" But, granting this, and also that conscious matter is the sole
alternative, and what follows? Not surely that matter cannot perceive, and
feel, and know, merely because it is repugnant to our idea of it that it
should. Granting that there is no other alternative in the whole
possibility of things, than that matter must be conscious, or that
self-conscious Mind must somewhere be self-existing; and granting that it
is quite "impossible for us to conceive" of consciousness as an attribute
of matter; still surely it would be a prodigious leap to conclude that for
this reason matter cannot possess this attribute. Indeed, Locke himself
elsewhere strangely enough insists that thought may be a property of
matter, if only the Deity chose to unite that attribute with that
substance. Why it should be deemed abstractedly impossible for matter to
think if there is no God, and yet abstractedly possible that it should
think if there is a God, I confess myself quite unable to determine; but I
conceive that it is very important clearly to point out this peculiarity in
Locke's views, for he is a favourite authority with theists, and this
peculiarity amounts to nothing less than a suicide of his entire argument.
The mere circumstance that he assumed the Deity capable of endowing matter
with the faculty of thinking, could not have enabled him to _conceive_ of
matter as thinking, any more than he could _conceive_ of this in the
absence of his assumption.
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