THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 191 



possession or absence of technical knowledge, which makes 

 Robinsan a favorite, and Driesch a persona non grata, with 

 "the very best representatives" of contemporary science. 

 "Science," says a writer in the Atlantic Monthly (Oct., 1915), 

 "has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which 

 clings to its skirts ; it has thrown contempt on all learning that 

 does not depend upon it; and it has bribed the sketches by 

 giving us immense material comforts." 



Here, however, we are concerned with the fact, rather 

 than the justice, of this discrimination which the scientific 

 world makes between philosopher and philosopher. Certain 

 it is that Robinson has received no end of encomiums from 

 scientists, who apparently lack the literary gifts to expound 

 their own philosophy, and that his claim to represent the 

 views of a large and influential section of the scientific world 

 is, in all probability, entirely correct. It is this manifest 

 approval of scientific men which lends especial interest to 

 the remarks of this scientific dilettante, and we shall quote 

 them as expressing the prevalent scientific view on the origin 

 of man, a view which, with but slight variations, has persisted 

 from the time of Darwin down to the present day. 



"The recognition," says Robinson, "that mankind is a spe- 

 cies of animal, is, like other important discoveries, illuminat- 

 ing." {Science, July 28, 1922, p. 74.) To refer to the recog- 

 nition of man's animality as a discovery is a conceit too 

 stupid for mere words to castigate. Surely, there was no need 

 of the profound research or delicate precision of modern 

 science to detect the all too obvious similarity existing between 

 man and beast. Mankind did not have to await the advent of 

 an "enlightened" nineteenth, or twentieth century to be assured 

 of the truth of a commonplace so trite and palpable. Even 

 the "benighted" scholastics of medieval infamy had wit 

 enough to define man as a rational animal. Indeed, it would 

 be a libel on human intelligence to suppose that anyone, in 

 the whole history of human thought, was ever sufficiently 

 fatuous to dispute the patent fact that man is a sentient or- 



