Is2 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



nerve-matter and the manifestations of consciousness disagree, seem 

 unlike after our best examinations, it is unreasonable to give them a 

 common cause*, they can not, by us as rational beings, be brought into 

 such close relation. 



Permit me to ask attention to a further consideration. Neither 

 the direct knowledge given b\ our senses, nor this inferred knowledge, 

 furnishes a solution of the mystery which belongs to the subjects we 

 investigate. It is often said and as often forgotten that all explana- 

 tion of natural processes consists solely in the resolution of involved 

 combinations of activities into their elements. We make a false de- 

 mand of the evolutionist when we insist that he shall tell us how the 

 biological is evolved from the a-biological, and he makes a false de- 

 mand of the spiritualist when he requires to be told how mind acts 

 on brain or brain on mind. There is no such thing as being told the 

 how of what takes place. The starting-points are unknowable in 

 their nature and in the reasons of their operations. If I have not 

 completely misunderstood that vigorous book, " Modern Physical Con- 

 cepts," the purpose of its writer was to show that the so-called bases 

 of physical science do not represent entities any more than the terms 

 vitality, justice, humanity, law, represent entities, but that the bases 

 of physical science stand for the present highest generalizations of the 

 mind working inductively, that these bases do not exist out yonder 

 among the spaces, but here within the thinker, and that when we 

 affirm matter to be, outside of us, exactly thus and so, force exactly 

 thus and so, we are but repeating the mediaeval procedure of declaring 

 that beneath the oak-tree there is an oak nature, beneath human 

 beings a human nature. Judge Stallo, as I think, found the mind at 

 its old trick in modern physical science, the trick of actualizing, and 

 thrusting out yonder into space, its thoughts, its concepts, and of 

 worshiping them as lords of all, explainers forever. Service is ren- 

 dered here, not for orthodoxy as against heterodoxy, not for spiritual- 

 ism as against materialism, but for all truth as against all error. We 

 need to keep in mind that the only thing which can be accomplished 

 by science, or by philosophy, as the unification of the sciences, is a 

 detection and expression of resemblance between phenomena and 

 between the modes of their activity. This may give us a law of evo- 

 lution extending over all manifestations, a law not perched up on 

 matter compelling it to evolve, but a law expressive of our feeling of 

 similarity where we had previously felt diversity. 



This resemblance is detected by observation. Now, observation is 

 a process, not a thing. Its character is never determined by the ob- 

 ject observed. Observation is not an instrument possessed by the 

 physicist alone. Observation is an intellectual operation, and may be 

 as genuine, as honest, when directed to thoughts, emotions, volitions, 

 as when brought to bear on stars, rocks, or brains. The time has 

 come when the truth shall assert itself that philosophy is an attempt 



