It is objected that no thought and feeling have ever yet been displayed independently of cerebral condition; they must have brain, either to originate or to announce them. If brain be source or instrument of human consciousness, what preserves it when the brain is dead? But there would have been no universe on such terms as that. What supplied infinite mind with its preliminary _sine qua non_ of brain matter? [*] It occurs in "American Religion," p. 149. But, surely, if this is an argument at all, if it does not beg the very question in debate--namely, whether there is an infinite mind,--is it not an argument for atheism? For either the existing universe fully expresses Deity, in which case Deity is something less than infinite; or Deity must be conceived as very imperfect, and a progressive, tentative Divinity is no better than none. To be sure, he says: "We attribute Personality to the divine Being, because we cannot otherwise refer to any source the phenomena that show Will and Intellect." That is to say, we yield to a logical necessity. To argue that materialism "reeks with immortality" because "the baldest negation is not merely a verbal contradiction of an affirmation, but a contribution to its probability,--for it testifies that there was something previously taken for granted,"--is really a play upon words, inasmuch as the denial is simply an affirmation of certain facts, and by no means a categorical declaration involving all the facts at issue. By claiming none but relative knowledge, the antithesis is removed. One is conscious of a suspicion that the author's tremendous overflow of nervous vitality had much to do with the vehemence of his persuasions. He himself countenances such a suspicion. "I confess," he declares, "to an all-pervading instinct of personal continuance, coupled with a latent, haunting feeling that there is a point somewhere in human existence, as there has been in the past, where animality controls the fate of men. Where is that point? We recoil from every effort to draw the line." He had a very strong sense of personality, with its inevitable reference of persistency. "To us, perhaps," he cries, in a kind of anguish, "no thought could be so dreadful, no surmise so harrowing, as that we might slip into nonentity. We impetuously repel the haunting doubt. We shut the eyes, and cower before the goblin in abject dread until it is gone. With the beauty-loving and full-blooded Claudio, we cry,-- Oh, but to die, and go we know not where." and he quotes the rest of the famous passage in "Measure for Measure," adding for himself: "Put us anywhere, but only let us live; and we could feel with Lear, when he says to Cordelia,-- Come, let's away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage."