TEE EARLIEST ORGANIC MOVEMENTS. 463 



have understood it, does not 'make sense/ except from the standpoint 

 which it is supposed to recommend. And the instances do not help us. 

 Breathing is not a source of such extreme pleasure, as things are, that 

 a reversal of relations should make it an agony, and the nervous proc- 

 esses in burning are by no means hesitant, and ought, therefore, to yield 

 nothing so intensive as delight.* 



So far, then, the argument from parsimony seems to have little 

 positive content. It simply asserts that the ontis probandi lies with 

 those who make mind and life coeval. Whether the parallelist can 

 shoulder the burden we shall see later on. In the meantime, let me 

 insist upon the limitation that attaches to both theories alike. The 

 parallelist can never explain why life should be attended by mind. He 

 thinks that there is evidence of the connection, but he cannot further 

 account for it. The interactionist is apt to suppose that, by his appeal 

 to parsimony, he has furnished an explanation of the appearance of 

 consciousness; mind came upon the scene, when and because it was 

 useful to the organism. The fallacy is obvious. The development of 

 mind under the rule of natural selection is one thing; the question of 

 the origin of mind is another, and is sometliing that lies wholly beyond 

 the ken of science. 



(2) But we may leave the sphere of formal argument. The 

 theory of originally unconscious movement finds factual support, it 

 may be said, and support of the strongest kind, in recent experimental 

 investigations. The movements of the lowest animals are not random 

 and variable, but simple and stereotyped ; they are, in many cases, even 

 simpler than the reflex, as we ordinarily conceive of the physiological 

 reflex; they may be referred to mere 'tropisms,' direct physico-chemical 

 responses to physico-chemical changes in the environment. Nay more, 

 the complicated activities of such highly developed organisms as ants 

 and bees may be subsumed, with surprising completeness, under some 

 such heading as the 'chemoreflex.'t Here is proof positive. What 

 more can we ask? 



We may ask, first, for a clearer recognition of the point of view 

 from which these investigations have been made. The psychologist 

 has no choice but to begin at the upper end of the organic scale — 

 to begin with himself, and his own mind — and to work downwards, 

 interpreting as he goes. The road is full of pitfalls; there is constant 



*W. James, 'The Principles of Psychology,' 1890, i., 138 ff., 67 ff. ; ii., 584, 

 591 f. 



t I have in mind such investigations as those of A. Bethe, Pfliiger's 

 Archiv, Ixx., 1898, 15, and H. S. Jennings, Amer. Journ. of Physiol., ii., 1899, 

 311; cf. Amer. Journ. of Psych., X., 1899, 503. The number of these studies 

 is steadily increasing. On the following arguments, cf. E. Claparfede, Revue 

 phil., 1901, 481 fT. 



