Reason and Invention. 859 



ions as to the things which are true, and our diverse inheritance of taste 

 and habit of life must always make us differ in our ideas of the things 

 that are beautiful, and of those which contribute to our interests. 



The brain is a machine for reflecting the conditions of its environ- 

 ment. It is a machine built up by such of the forces in the environ- 

 ment as it reflects. We call the reflection of these forces reason. It 

 follows that the original of reason is the interaction of the natural forces 

 in the environment itself. These forces must be able to work out a rea- 

 sonable result in the external world before a picture to be appreciated in 

 consciousness as reason or reasoning, could be produced on the reason- 

 ing machine, namely the brain, or indeed before such a machine itself 

 could be produced. A reasonable result in the operation of environing 

 forces can mean nothing else than the necessary result of efficient 

 causes. If no two things in nature ever did occupy towards each other 

 the relationship of cause and effect for example, there never could have 

 been an organ built up sensitive to the fact of such a relationship. 

 Nothing exists in nature except through the operation of efficient cause, 

 therefore everything in nature reasonably exists. Some authors have 

 used the term Supreme Reason to indicate the original cause of things. 

 There is indeed no generic difference between the efficient causes in the 

 environment, by which one physical result will occur, only on condition 

 that it has been preceded by a certain other one, and the efficient causes 

 by which a certain state of brain tissue will exist, only on condition 

 that a certain other state has immediately preceded it. To this chain of 

 physical action in the cerebrum, we give the title of reason. Perhaps 

 it is best to confine the title to this sort of action. Yet it is well to 

 keep in mind that reason thus defined, is only a subdivision or specific- 

 ally designated department of the great universe of cause and effect 

 from which it is physically inseparable. The term supreme is not ap- 

 plicable to this department of nature, but neither is it applicable to any 

 other ; and if it be admissible to use it at all, it must be understood of 

 the great aggregate of Kinetic Energy throughout the universe including 

 cerebral action. For there is no warrant for an assumption that there 

 is any original source of energy known to us, or that any one link in 

 the chain of cause and effect that is accessible to us, or imaginable by 

 us, is more original, more important, more necessary, or more dignified, 

 than any other. Where every one is necessary the possible inferiority 

 or superiority of any one is inconceivable. Since reason is the form of 

 energy which follows and imitates other forms, and is in a certain sense 

 a reflection of other forms, it follows that reason could not be a first 

 cause of things. It would be as reasonable to say that the image in 

 the looking-glass was the creator of the body that was reflected. 



The organic world is full of examples of the adaptations of instru- 



