Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/472

468 300-350 feet across at the base is slightly curved in the direction of Saint Pierre; the eastern face is smooth and grooved, showing well the marks of attrition against the encasing wall of rock which lined its channel of exit. On the west and southwest it is 'cavernous' and slaggy, having the impress of successive eruptions which have blown its parts asunder. On the night of June 12, immediately preceding my ascent, the southwest base was intensely luminous, shining out bright red with the lava that was being forced into it. A few days later, a thin vapor pennant was seen to issue from the absolute apex. Basal eruptions were taking place almost continuously.

2em

Permit me to call your attention to an article by Professor N. S. Shaler in the July issue of Harper's Monthly under the caption 'Plant and Animal Intelligence.' This article contains so many glaring inaccuracies and misinterpretations of the views of Huxley, the monistic philosophers and those whom he terms 'men of the extreme Darwinian school' that in the interest of scientific truth—of which your journal has always been such a valuable exponent—some action on your part to correct the evil effect of these errors would be both timely and consistent. Now, I am not posing as a champion of monistic philosophy, but the public should not be misled with respect to what monism really means, nor should the broad-minded Huxley, the enemy of dogma, whether in science or religion, be held responsible for views not only foreign to his beliefs, but incompatible with his habits of thought.

Professor Shaler asserts that Huxley was the originator of the theory of animal automatism. One is tempted to believe that the learned professor has had no time to peruse Huxley's monograph on the subject, but has jumped at the conclusion that the title signifies a belief in that theory in its narrowest sense. The great name of Descartes, the real originator of the theory, is not even mentioned, and Professor Shaler seems to be ignorant of the fact that Huxley's interesting monograph is merely a critical analysis of Descartes's thesis, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the great seventeenth century philosopher's views on the subject were untenable, although in part justified by his marvelously prophetic insight into the truths of modern psychology and physiology.

The following extracts from Huxley's monograph show very clearly his thought on these subjects:

But though I do not think that Descartes' hypothesis can be positively refuted, I am not disposed to accept it. The doctrine of continuity is too well established for it to be permissible to me to suppose that any complex natural phenomenon comes into existence suddenly, and without being preceded by simpler modifications; and very strong arguments would be needed to prove that such complex phenomena as those of consciousness, first make their appearance in man. . . . We know, further, that the lower animals possess, though less developed, that part of the brain which we have every reason to believe to be the organ of consciousness in man; and as, in other cases, function and organ are proportional, so we have a right to conclude it is with the brain; and that the brutes, though they may not possess our intensity of consciousness, and though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own.

It is true that Huxley, in another part of his essay, offers the postulate that man, and other higher organisms, are conscious automata, but this is very different from believing, as Professor Shaler asserts he did, 'that mind was a peculiarity of man, the lower animals being essentially automata, all their apparent intelligence being due to mere reflex action essentially comparable with mechanical movements such