Man himself presents a microcosm of matter and force, raised to a higher plane then that of the merely chemical and physical. In him we find not merely that brain and nerve force which is common to him and lower animals, and which exhibits one of the most marvellous energies in nature, but we have the higher force of will and intellect, enabling him to read the secrets of nature, to seize and combine and utilize its laws like a god, and like a god to attain to the higher discernment of good and evil. Nay, more, this power which resides within man rules with omnipotent energy the material organism, driving its nerve forces until cells and fibres are worn out and destroyed, taxing muscles and tendons till they break, impelling its slave the body even to that which will bring injury and death itself. Surely, what we thus see in man must be the image and likeness of the Great Spirit. We can escape from this conclusion only by one or other of two assumptions, either of which is rather to be called a play upon words then a scientific theory. We may, with a certain class of physicists and physiologists, confine our attention wholly to the fire and the steam, and overlook the engineer. We may assume that with protoplasm and animal electricity, for example, we can dispense with life, and not only with life but with spirit also. Yet he who regards vitality as an unmeaning word; and yet speaks of "living protoplasm," and "dead protoplasm," and affirms that between these two states, so different in their phenomena, no chemical or physical difference exists, is surely either laughing at us, or committing himself to what the Duke of Argyll calls a philosophical bull; and he who shows us that electrical discharges are concerned in muscular contraction, has just as much proved that there is no need of life or spirit, as the electrician who has explained the mysteries of the telegraph has shown that there can be no need of an operator. Or we may, turning to the opposite extreme, trust to the metaphysical fallacy of those who affirm that neither matter, nor force, nor spirit, need concern them, for that all are merely states of consciousness in ourselves. But what of the conscious self this self which thinks, and which is in relation with surroundings which it did not create, and which presumably did not create it? and what is the unknown third term which must have been the means of setting up these relations? Here again our blind guides involve us in an absolute self-contradiction.