292 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



intellectual impulse. Its very popularity betokens its lack of pro- 

 fundity, and its delight in simple formulae is characteristic of that 

 mediocrity of thought which has much more ambition than real power 

 and accepts simplicity of formularization as equivalent to evidence. 

 It would seem stronger too, if it were less defended as a faith. Strong 

 partizans make feeble philosophers. 



Consciousness ought to be regarded as a biological phenomenon, 

 which the biologist has to investigate in order to increase the number of 

 verifiable data concerning it. In that way, rather than by speculative 

 thought, is the problem of consciousness to be solved, and it is precisely 

 because biologists are beginning to study consciousness that it is becom- 

 ing, as I said in opening, the newest problem of science. 



The biologist must necessarily become more and more the supreme 

 arbiter of all science and philosophy, for human knowledge is itself a 

 biological function which will become comprehensible just in the meas- 

 ure that biology progresses and brings knowledge of man, both by him- 

 self and through comparison with all other living things. We must 

 look to biologists for the mighty generalizations to come rather than 

 to the philosophers, because great new thoughts are generated more by 

 the accumulation of observations than by deep meditation. To know, 

 observe. Observe more and more, and in the end you will know. A 

 generalization is a mountain of observations ; from the summit the out- 

 look is broad. The great observer climbs to the outlook, while the 

 mere thinker struggles to imagine it. The best that can be achieved 

 by sheer thinking on the data of ordinary human experience we have 

 already as our glorious inheritance. The principal contribution of 

 science to human progress is the recognition of the value of accumulat- 

 ing data which are found outside of human experience. 



Twenty-three years ago, at Saratoga, I presented before the meeting 

 of this Association — which I then attended for the first time — a paper, 

 ' On the Conditions to be filled by a Theory of Life,' in which I main- 

 tained that, before we can form a theory of life, we must settle what 

 are the phenomena to be explained by it. So now, in regard to con- 

 sciousness it may be maintained that, for the present, it is more impor- 

 tant to seek additional positive knowledge than to hunt for ultimate 

 interpretations. We welcome therefore especially the younger science of 

 experimental psychology, which, it is gratifying to note, has made a 

 more auspicious start in America than in any other country. It com- 

 pletes the circle of the biological sciences. It is the department of 

 biology to which properly belongs the problem of consciousness. The 

 results of experimental psychology are still for the most part future. 

 But I shall endeavor to show that we may obtain some valuable prelim- 

 inary notions concerning consciousness from our present biological 

 knowledge. 



