Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/515

Rh in the pages of his article, and of which an orang-outang might be just as acutely sensible. No, it lies in an appreciation of literary form and logical structure by æsthetic and intellectual faculties which are not senses, and which are not unfrequently sadly wanting where the senses are in full vigor. My poor relation may beat me in the matter of sensation; but I am quite confident that, when style and syllogisms are to be dealt with, he is nowhere.

If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in it is the universal validity of the law of causation; but that universality can not be proved by any amount of experience, let alone that which comes to us through the senses. And, when an effort of volition changes the current of my thoughts, or when an idea calls up another associated idea, I have not the slightest doubt that the process to which the first of the phenomena in each case is due, stands in the relation of cause to the second. Yet the attempt to verify this belief by sensation would be sheer lunacy. Now, I am quite sure that Mr. Lilly does not doubt my sanity, and the only alternative seems to be the admission that his first proposition is erroneous.

The second thesis charges me with putting aside "as unverifiable" "everything beyond the bounds of physical science." Again, I say No. Nobody, I imagine, will credit me with a desire to limit the empire of physical science; but I really feel bound to confess that a great many very familiar and, at the same time, extremely important phenomena lie quite beyond its legitimate limits. I can not conceive, for example, how the phenomena of consciousness as such, and apart from the physical process by which they are called into existence, are to be brought within the bounds of physical science. Take the simplest possible example, the feeling of redness. Physical science tells us that it commonly arises as a consequence of molecular changes propagated from the eye to a certain part of the substance of the brain, when vibrations of the luminiferous ether of a certain character fall upon the retina. Let us suppose the process of physical analysis pushed so far that one could view the last link of this chain of molecules, watch their movements as if they were billiard-balls, weigh them, measure them, and know all that is physically knowable about them. Well, even in that case we should be just as far from being able to include the resulting phenomenon of consciousness, the feeling of redness, within the bounds of physical science, as we are at present. It would remain as unlike the phenomena we know under the names of matter and motion as it is now. If there is any plain truth upon which I have made it my business to insist over and over again it is this; and, whether it is a truth or not, my insistence upon it leaves not a shadow of justification for Mr. Lilly's assertion.

But I ask in this case, also, how is it conceivable that any man in possession of all his natural faculties should hold such an opinion? I do not suppose that I am exceptionally endowed because I have all my