ATTITUDES TOWARD HUMAN NATURE 27 



ness? Still another of these pathetically one-sided and superficial 

 theories of man as a machine pure and simple which would 

 make him the most complicated of mechanisms, a marvel of 

 intricate parts, but would deprive him of his essence as self- 

 conscious unique in the universe. Man, thinking man, at any 

 rate, dreads to lose the cherished impregnable conviction that he 

 is something apart, inherently, and therefore infinitely different 

 from every other phenomenon in the range of his cosmos. 



A thorough dissection of the relation and attitude toward 

 psychic material of the consistent physiologist, who refuses to 

 deal in contradictory terms, would lead us a little too far. So 

 would the reconciliation between the claims of mind and the 

 concept of the organism as a system of chemical reactions. The 

 most fundamental aspects of that herculean task, warned by the 

 sign, No Trespassing, we shall leave to the metaphysicians. The 

 influence of the glands of internal secretion upon the mind we 

 must consider, but at present postpone. Yet the hot-headed con- 

 tenders on both sides may be reminded of certain facts. 



We live in the most iconoclastic of ages. There are sane 

 people alive today going quietly about their business who deny 

 the very existence of consciousness. These heretics of course 

 pooh-pooh absolutely the lions of metaphysics. On the other 

 hand, it may be pointed out to our mechanists who believe in 

 mechanism to the bitter end, that even if man can be described 

 entirely as a mere transformer of energy, there is no reason why 

 he cannot also be described as a transformer of energy plus 

 someone who makes use of the transformer and of the energy 

 transformed. The stone wall before the honest mechanist is the 

 abolition of purpose, and design, an old insoluble problem upon 

 his premises. Preach, until you are blue in the face, behaviorist 

 tropisms, in which man is pushed and pulled about in his environ- 

 ment as are iron filings in a magnetic field. Think up objective 

 physiologies in which your life and mine become a series of con- 

 catenated influences and compound reflexes. Play with words 

 like the concentration reflex when you mean idea, and the sym- 

 bolic reflex when you mean language. But your most rigid 

 nomenclature will never abolish the mystic personal purpose 

 in the equation, no matter how low the step in the animal series 

 to which you descend. The declaration that a man is dominated 

 by certain glands within his body should not be taken to give 

 aid and comfort to those who would banish mind from the 

 universe. 



