* CHAPTER IX 



Mind and Body^ 



§ I . Resume on Consciousness and Evolution 



Professor Cope's position as to the importance of 

 consciousness in evolution seems in the main true as far as 

 the question of fact is concerned. I agree with him that 

 no adequate theory of the development of organic nature 

 can be formulated without taking conscious states into 

 account. The fact of accommodation requires on the part 

 of the individual organism something equivalent to what we 

 call consciousness in ourselves. But I do not think that 

 the need of recognizing consciousness in connection with 

 organic functions leads at all necessarily to the view that 

 consciousness is a causa vera whose modes of action do 

 not have physiological parallel processes in the brain and 

 nerves. The alternatives are not really two only, autom- 

 atism — a theory of mechanical causation of all move- 

 ment, with the inference that consciousness is a by-product 

 of no importance — and the vera causa view, which makes 

 consciousness a new form of energy injected among the 

 activities of the brain. There is another way of looking 

 at the question, to which I return below. 



With Professor Cope's view that the recognition of 



1 Discussion (revised) with Professors James, Cope, and Ladd before the 

 American Psychological Association at Philadelphia, Dec. 28, 1895. From 

 The Psychological Review, May, 1896, article 'Consciousness and Evolution.' 



121 



