[BRETT] REVOLT AGAINST REASON 15 



having abandoned Filmer and the fantastic habit of beginning from 

 Melchisedec, passed from a natural man (whom Nature frankly 

 disowned) to a still more blatant type also called "natural," but in 

 every sense a manufactured article. 



It has occurred to many people at different times that the most 

 comprehensive question we can ask to-day is based upon the historical 

 evolution which I have thus suggested rather than traced. That 

 question might be put in this form: What place has reason in modern 

 life; or again we might ask: Is democracy naturally allied with the 

 philosophy which calls itself irrationalism ? From answering that 

 question man may be absolved ; he is not only a little lower than the 

 angels, but also a little less reliable than the minor prophets. But 

 something may be done toward analysing the situation, and for this 

 our earlier study gives us guidance since it indicates where and how 

 the influences may be found at work. 



In the first place, modern physiology and biology have tended to 

 emphasise the original doctrine of Descartes; we are largely automatic 

 in the sense that our life comprises tropisms, reflexes, hereditary 

 tendencies, habits, brain-paths or even hereditary memories; we 

 virtuously get up steam, but the permanent way is laid and we are 

 but rolling stock; a Huxley arises to defend in essence the Cartesian 

 automatism and complete the condemnation of reason by making 

 consciousness a by-product or epiphenomenon. 



To the sciences of the body must be added the science of mind. 

 The great French anatomist, Bichat, bequeathed a part of his doctrine 

 to Schopenhauer and from the original stock sprang the first doctrine 

 of the Unconscious, a strange growth half physiology and half 

 Buddhism. The great English doctor, Hartley, inspired the work of 

 Charcot, and so indirectly produced that school of psychology which 

 is to-day one of the brightest ornaments of French learning. From 

 this school we have learned much about the nature and meaning of 

 consciousness, to which must now be added as much of Freud's work 

 as seems to the individual good. However much we leave unappro- 

 priated, there must inevitably remain enough to leaven the whole 

 lump. The gradual but sure removal of one belief after another had, 

 before 1860, created a profound sense of despair in some, of hope in 

 others. The physiologists of 1860 were conscious of their aims; 

 they were not only advancing the science of membranes and tissues; 

 they were also emancipating the human race from the superstitions 

 which had established themselves as eternal truths under the titles, 

 "Soul," "Freedom," "Immortality," or "God." The materialism 

 made in Germany, no less than its predecessor the German meta- 



