Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/299

Rh have two sides? This is the very core of the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit this two-sideness. Does water think or feel when it runs into frost-ferns upon a windowpane? If not, why should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked to this mysterious companion—consciousness? We can form a coherent picture of all the purely physical processes—the stirring of the brain, the thrilling of the nerves, the discharging of the muscles, and all the subsequent motions of the organism. We are here dealing with mechanical problems which are mentally presentable. But we can form no picture of the process whereby consciousness emerges either as a necessary link or as an accidental by-product of this series of actions. The reverse process of the production of motion by consciousness is equally unpresentable to the mind. We are here, in fact, on the boundary-line of the intellect, where the ordinary canons of science fail to extricate us from difficulty. If we are true to these canons, we must deny to subjective phenomena all influence on physical processes. The mechanical philosopher, as such, will never place a state of consciousness and a group of molecules in the relation of mover and moved. Observation proves them to interact; but, in passing from the one to the other, we meet a blank which the logic of deduction is unable to fill. This, the reader will remember, is the conclusion at which I had arrived more than twenty years ago. I lay bare unsparingly the central difficulty of the materialist, and tell him that the facts of observation which he considers so simple are "almost as difficult to be seized mentally as the idea of a soul." I go further, and say, in effect, to those who wish to retain this idea, "If you abandon the interpretations of grosser minds, who image the soul as a Psyche which could be thrown out of the window—an entity which is usually occupied, we know not how, among the molecules of the brain, but which on due occasion, such as the intrusion of a bullet or the blow of a club, can fly away into other regions of space—if, abandoning this heathen notion, you approach the subject in the only way in which approach is possible—if you consent to make your soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which, as I have taken more pains than anybody else to show you, refuses the joke of ordinary physical laws—then I, for one, would not object to this exercise of ideality." I say it strongly, but with good temper, that the theologian, or the defender of theology, who hacks and scourges me for putting the question in this light is guilty of black ingratitude.

Notwithstanding the agreement thus far pointed out, there are certain points in Prof. Virchow's lecture to which I should feel inclined to take exception. I think it was hardly necessary to associate the theory of evolution with socialism; it may be even questioned whether it was correct to do so. As Lange remarks, the aim of socialism, or of its extreme leaders, is to overthrow the existing systems of government.