134 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



pansion of a muscle. But all this observation would 

 be unmeaning, would be even impossible, if there 

 were not in the observer rational discrimination 

 dealing with cause and effect, so as to interpret 

 occurrences. Organism does not provide for such 

 observations. 



Beyond this, in the field of experimental psychology, 

 lies the inquiry concerned with the relation of organic 

 functions to the facts of consciousness. Here, as we 

 have seen, the observer is restricted to individual 

 experience for the main part of his observations. The 

 questions raised are of a different kind, for they con 

 cern the relation of organism to a higher form of life. 

 On the one side, are variations of sensory experience ; 

 on the other, discrimination of surface, form, and 

 colour in objects. Quite beyond this, entirely out of 

 reach here, is our treatment of the problems of 

 existence, speculative in their character. Between 

 the physical and the speculative, there lies a wide 

 region for investigation, within which may await 

 us many discoveries of deep interest. To this area 

 belong such questions as these: how the higher 

 emotions and loftier sentiments are related to bodily 

 functions, affecting rate of circulation of the blood, 

 how the rush of sympathetic feeling connects with 

 physiological action, how patriotic feeling by its 

 utterance makes the cheeks glow, how abstract 

 thought places restraint on muscular activity, yet 

 taxes the brain. Throughout, a higher phase of action 

 is prior to the organic, and even accounts for the 

 latter. So distinct are the phenomena of conscious 

 ness, from those movements measurable by mechanical 

 contrivance, that the former do not come within the 



