How such a thing as a conscious intelligence is possible is
another and wholly unanswerable question (though not more so than that as
to the existence of force and matter, and would not be rendered less so by
merging the fact in a hypothetical Deity); but granting, as we must, that
such an entity does exist, and supposing it to have been evolved by natural
causes, then it would appear incontestably to follow, that whether or not
objective existence is presided over by objective mind, our subjective mind
would _alike_ and _equally_ require to read in the facts of the external
world an indication, whether true or false, of some such presiding agency.
The subjective mind being, by the supposition, but the obverse aspect of
the sum total of such among objective relations as have had a share in its
production, when, as in observation and reflection, this obverse aspect is
again inverted upon its die, it naturally fits more or less exactly into
all the prints.
Sec. 34. This last illustration, however, serves to introduce us to another
point. The supposed evidence from which the existence of mind in nature is
inferred does not always depend upon such minute correspondences between
subjective method and objective method as the illustration suggests. Every
natural theologian has experienced more or less difficulty in explaining
the fact, that while there is a tolerably general similarity between the
contrivances due to human thought and the apparent contrivances in nature
which he regards as due to divine thought, the similarity is nevertheless
_only_ general.
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