156 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



with the hoary old philosophical conundrum of free-will, 

 but the issue is the very live and real one of the fundamental 

 veracity of our clear conscious experience. If in the last 

 resort we cannot believe our consciousness and senses, we 

 had better give up the problem of knowledge altogether. 



In this dilemma it seems to me that only one course 

 remains open for us, and that is to accept the direct deliver- 

 ance of our senses at its face value. If we cannot trust 

 our consciousness when it produces clear, direct and 

 immediate testimony to our power of self-direction and 

 action, how can we rely on it when it proceeds by way 

 of inference to build up a vast construction such as the 

 universal causality of Nature? If we cannot trust our 

 experience where it is perfectly clear and unequivocal, it 

 is useless to attempt to proceed any further in our search 

 for truth. But then the question at once arises, how our 

 minds can act on Nature without breaking the causal chain 

 of Nature. How is the link of Mind inserted into that 

 closed chain? It is unnecessary to discuss at length the 

 answers which philosophers and scientists have attempted 

 in reply to these questions. Science on the whole tends to 

 accept the physical view of natural necessity and to look 

 upon mind as ineffective, as an epiphenomenon which does 

 not avail to alter the course of Nature. It is forced to this 

 view in spite of the difficulty which thereby arises of explain- 

 ing how this useless and ineffective organ of mind could 

 have arisen in the grim struggle for existence ; what biological 

 function it performs and what survival or other value it 

 possesses. But that question need not detain us here. 

 Nor need we consider the theories of psycho-physical 

 parallelism and pre-established harmony and such like, to 

 which philosophers have been driven in their distress in 

 order to explain the apparent miracle of the adjusted 

 co-working of body and mind. There is no doubt that 

 none of these views can be looked upon as satisfactory. 

 And the necessity remains for further exploration. Instead 

 of rummaging in the scrap-heap of philosophy, let us rather 

 explore some new way out amid these historic problems 



