MECHANICAL BASIS OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 2$^ 



admission that there is something in the organism which Hes under 

 or goes beyond the processes of mechanics. Prof. Ray Lankester 

 seems to admit as much when he says in a passage quoted above 

 that 



" man stands face to face with the mechanism of nature. It is his 

 destiny to understand and control it." 



Prof. Ward gives the following reason for holding this view, 

 and claims for it the support of the Physicists as Loi'd Kelvin 

 claimed that of the Biologists : — 



" In the inanimate world we note a general downward trend, the resolution 

 of potential energy into kinetic, and of available forms of this into forms 

 which are unavailable ; in other words we find a uniform tendency to 

 pass in the shortest and easiest way to physical quiescence, fixity, and 

 equilibrium. But in the organic world we find a steadily increasing 

 differentiation of structure and composition, entailing a large storage of 

 potential energy." 



" So diametrically opposed are the two (the organic and the inorganic 

 tendencies) that our eminent physicists, with scarcely an exception proclaim 

 the problem of life to be ultra-physical."* 



Of course we recognise that no scientilic question is to be settled 

 by the counting of heads ; yet these quotations may serve, at any 

 rate, to make us pause in the tendency to ascribe too wide a scope 

 to the mechanical theory before that theory has been sufficiently 

 tested. 



(B) What is true of Organic Life in general is still more true in 

 regard to the problem of sensation and feeling — e.g., the feelings 

 of pleasure and pain. Even these scientists who incline most 

 strongly to the mechanical theory give up the attempt to account 

 for, or to describe, sensation and feeling, in mechanical ways. 



Thus Huxley, who says : 



" I believe we shall arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness, 

 just as we have arrived at a mechanical equivalent of heat."f 



says in another place : 



" it seems to me pretty plain that besides matter and motion there 

 is a third thing in the Universe, to wit consciousness, which, in the 

 hardness of my heart or head, I cannot see to be matter or force or any 

 conceivable modification of either." | 



So Tyndall, who spoke of matter containing " the promise and 

 potency of life," says nevertheless that 



" the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts 

 of consciousness is unthinkable," 



and that 



" the chasm between the two classes remains intellectualh' impassable." 



(C) I come now to my last point. There are certain scientists 

 who maintain the fundamental difference between mechanical 

 and psychical processes who nevertheless attempt to save the 

 mechanical theory by the theory commonly known as " Conscious 

 Automatism." 



* (" Naturalism and Agnosticism," vol. i, p. 276, and vol. ii, p. 26). 



t (Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 22, p. '/?<). 



J (" Evolution and Ethics," p. 117 ff.) 



§ (Address to British Association at Norwich, and Belfast Address), 



