SHORTER ARTICLES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 469 



as those of sensitive instruments — witli 

 no intelligence whatever in the action.' 



Now, while the word automaton, in 

 the literal sense, may be olFensive as 

 applied to man, coupled wilh the word 

 'conscious' it merely signitu^s a nega- 

 tion of the doctrine of free will or un- 

 caused action. In other words, Huxley 

 suggests that the state of consciousness 

 preceding any so-called voluntary act 

 is merely a part of the mechanism of 

 that act, and not its cause, the cause 

 being found in immediate external 

 stimvili and molecular conditions, the 

 result of the accumulated effects of 

 more remote external stimuli incident 

 during both individual and ancestral 

 existence, and forming links in a long 

 chain of causation whicn is finally lost 

 in the infinite and absolute cause of all 

 things. 



Professor Shaler laboriously seeks to 

 prove by Huxley's own familiar argu- 

 ments the analogy between the psychic 

 life of animals and that of man. It 

 is really amusing to find Huxley, the 

 author of ' Man's Place in Natui'e ' and 

 always a believer in the continuity of 

 organic life, credited with doctrines 

 actually subversive of his most cher- 

 ished theories. 



The philosophers of the extreme 

 * Darwinian ' and monistic schools 

 would be astonished and shocked, I 

 am sure, to learn that they have com- 

 mitted philosophical ' hari kari ' by 

 regarding an elephant as an automa- 

 ton. Surely the formation of species 

 by the almost inconceivably slow and 

 gradual process described by Darwin 

 is incompatible with any theory calling 

 for the sudden appearance of conscious 

 man. Such a theory might be held 

 more consistently by De Vries or others 

 who question the validity of Darwin's 

 generalizations and ask us to believe in 

 the sudden ' mutation ' of species. 



One is loath to believe Professor 

 Shaler serious in his statement that 

 the monists have sought to establish 

 their conception of the universe by 

 exploiting a distinctly dualistic theory. 



Ernst Haeckcl, wlio may I)e cited as a 

 type of the extreme monistic school, 

 asserts his belief that consciousness in 

 the true sense of the word is present in 

 all organisms having a centralized 

 nervous system; furthermore, Haeckel 

 invites us to the study of the ' sublime 

 monism of Spinoza,' which, after all, 

 is the very pantheism which Professor 

 Shaler says has never held an im- 

 portant place in occidental philosophy. 



It is not a far cry from Spinoza's 

 self-existent universal svibstance, of 

 which consciousness is only a mode, 

 or Schelling's ' world soul ' composed 

 of the union of a positive and negative 

 principle to Spencer's ' unknowable 

 absolute.' In Spinoza and Schelling 

 we have the pantheism of the East 

 purified and shorn of its allegory and 

 imagery. In Spencer we have the es- 

 sentially modern, scientific arrange- 

 ment of the data of our consciousness 

 leading to conclusions only faintly 

 adumbrated in the hazy speculations 

 of a priori philosophers. 



It has become the fashion lately in 

 certain quarters to disparage the work 

 of that splendid band of truth seekers 

 who created modern science, not only 

 by what they contributed in exact 

 knowledge, but by the inspiration they 

 afforded others and the impetus they 

 gave to rational methods of research 

 and speculation. Doubtless the gen- 

 eralizations of the great evolutionists 

 will be modified by advancing knowl- 

 edge, but I am confident that far into 

 the future the pathway blazed by these 

 men through the wilderness of ignor- 

 ance, tradition and error will always 

 be found leading towards truth, though 

 possibly at times through tortuous 

 ways. Hero worship and the weight of 

 authority should not be permitted to 

 stay the march of progress, but the 

 cause of science is not best served by 

 reading into the works of the great 

 men of the past views which they 

 would have been the first to repudiate. 



EuG. L. FiSK. 



New York. 



