Page:Philosophical Review Volume 19.djvu/130

116 of its advocates. We are not yet prepared for Haeckel's declaration that "Consciousness is the mechanical work of the ganglion cells."

On the other hand, the older form of vitalism is out of court, and neo-vitalism has not yet made good its claims and promises, despite so eminent an advocate as Driesch. In the midst of such uncertainty, philosophy has turned its attention to another question, and upon it has seemingly centered for the present time its exclusive interest. It is this: Is not the unknown factor in evolution essentially unknowable? Is not the human intellect by reason of its very nature incapable of interpreting a continuous and progressive process such as that which is characteristic of plant and animal organisms? Is any theory of knowledge adequate to comprehend the infinite variety of life?

We will now turn our attention to the more particular examination of these three questions in the forms which during the progress of discussion they have now finally assumed.

I. In the early discussion concerning man's place in the cosmos both parties to the controversy were at fault. The one was afraid to face the facts lest man's dignity and worth might be impaired by the discovery of his lowly origin; the other, in interpreting the facts, fell into the snare of the genetic fallacy in assuming that the discovery of man's remote ancestry could be regarded in any sense as an explanation either of the process by which he had attained his present estate, or of the significance of that estate itself. The many points of resemblance between the human species and the rest of the animal world can neither belittle man, nor explain him. The supposition of the common origin of man and the higher Simian family only serves to emphasize the manifest differences of man and the ape at the present stage to which the processes of evolution have brought them both.

Going backward the lines converge to a common point; but from that point onward they diverge with an ever increasing distance in their separation. The Darwinian theory of natural selection cannot explain and was never intended to explain the origin of the process of evolution, or the ground of the course