not one; if, then, we are to have our monistic
conception, it would seem as though one of these must yield to the
other; which, therefore, is it to be?

This is a very old question. Some, from time immemorial, have tried
to get rid of matter by reducing it to a mere concept of the mind,
and their followers have arrived at conclusions that may be