A SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION OF LIFE 83 



physical symbols of their consciousness, it would be the height of folly 

 to consider this information complete, for it leaves out the most im- 

 portant thing about men. This greatest asset of all so transcends in 

 value to us the knowledge of its physical basis, that even if every feel- 

 ing and thought we have comes only with such changes in our brains 

 as a skilful chemist and physicist might detect, measure and tabulate, 

 it still remains true that we have used and are using our minds ad- 

 vantageously in the almost complete absence of such records. Had 

 Shakespeare been dependent on a knowledge of the chemical changes 

 in his nervous tissues as he wrote Hamlet, it is needless to insist that the 

 play would not yet be written. To know a thing, to perceive and ap- 

 preciate beauty, to recognize natural law and truth, all these are ex- 

 periences in consciousness whose value and importance in human life 

 no man can deny, nor can any man give a satisfactory explanation of 

 the actions of his fellow-men without considering their feelings, emo- 

 tions, and thoughts. 



Since consciousness must be reckoned with in a scientific explanation 

 of men, the question arises whether something analogous is not also 

 true of living things in general. Does not the fitness of living things, 

 the fact that they perform acts useful to themselves in an environment 

 which is constantly shifting, and often very harsh; the fact that in 

 general everything during development, during digestion, during any 

 one of the complicated chains of processes which we find happens at 

 the right time, in the right place, and to the proper extent, does not 

 all this force us to believe that there is involved something more than 

 mere chemistry and physics? Does not all this show that there must 

 be present something, not consciousness necessarily, but yet its analogue 

 — a vital X? 



If we begin with what each one knows best of all, we may say that 

 we can not doubt the existence of consciousness in ourselves. By inti- 

 mate association with our fellow-men, and by comparing their acts with 

 our own, we infer that they too are conscious, though we do not know 

 this with the same certainty with which we know it of ourselves. If 

 we descend in the scale of life, we know that it is practical to deal with 

 many animals as though we knew for certain what in all probability is 

 true, namely, that they also are conscious, but when we descend still 

 farther, and reach forms built on a different plan, forms devoid of sense 

 organs, and of brains, forms leading totally different lives, and with 

 responses often simple and direct, what shall we say of them? Are 

 they conscious ? Is the amoeba, the germinal disc of a hen's egg, or the 

 sapling oak conscious? Nothing short of a method of communication 

 as complete, delicate and trustworthy as the language of men, could 

 ever enlighten us on this question, unless indeed we could transform 

 ourselves at will into amoeba?, hen's eggs or oak trees. Even then we 



