270 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



with languid curiosity. So long as it is not his own it 

 does not matter. That it may be his own in a minute 

 or two he can not foresee. 



The study of the development of mind in animals 

 and men gives no support to the mediaeval idea that 

 the mind exists as an entity apart from the organ 



through which it operates. This "cla- 

 The clavier yier the .. of the mind that the 



theory of mind. . . . * ... 



resides in the brain, playing upon the 



cells as a musician upon the chords of a piano, finds no 

 warrant in fact. So far as the evidence goes, we know 

 of no ego* except that which arises from the co-ordina- 



* That what we really know of human personality tells the 

 whole story of it, no one should maintain. It is well, how- 

 ever, not to ascribe to it entities and qualities of which we know 

 nothing. Huxley well says : " There can be little doubt that the 

 further science advances, the more extensively and consistently 

 will all the phenomena be represented by materialistic formula? 

 and symbols. But the man of science who, forgetting the limits 

 of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulae and symbols 

 into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me 

 to place himself on a level with the mathematician who should 

 mistake the x's and y's with which he works his problems for real 

 entities ; and with this further disadvantage as compared with 

 the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no prac- 

 tical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may 

 paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of life. 



"We live," continues Huxley, "in a world which is full of 

 misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is 

 to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less 

 miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he 

 entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully pos- 

 sessed of two beliefs the first, that the order of nature is ascer- 

 tainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlim- 

 ited ; the second, that our volition counts for something as a 

 condition of the course of events. 



" Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally as often 

 as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest 



