264 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



rational apprehension of the desired end, like the muscular coordi- 

 nations involved in making a watch, are we not forced to ask the 

 question whether we can be sure that the mental states which have 

 accompanied the watchmaker's training are anything more than 

 the occasion of this training, or the stimulus under which it exhibits 

 itself ? Is it any harder to believe an imperfect watch or a rough, 

 unfinished part of a watch might be made unconsciously than it is 

 to believe a finished watch might be made in the same way? If 

 a perfect art may be carried on unconsciously, when attention is 

 otherwise occupied, why might not each imperfect step in its grad- 

 ual acquisition be taken when all conscious knowledge of the pro- 

 cess is lost through absorption in the work ? The question is not 

 whether men make watches voluntarily, for this all must admit, 

 even if we see reason to ask whether their unconscious produc- 

 tion is impossible. 



Whether we can answer it or not, the progress of zoology has 

 forced us to ask anew the old question whether a watch may not 

 be part of the chain of physical causation just as truly as the 

 spider's web or the cat. Thoughtful men in times long past have 

 asked this question in one form or another without finding any 

 answer which could command general assent, and while we may be 

 no more able to solve it, it is plain that the discovery of natural 

 selection has put the matter in a new light. 



If, fifty years ago, one had asserted that there can be no causal 

 relation between the mechanism of the watch and the movements 

 of the earth, except that which is found in the thinking minds of 

 those by whom watches are invented and made, I do not suppose 

 any one could then show the mistake in this assertion ; but Dar- 

 win and Wallace have shown that such a relation actually exists, 

 in the external world, and as independent as the metal in the 

 watch of human thinkers. Watches help the watchmaker to hold 

 his own in the struggle for existence and to make and keep a 

 place in a crowded world for himself and for his family, pre- 

 cisely as the spider's web helps the spider. While the external 

 world of men is incomparably more vast and diversified than that 

 of cats, the adjustment of our actions to the flight of time is use- 

 ful and important to us just as adjustment to the life of mice is 

 useful and important to cats ; for the lives of thousands hang 



