Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/166

152 nerve-matter and the manifestations of consciousness disagree, seem unlike after our best examinations, it is unreasonable to give them a common cause*, they can not, by us as rational beings, be brought into such close relation.

Permit me to ask attention to a further consideration. Neither the direct knowledge given by our senses, nor this inferred knowledge, furnishes a solution of the mystery which belongs to the subjects we investigate. It is often said and as often forgotten that all explanation of natural processes consists solely in the resolution of involved combinations of activities into their elements. We make a false demand of the evolutionist when we insist that he shall tell us how the biological is evolved from the a-biological, and he makes a false demand of the spiritualist when he requires to be told how mind acts on brain or brain on mind. There is no such thing as being told the how of what takes place. The starting-points are unknowable in their nature and in the reasons of their operations. If I have not completely misunderstood that vigorous book, "Modern Physical Concepts," the purpose of its writer was to show that the so-called bases of physical science do not represent entities any more than the terms vitality, justice, humanity, law, represent entities, but that the bases of physical science stand for the present highest generalizations of the mind working inductively, that these bases do not exist out yonder among the spaces, but here within the thinker, and that when we affirm matter to be, outside of us, exactly thus and so, force exactly thus and so, we are but repeating the mediæval procedure of declaring that beneath the oak-tree there is an oak nature, beneath human beings a human nature. Judge Stallo, as I think, found the mind at its old trick in modern physical science, the trick of actualizing, and thrusting out yonder into space, its thoughts, its concepts, and of worshiping them as lords of all, explainers forever. Service is rendered here, not for orthodoxy as against heterodoxy, not for spiritualism as against materialism, but for all truth as against all error. We need to keep in mind that the only thing which can be accomplished by science, or by philosophy, as the unification of the sciences, is a detection and expression of resemblance between phenomena and between the modes of their activity. This may give us a law of evolution extending over all manifestations, a law not perched up on matter compelling it to evolve, but a law expressive of our feeling of similarity where we had previously felt diversity.

This resemblance is detected by observation. Now, observation is a process, not a thing. Its character is never determined by the object observed. Observation is not an instrument possessed by the physicist alone. Observation is an intellectual operation, and may be as genuine, as honest, when directed to thoughts, emotions, volitions, as when brought to bear on stars, rocks, or brains. The time has come when the truth shall assert itself that philosophy is an attempt