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But will the human race be more honored when it can be said that man acts by the secret impulsions of a spirit, or a certain something which animates him without his knowing how?
From the antagonism of the two impulsions, and from the association of two opposite principles, we have seen beauty to result, of which the highest ideal must therefore be sought in the most perfect union and equilibrium possible of the reality and of the form. But this equilibrium remains always an idea that reality can never completely reach.
No doubt this correlation of the two impulsions is simply a problem advanced by reason, and which man will only be able to solve in the perfection of his being. It is in the strictest signification of the term: the idea of his humanity; accordingly, it is an infinite to which he can approach nearer and nearer in the course of time, but without ever reaching it.
Man's conduct appears as the mere resultant of all his various impulsions and inhibitions. One object, by its presence, makes us act: another object checks our action. Feelings aroused and ideas suggested by objects sway us one way and another: emotions complicate the game by their mutual inhibitive effects, the higher abolishing the lower or perhaps being itself swept away.
All human actions, visible and invisible, are the necessary consequences of man's mechanism, and of the impulsions which it receives from surrounding entities. The universe is made up of matter and motion, cause and effect. Nature is the great whole, resulting from the assemblage of different matters, combinations, and motions.
This caution appears to have been very necessary; for Dr Madden the substance of whose lecture was given in the article now declares, that 'very shortly after its delivery, he, in common with many others, detected a serious fallacy in the whole series of experiments; and that, by prosecuting his inquiry in this new direction, he ascertained that not one of the hitherto recorded experiments can be looked upon as proving the existence of magnetic currents at all. The pendulations, it seems, are caused solely by 'slight mechanical impulsions, unconsciously or half consciously conveyed to the instrument by the luckless experimentalist.
Consequently these two impulsions require limits, and looked upon as forces, they need tempering; the former that it may not encroach on the field of legislation, the latter that it may not invade the ground of feeling. But this tempering and moderating the sensuous impulsion ought not to be the effect of physical impotence or of a blunting of sensations, which is always a matter for contempt.
Therefore these two impulsions are not divided by nature, and if, nevertheless, they appear so, it is because they have become divided by transgressing nature freely, by ignoring themselves, and by confounding their spheres.
But if so, tumultuously, and under stress of catastrophic impulsions. A picture obtained by Mr. Perrine with the Crossley refractor, in 7h. 19m., on November 7 and 8, disclosed the progress of a startling change.
The first of these impulsions, which I shall call the sensuous instinct, issues from the physical existence of man, or from sensuous nature; and it is this instinct which tends to enclose him in the limits of time, and to make of him a material being; I do not say to give him matter, for to do that a certain free activity of the personality would be necessary, which, receiving matter, distinguishes it from the Ego, or what is permanent.
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