RELATIONS BETWEEN MIND AND MATTER. 



93 



live in, how it works, and how they came to be and to think 

 as they do ; and not unlikely what we please to call evolution 

 will have to be explained and restated in very different terms 

 from those in vogue now. 



So far I have talked about body and have endeavored to 

 show that present science gives no warrant for holding that 

 the matter which constitutes it is lifeless or inert ; but, on the 

 other hand, it does show that it is endowed with energy, and 

 that in enormous quantity, and also that the minute study of it 

 has led students from both the biologic and physical side to 

 conclude that matter is itself alive, as endowed with an inalien- 

 able quality, and that the manifestations of this quality depend 

 upon the degree of complexity of composition and arrange- 

 ment rather than upon any superendowment of any kind of 

 an entity, and hence giving no support to the notion of a disem- 

 bodied spirit, in the extreme sense of that expression. How 

 much matter is really needed to exhibit any degree of life ? 



Let us turn now to the other factor, mind. First it may be 

 remarked that there is no tangible evidence of the existence of 

 mind apart from some kind of a material structure. I suppose 

 there is no one now who would imagine that in the develop- 

 ment of, say a chicken, there came a time in the physical and 

 chemical changes going on in a warm egg when it was in 

 some superphysical way endowed with what we call mind in 

 any degree, so that one could say, now this growing thing is 

 without mind, and the next instant, now this growing thing 

 has a mind. If mental endowment be not a part of the 

 physical process just as necessary under the conditions as any 

 other part of the process, then one must say at some instant, 

 now it has been endowed. The chicken in the egg has life, 

 for it grows, and when out of it gives evidence of intelligence 

 of no mean grade. Whatever its grade, it is the outcome 

 either of its physical constitution or else there has been a 

 miracle of some order. Is there any third alternative ? I 

 know of none. That there has been a miraculous phenomenon 

 in the egg, no one can believe, and that the intelligence is the 

 mere outcome of physical antecedents few want to believe. 

 If one believes that humanity, as it now is, is traceable 



