THE EARLIEST ORGANIC MOVEMENTS. 461 



has given us mind into the bargain. It is, I say, at least possible. We 

 know too little of the facts cited as analogical to be able to say more. 



But there is another and a stronger objection. We know nothing 

 of mind, at first hand, except as it exists in man. Elsewhere, we are 

 forced to rely upon the 'objective criteria,' of which more presently. 

 What right, now, has the interactionist to bring mind into the organic 

 series at any point lower than man ? Why is he not bound, under the 

 law of parsimony, to keep mind out until its presence can be positively 

 demonstrated ? I think that the answer is plain ; he is so bound, unless 

 he can show cause for believing that mind, were it present, would be 

 of service to the organism in the struggle for existence. As he has 

 called upon his opponent to 'prove the necessity of mind at the first 

 appearance of life,' so we might retort that he is himself bound to show 

 the indispensableness of mind to the struggling organism. But we will 

 let the more modest phrasing stand, and proceed to an examination 

 of tlie arguments. 



The locus classicus for the survival value of consciousness is Chapter 

 V. of James' ' Principles of Psychology.' The arguments are three. 



(a) "The brain is an instrument of possibilities, but of no certainties. " 

 . . . Its hair-trigger organization makes of it a happy-go-lucky, hit-or-miss 

 affair. It is as likely to do the crazy as the sane thing at any given mo- 

 ment. . . . But the consciousness, with its own ends present to it, and knowing 

 also well which possibilities lead thereto and which away, will, if endowed with 

 causal efficacy, reinforce the favorable possibilities, and repress the unfavorable 

 and indifferent ones." 



The facts bear out this 'a priori analysis'; for 



'consciousness is only intense when nerve-processes are hesitant.' (6) The 

 phenomena of vicarious function 'seem to form another bit of circumstantial 

 evidence.' "Nothing seems at first sight more unnatural than that [the re- 

 maining parts of the brain] should vicariously take up the duties of a part 

 now lost without those duties as such exerting any persuasive or coercive force." 

 (c) "If pleasures and pains have no efficacy, one does not see . . . why the 

 most noxious acts, such as burning, might not give thrills of delight, and the 

 most necessary ones, such as breathing, cause agony." 



The first of these arguments is little less than ama?>ing. It asserts 

 that the brain, the central and ruling organ of the whole body, has 

 been so far exempt from the influence of natural selection that it is 

 'indeterminate,' 'an instrument of possibilities,' 'as likely to do the 

 crazy as the sane thing' I 'The natural law of an organ constituted 

 after this fashion can be nothing but a law of caprice.' Does such 'a 

 priori analysis' commend itself to the neurologist? I should rather 

 say that the brain, combining as it does an immense structural com- 

 plexity with great architectural simplicity, has been stably and de- 

 terminately molded for the part which it plays in the economy of the 

 organism; that it is a marvelously reliable organ, definitely disposed 



