But to continue the quotation:--"If, therefore, it be evident that something necessarily must exist from eternity, it is also as evident that that something must necessarily be a cogitative being; for it is as impossible [_inconceivable_] that incogitative matter should produce a cogitative being, as that nothing, or the negation of all being, should produce a positive being or matter." Again,--"For unthinking particles of matter, however put together, can have [_can be taught to have_] nothing thereby added to them, but a new relation of position, which it is impossible [_inconceivable_] should give thought and knowledge to them." It is unnecessary to multiply these quotations, for, in effect, they would all be merely repetitions of one another. It is enough to have seen that this able author undertakes to demonstrate the existence of a God, and that his whole demonstration resolves itself into the unwarrantable inference, that as we are unable to conceive how thought can be a property of matter, therefore a property of matter thought cannot be. That such an erroneous inference should occur in any writings of so old a date as those of Locke is not in itself surprising. What is surprising is the fact, that in the same writings, and in the course of the same discussion, the fallacy of this very inference is repeatedly pointed out and insisted upon in a great variety of ways; and it has been chiefly for the sake of showing the pernicious influence which preformed opinion may exert--viz., even to blinding the eyes of one of the most clear-sighted and thoughtful men that ever lived to a glaring contradiction repeated over and over again in the course of a few pages,--it has been chiefly for this reason that I have extended this Appendix to so great a length. I shall now conclude it by quoting some sentences which occur on the very next page after that from which the last quoted sentences were taken. Our author here again returns to his defence of the omnipotency of God; and as he now again thus personifies the sum total of possibility, his mind abruptly reverts to all its other class of associations. In this case the transition is particularly interesting, not only on account of its suddenness, but also because the correlations contemplated happen to be exactly the same in the two cases--viz., matter as the cause of mind, and mind as the cause of matter. Remember that on the last page this great philosopher supposed he had demonstrated the abstract impossibility of matter being the cause of mind on the ground of a causal connection being inconceivable, let us now observe what he says upon this page regarding the abstract possibility of mind being the cause of matter. "Nay, possibly, if we would emancipate ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts as far as they would reach to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim at some dim and seeming conception how matter might at first be made and begin to