P. 24.  ’I am quite unable to understand how any one at the present
     day, and with the most moderate powers of abstract thinking, can
     possibly bring himself to embrace the theory of Free-will.’

P. 64.  ’Undoubtedly we have no alternative but to conclude that the hypothesis of mind in nature is now logically proved to be as certainly superfluous as the very basis of all science is certainly true.  There can no longer be any more doubt that the existence of a God is wholly unnecessary to explain any of the phenomena of the universe, than there is doubt that if I leave go of my pen it will fall upon the table.’

As evidence of (2) I would adduce from the preface—­

’To my mind, therefore, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that, looking to this undoubted pre-eminence of the scientific methods as ways to truth, whether or not there is a God, the question as to his existence is both more morally and more reverently contemplated if we regard it purely as a problem for methodical analysis to solve, than if we regard it in any other light.’

It is in respect both of (1) and (2) that the change in Romanes’ thought as exhibited in his later Notes is most conspicuous[15].

At what date George Romanes’ mind began to react from the conclusions of the Candid Examination I cannot say.  But after a period of ten years—­in his Rede lecture of 1885[16]—­we find his frame of mind very much changed.  This lecture, on Mind and Motion, consists of a severe criticism of the materialistic account of mind.  On the other hand ’spiritualism’—­or the theory which would suppose that mind is the cause of motion—­is pronounced from the point of view of science not impossible indeed but ‘unsatisfactory,’ and the more probable conclusion is found in a ‘monism’ like Bruno’s—­according to which mind and motion are co-ordinate and probably co-extensive aspects of the same universal fact—­a monism which may be called Pantheism, but may also be regarded as an extension of contracted views of Theism[17].  The position represented by this lecture may be seen sufficiently from its conclusion:—­

’If the advance of natural science is now steadily leading us to the conclusion that there is no motion without mind, must we not see how the independent conclusion of mental science is thus independently confirmed—­the conclusion, I mean, that there is no being without knowing?  To me, at least, it does appear that the time has come when we may begin, as it were in a dawning light, to see that the study of Nature and the study of Mind are meeting upon this greatest of possible truths.  And if this is the case—­if there is no motion without mind, no being without knowing—­shall we infer, with Clifford, that universal being is mindless, or answer with a dogmatic negative that most stupendous of questions,—­Is there knowledge with the Most High?  If there is no motion without mind, no being without knowing, may we not rather infer, with Bruno, that it is in the medium of mind, and in the medium of knowledge, we live, and move, and have our being?