THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



Huxley's ingenious mechanism, if a falling weight 

 produces feeling and is equivalent to consciousness, it 

 must be true that a man by feeling and by conscious- 

 ness can raise the weight. One would never expect 

 Huxley to have stated as scientific truth what to most 

 of us would be classed as a miracle. Is he of those who 

 by faith can move mountains ?^^ 



How is one to argue with the materialistic monist 

 or rather with the materialistic terminologist'? When 

 one thinks he has him cornered, like Proteus he as- 

 sumes a new form and slips from the grasp. I thought, 

 for once, Huxley had been so definite in his statement 

 that consciousness — and the term carries with it the 

 functions of life — was a phenomenon of mechanical 

 energy that I had finally cornered a monist and shown 

 him to be unescapably in error. But what was my sur- 

 prise to find Huxley was merely using materialistic 

 termifiology; his meaning was something quite dif- 

 ferent as one can see from this passage: "I have 

 already hinted, it seems to me pretty plainly, that 

 there is a third thing in the universe, to-wit, con- 



15 Huxley, of course, wrote this before the discovery of Fechncr's 

 law ; that sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the stimu- 

 lus. This law is frequently cited as an example that we are able to 

 express psychological phenomena in terms of mathematical formu- 

 lae. But, as Poincare points out, Fechner's law violates a funda- 

 mental law of quantity. No one will deny that, in mathematics, if 

 A = B, and B = C, then A = C. But by Fechner's law : if a weight 

 A of 10 grams and a weight B of 1 1 grams produce identical sen- 

 sations, and if the weight B of 1 1 grams and a weight C of 12 grams 

 also produce identical sensations, then we must say mathematically; 

 A = B, and B = C. But we also find that the weight A of 10 grams 

 and the weight C of 12 grams produce easily distinguishable sen- 

 sations, then we must, contrary to mathematical law, hold that 

 A is not equal to C. 



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