UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



contradictory, as we postulate ourselves as still 

 being witnesses of the existence of matter and en- 

 ergy. Blot out life and mind, and, so far as we are 

 concerned, there is nothing left. We cannot get rid 

 of ourselves without turning the universe topsy- 

 turvy, and even then we are on hand to bear witness 

 that it is topsy-turvy. In my youth I once heard an 

 old Methodist preacher say that we could not con- 

 ceive of annihilation without thinking of our unan- 

 nihilated selves as looking on. 



The modern, rigidly scientific mind, in consider- 

 ing this question of life, gets right down to the 

 ground and denies everything we call spirit, mind, 

 soul, creative energy, and the like. Man is a ma- 

 chine and only a machine, it says, run by the phys- 

 icochemical forces. His brain is only a photochemi- 

 cal mirror, his thoughts only molecular activities. 



Mind, or our mental states, is only a name for 

 complex physicochemical processes in the brain- 

 substance. But what is it that understands and 

 names these processes? Can a physicochemical 

 process write a poem, or paint a picture, or weigh 

 the stars? 



Modern biophysics sees no more evidence of 

 mind in living processes than in non-living. Intelli- 

 gence is only a sequence of physical states caused 

 by physical stimuli. The brain is no more creative 

 than is the prism when it divides a ray of light into 

 the component colors of the spectrum. The division 



136 



