What makes this so important is the fact that we are so built that the minutest imaginable interior events may determine our largest actions. I lift a pound weight, but it was the movement of the all but impalpable particles of the brain which decided what the movement was to be. A touch upon the trigger fires the gun. And the force at the disposal of will needs to be only enough to move these tiny particles in the vital field. The trigger-touch, the precipitating circumstance, is traceable, says Lillie, “to ultra-microscopic events in the nerve cells.” And it is precisely this fact, with the opportunity it offers for central control, which makes a man’s behavior, even as to his body, something other than the result of a struggle of blind forces. Man is not a mass of particles like a dumb-bell. There is, Lillie contends (and he is supported by Maxwell and Boltzman), “a smoothing off, or obliteration of detail” in “effects controlled by mass action.” So we say that we lose ourselves in a crowd. “Mass action” represents the “sum of numerous fluctuating minutiæ.” What we see is like a composite picture, with individual traits more or less obliterated. Excess in one unit is off-set by deficiency in another, so to our sight the individual is obscured. “The relation between a smoothed curve and the distribution of the points showing the individual data is a relation of a similar kind,” he adds for the mathematically minded. And then he throws an almost literal bombshell into the determinist camp, with these words: “Every now and then an unexplained catastrophe occurs in stores of high explosives. We know from observation ... as well as from theoretical considerations of probability, that at infrequent intervals an internal molecular movement of unusual amplitude occurs. Such a movement may exceed the critical minimum below which no chemical reaction results,”--and so blow up the whole mass. But what we are here interested in is that unexplained molecular movement of unusual amplitude. It is almost like coming upon the creative spark itself, and--as is frequently the case with creative sparks--the immediate result is destructive to existing conditions. Not that I think that here is actually the naked finger of God. I am no Monist. So far as human experience, at least, is concerned, I believe that however far we pursue matter, either into its minute or its starry depths, it remains matter; and that spirit is separate and apart from it. The ultimate knot cannot be untied. The seamless veil has been drawn too tightly across the face of Deity for it ever to be penetrated by physical science.