74 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



joined to an expression of his confidence that these observations 

 may be repeated, and are no more than might have been expected. 



When the believer in innate ideas goes farther than this, and 

 asserts that the " forms " or ** archetypal ideas " which thus arise 

 in the mind are universal or necessary, the zoologist must ask 

 him how this is known. Things that are innate, or natural, are 

 not always universal or necessary, for while parental affection is 

 natural, some parents are unnatural. 



If the believer in innate ideas asserts that, while our latent or 

 potential sensational knowledge does not become active or mani- 

 fest until it is called forth by some change in the physical world, 

 we are the ultimate and efficient causes of our own thoughts, the 

 zoologist must ask, once more, how this is known. If any assert 

 that we know that our thoughts are ours because we can control 

 them, the physiologist, while admitting the control, asks how we 

 know that the way we control them is different from the way we 

 control our visual sensations by going into a dark room, or by 

 shutting our eyes. 



All admit that all normal human beings who are not helpless 

 infants, or aged dotards, are able to control their thoughts, and 

 the actions which follow them, in some practical sense of the 

 words. 



" If I take things as they are and ask any plain, untutored man 

 whether he acts or is free in any particular action, he readily 

 assents, and I as readily, believe him from what I find within. 

 And if man be free, he is plainly accountable. But if you shall 

 define, abstract, suppose, and it shall follow that according to you 

 definitions, abstractions, and suppositions, there can be no free 

 dom in man, and you shall therefore infer that he is not account 

 able, I shall make bold to depart from your metaphysical abstract 

 sense and appeal to the common sense of mankind." 



May not the modest zoologist, who humbly admits that, while 

 he does not know what the relation between mind and matter 

 is, he would like to find out, also ask, in all sincerity, whether it 

 is he who has perplexed our common sense by defining and ab- 

 stracting and supposing.? May he not also ask, not in a critical 

 spirit, but in order that he may approach this difficult subject 

 without prejudice, whether some of the responsibility for this 



I 



