THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS 



tivity"; but as he fingers and smells and sees it, 

 does it ever occur to him that he is fingering and 

 smelling and looking at mind ? so that he is entitled 

 to say, "This morning I bought a small piece of 

 consciousness, cut a thin section of it, stained it by 

 Golgi's method, and mounted it in Canada bal- 

 sam"? Even granted that the thin section is 

 really a manifestation of energy, can anything 

 more fatuous than such a mode of thinking be 

 conceived ? 



Of course the materialistic or energistic theory 

 of mind can be framed in terms slightly less ridicu- 

 lous. If we avoid the use of the term "matter" 

 and confine ourselves to such words as "energy," 

 we can declare, if we like, that " consciousness is a 

 form of energy." This is by far the most plausible 

 form in which the theory can be presented, for we 

 are easily deceived by the excellence of the meta- 

 phor into thinking that it is more than a metaphor. 

 But to name the most serious objection that oc- 

 curs all the natural sciences have united in the 

 demonstration of the fact expressed by the phrase 

 "conservation of energy." Heat, light, electricity 

 may be transformed, but they are never lost; nor 

 is any energy ever created. Those who would 

 persuade us that "consciousness is a form of en- 

 ergy" must be good enough to demonstrate that 

 its manifestations are compatible with this law. 

 But how is this to be done while no one can even 

 furnish us with any unit or scale of consciousness ? 

 Even if we assume, for argument's sake, that ex- 

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