304 The Theory of Genetic Modes 



that there are certain aspects of phenomena which that 

 law — admitting the postulates of uniformity and lawful- 

 ness mentioned above — has the right to construe, and 

 which we are bound to recognize when we use the cate- 

 gories which experience of these aspects has engendered. 

 But it does not work negatively or conversely ; it cannot 

 dictate to reality its future working, nor say that in the 

 very experiences so formulated there may not be more than 

 these formulations get out of them. 



For an illustration of this point, let us go direct to 

 a critical case. Brain changes are accompanied, say, by 

 acts of conscious volition. If we saw only the outside of a 

 man's brain, our science of brain changes — the shorthand 

 description of what we see — would seem to exhaust the 

 phenomena ; but all the while there would be present, 

 inside the man's head in some sense, and escaping our 

 description altogether, the phenomena of volition. Now 

 suppose that these inner phenomena of volition are 

 present only at a certain stage in the development of a 

 series of brain changes, appearing when the individual is 

 from six to nine months old. Admitting for the moment 

 that the description made from the outside is exhaustive, 

 both earlier and also later on in the series, the later terms 

 simply being further along and perhaps more involved ; 

 yet this gives no inkhng of the change from one form or 

 mode of consciousness to the other — that is, of the rise 

 of volition. All that another science, psychology, takes 

 cognizance of — the mental transformations — are additional 

 things in the world, aspects of reality not in so far touched 

 by the formulations of quantitative science. Who can tell, 

 indeed, what modes of existence may come and go with the 

 development of changes in the brain ? 



