The older view of Mind is that it is a something higher than matter which it uses for its manifestation. It was held to be unknowable in itself and to be studied only through its manifestations. It was supposed to involve itself, to become involved, in some way in matter and to there manifest itself in an infinitude of forms, degrees, and variations. The materialistic view, which arose into prominence in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, held, on the contrary, that Mind was merely an activity or property of Matter--a function of matter akin to extension and motion. Huxley, voicing this conception said: "We have no knowledge of any thinking substance apart from an extended substance.... We shall, sooner or later, arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness, just as we have arrived at a mechanical equivalent of heat." But, Huxley, himself, was afterwards constrained to acknowledge that: "How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about by the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the _jinnee_ when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." The most advanced authorities of the day, are inclined to the opinion that both Matter and Mind are both differing aspects of some one fundamental Something; or, as some of the closest thinkers state it, both are probably two apparently differing manifestations or emanations of an Underlying Something which, as Spencer says: "transcends not only our reason but also our imagination." The study of philosophy and metaphysics serves an important purpose in showing us _how much we do not know_, and why we do not know--also in showing us the fallacy of many things we had thought we did know--but when it comes to telling us the real "why," actual cause, or essential nature of _anything_, it is largely a disappointment to those who seek fundamental truths and ultimate reasons. It is much more comfortable to "abjure the 'Why' and seek the 'How'"--if we can.