AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 



It is true that he defines a man's self-conscious- 

 ness as the power of reflecting upon " such points 

 as whence he comes and whither he will go, 

 or what is life and death, and so forth " ; 

 but the " so forth " is an elastic phrase. It cer- 

 tainly covers such questions as what is pain 

 and pleasure, happiness or unhappiness, " and so 

 forth." 



You must remember that Darwin was laboring 

 to trace the mental likeness of man and other 

 animals, for the purpose of establishing his theory 

 of the descent of man ; and it is characteristic of 

 the absolute fairness of his mind and the dry im- 

 partiality of his conclusions that he frankly aban- 

 doned the argument when he reached the human 

 faculty of " self-consciousness." 



Darwin conceded this, although he was striving 

 to establish an unpopular doctrine now firmly 

 established in all scientific minds by heaping up 

 evidence in its favor. Now we, on the other hand, 

 who have accepted his doctrine of evolution as the 

 mainspring of the machinery of existence, are more 

 concerned in discovering the checks and limita- 

 tions which modify its working. And I think that 

 it is little short of marvelous that in the honesty 

 of his intellect and in spite of his urgent desire to 

 establish the absolute identity of animal and human 

 emotions and mental powers Darwin should have 

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