64 Heredity and Social Progress 



life may assume a radically different form in 

 scientific laws, and yet they are there. The 

 primary laws confirm the secondary if the 

 latter are really the result of observation. 



Opposed to these observations is the theory 

 that the mind is a blank until aroused by external 

 sensations. Nothing but the physical and ma- 

 terial can exist until contact with the external 

 starts mental activity. Therefore conscious- 

 ness can play no part in the formation of 

 ultimate organic relations, but is a result that 

 appears after they have been established. 



This philosophy, attributable in the first in- 

 stance to Locke, has been thoroughly ingrafted 

 on modern thought. It holds sensation to be 

 primary and the only basis upon which the 

 higher faculties rest. The starting-point of con- 

 sciousness is assumed to be the external stim- 

 ulus which comes over developed nerves, and 

 not a result of the general conditions of life. 

 We now know, as Locke did not, that all the 

 elements of consciousness exist in various com- 

 binations in the cell before the nerves appear. 

 We know that even the simple nervous arc 

 which gives sensation and its motor response 



