Ill SCIENCE AND MORALS 



casually associated for threescore years and ten 

 with the arrangement and movements of in 

 numerable millions of successively different mate 

 rial molecules, can be continued, in like associ 

 ation, with some substance which has not the 

 properties of matter and force ? " As Kant said, 

 on a like occasion, if anybody can answer that 

 question, he is just the man I want to see. If he 

 says that consciousness cannot exist, except in 

 relation of cause and effect with certain organic 

 molecules, I must ask how he knows that ; and if 

 he says it can, I must put the same question. 

 And I am afraid that, like jesting Pilate, I shall 

 not think it worth while (having but little time 

 before me) to wait for an answer. 



Lastly, with respect to the old riddle of the 

 freedom of the will. In the only sense in which 

 the word freedom is intelligible to me that is to 

 say, the absence of any restraint upon doing what 

 one likes within certain limits physical science 

 certainly gives no more ground for doubting it 

 than the common sense of mankind does. And if 

 physical science, in strengthening our belief in the 

 universality of causation and abolishing chance as 

 an absurdity, leads to the conclusions of deter 

 minism, it does no more than follow the track of 

 consistent and logical thinkers in philosophy and 

 in theology, before it existed or was thought of. 

 Whoever accepts the universality of the law of 

 causation as a dogma of philosophy, denies the 



