436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



believed to originate, it has only been developed from germs that were 

 already present. Yet those who will not adhere to a wholly childish 

 view may be logically compelled to concede a mechanical origin of 

 life. Hardly any one can now be found to advocate the doctrine of 

 periods of creation by which the Almighty was supposed to have re- 

 peatedly destroyed his work to do it over again for better or worse, in 

 the face of geological facts and the theory of descent. The believer 

 in a final cause must admit that such a proceeding is little worthy of a 

 creative Almighty. It is most highly becoming to him once by super- 

 natural interference with the world's mechanism to call the simplest 

 germ of life into being, and let further organic creation proceed from 

 that. If this is conceded, it is permissible to ask if it is not still more 

 worthy of the creative Almighty to avoid even that single interven- 

 tion by means of established laws, and to endow matter from the be- 

 ginning with the power of originating life under suitable conditions. 

 There is no reason for denying this view, but with its acceptance the 

 possibility of a mechanical origin of life is conceded, and we have only 

 to consider whether the matter which can thus mechanically compose 

 itself into a living condition always existed, or whether, as Leibnitz 

 thought, it was created by God. 



I conclude that astronomical knowledge of the brain would not 

 make consciousness more comprehensible on a mechanical basis because 

 it must be indifferent to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxy- 

 gen, nitrogen, etc., how they are situated or how they move, unless 

 they already had individual consciousness ; and this woidd not help to 

 explain consciousness in general, or the aggregated consciousness of 

 the brain. 



I hold this conclusion to be fully convincing. Herr Haeckel, how- 

 ever, has advanced as a metaphysical axiom that every atom possesses 

 an inherent quantity of force, and is in this sense " be-souled," and 

 that without the acceptance of an " atom-soul " the commonest and 

 most general phenomena of chemistry are inexplainable. " Pleasure 

 and displeasure," he says, " desire and aversion, attraction and repul- 

 sion, must be common to all the atoms, for the movements of atoms 

 that take place in the formation and decomposition of all chemical 

 compounds are susceptible of explanation only if we ascribe feeling 

 and will to them. ... If the ' will ' of man and the higher animals 

 seems to be free in contrast with the ' fixed ' will of the atoms, that is 

 a delusion provoked by the contrast between the extremely complicated 

 voluntary movements of the former and the extremely simple volun- 

 tary movements of the latter." Quite in the spirit of the false phi- 

 losophy from the same source that has been so pernicious to German 

 science, Herr Haeckel goes on with the construction upon " unconscious 

 recollection" of a certain "vivified" atom-complex that he calls "plas- 

 tidule." 



Thus does he disdain the path of inductive research shown us by 



