The inquiry must be made more broadly, more rationally, more truly under its own conditions.

The question is not this, Do we, as a sensible fact, within the circuit of our observation, find mind prior to matter? but this, Do the laws of matter impose themselves on mind, or does mind under its own laws lay hold of and employ those of matter? If the order we find in thoughts and feelings is induced in them by physical causation, then in this direction lies all the coherence of the world; but if thought and feeling, with laws of their own, work their own ends through the laws of matter, then the coherence of the world is that of reason. If we are to determine the fitness of matter or of mind to be an ultimate term, the mere time-sequence in our own period goes for very little. It would be quite preposterous to say that a personal God must have created mind before matter. On the other hand, it is quite plain that finite mind being subject to the most complicated dependencies on matter, must appear subsequently to it, and largely subject to it, in a rational creation. The relation of guidance between mind and matter, is on the other hand, the truly significant term; it is this which discloses ultimate relations. The boat precedes the boatman, nor can it be steered beyond the water; none the less the boatman explains the boat.

The spontaneity of mind avails to free it from the direct control of matter, while the causal dependencies of things only put them the more completely under the guidance of reason. The control of mind by physical conditions is insanity, is madness; the