Sketch of an Organismal Theory of Consciousness 337 



most differentiative things about these metals. Let us push 

 the application of this criterion of difference a little farther 

 in comparing human persons. We give energy-transforma- 

 tion and work performed a leading place here also. And 

 being naturalistically chemical rather than chemically chem- 

 ical we are forced to touch the "high spots" only at first 

 regardless of what may be in between them. We are free to 

 seize upon the end or completed products of the reactions 

 and transformations. What reaction-products, I ask, of 

 nickel and iron towards any other substance or set of condi- 

 tions are more unlike than the reaction-products of an effi- 

 cient Department-of-Justice official, let us say and an ef- 

 ficient food conserving house-keeper, in this time of common 

 national danger? Yet these diverse products may come from 

 not only the same danger stimulus, but likewise from as nearly 

 identical physico-chemical environic stimuli as it is possible 

 to secure. Were official and house-keeper to eat of the same 

 food, drink of the same fluids, breathe of the same air, and 

 be subject to the same temperatures month in and month 

 out the difference in product would not be a whit less. 



So stands the case when viewed in its "high places" only. 

 But the high places are as real places as any whatever. No 

 realities, it matters not how obscure or subtle, pertaining to 

 the intermediate places, can make the high places other 

 than what they are. Judging human beings by what they do, 

 by work done through the transformation of the substances 

 and energies which they take from the external world, their 

 personalities xe surely not less well-attested than are the 

 individualities ^.' elementary chemical substances.* But it 

 will not do to be satisfied with touching the high places in 

 this rather jaunty fashion. Some attention must be given to 



* A rather full discussion of the point here touched may be found in 

 my essay, The Higher Usefulness of Science, where I raise and try to 

 answer the query, "What is nature because man is a part of it?" Per- 

 haps a less ambiguous way of asking the question would be, "What must 

 nature be in order that it may produce such an animal as man?" 



