ii8 evolution: the ages and tomorrow 



vividly must have arisen. In some unexplained fashion there seems 

 to reside in every living thing, though particularly evident in ani- 

 mals, an inner, subjective relation to its bodily organization. This 

 has finally evolved into what is called consciousness. Such an inner 

 relationship is most evident in the sensations experienced when 

 nerves are stimulated, its origin evidently going back to the be- 

 ginning of the stimulus-response reaction in the simplest of living 

 things. I ask you to consider the possibility that through this same 

 inner relationship the mechanism which guides and controls vital 

 activity toward specific ends, the pattern or tension set up in 

 protoplasm which so sensitively regulates its growth and be- 

 havior, can also be experienced, and that this is the genesis of de- 

 sire, purpose, and all other mental activities.* 



And again from Sinnott's Cell and Psyche: 



. . . the thesis is briefly this: that biological organization (con- 

 cerned with organic development and physiological activity) and 

 psychical activity (concerned with behavior and thus leading to 

 mind) are fiindamejitally the same thing. This may be looked at 

 from the outside, objectively, in the laboratory, as a biological fact; 

 or from the inside, subjectively, as the direct experience of desire 

 or purpose. t 



It is interesting to note here how many of our leaders in 

 physics and biology have shown a willingness to adopt the 

 full meaning and significance of the notion of the organism, 

 and to aid in establishing the continuity between the two 

 sciences. The emphasis on the regulatory character of 

 protoplasm, on its origins, and on the over-all concept of 

 nature's drive toward organization is the beginning of a new 

 era in science. If mind in matter-energy can, through the 

 organizing genius of universal evolution, finally emerge as 

 the creative imagination and philosophy of man, as evidence 

 seems now clearly to indicate, then we must indeed revise 

 our whole scientific outlook. The linkage of mind in matter- 

 energy, the inseparable reality of Bruno and Spinoza, must 

 always be uppermost in our minds. Biologists and physicists 



* E. W. Sinnott, Cell and Psyche (Chapel Hill: University of North 

 Carolina Press, 1950), pp. 55-56. 

 t Ibid., p. 48. 



