456 NATURAL SCIENCE. august. 



Morgan out of place in Physics and Biology. And yet the question 

 has practical bearings as will be evident to any reader who carefully 

 -studies the chapter on Probability, or the concluding section of the 

 chapter on Space and Time in the " Grammar." 



Happily, there can be no two opinions about the importance of 

 clearly distinguishing between Perceptions and Conceptions, and by 

 the aid of an analogy Professor Lloyd Morgan very clearly illustrates 

 the process by which, in many cases, scientific conceptions are 

 reached. But for whose benefit has Professor Lloyd Morgan written 

 the sentence which follows, in which we are told that " the perceptual 

 conception '{sic) as such has neither a continuous boundary as 

 idealised in geometry, nor a molecular constitution as idealised in 

 physics" ? Professor Lloyd Morgan must have forgotten a passage in 

 Mill's " Logic," which tells the reader that " although I cannot dig 

 the ground unless I have the idea of the ground, still it would be 

 ridiculous to describe digging as putting one idea into another." 



The Geometry of Motion is left to the Physicists to criticise.' 

 This chapter, together with those on Matter and the Laws of Motion, 

 contain a full exposition of what the author means by mechanism in 

 Nature, but the reviewer can say nothing more than that it appears 

 to him more simple and more scientifically accurate to regard 

 matter and motion as frankly objective and ("perceptually") 

 external — a dictum which does not call for further comment. 



Some remarks in Professor Pearson's chapter on Life have given 

 Professor Lloyd Morgan an opportunity to defend his well-known 

 views upon the origin of consciousness. The reviewer holds that 

 consciousness has been developed from something which he calls 

 Metakinesis, which something is said to be of the same nature as 

 consciousness, but to have not yet risen to the level of consciousness. 



Professor Pearson thinks that we might as well talk of life as 

 having been developed from something " which-is-not-yet-life-but- 

 which-may-develop-into-life." 



There seems but small chance that the author of the " Grammar 

 of Science " will be led to believe in Metakinesis by Professor Lloyd 

 Morgan's new defence of it, for, judged by the principles of that work, 

 the scientific legitimacy of the theory is more than doubtful. 



It is one of the canons of Professor Pearson's scientific method 

 that a Conception, in order to be valid, must be derivable from 

 Perception ; also, it is essential to the validity of the Conception 

 that it should be self-consistent. But what phase of our perceptual 

 experience is described by Metakinesis ? and what can we say of its 

 self-consistency when we are told in one place that it is phenomenal, 

 and in another that it is arrived at by carrying to a conceptual limit 

 that which is suggested in the sphere of the perceptual ? 



^ See review in Nature, June 2, 1892, and correspondence in Nature, June 30, 

 July 7, July 14. 



