CHAPTER III 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE WILL 



THE great French physiologist Claude Bernard, 

 discussing the problems of life in his lucid and large 

 way, concluded that the irreducible residuum is the 

 power of development of the egg, to which the laws 

 of physics and chemistry cannot be made to apply. 

 It has just been pointed out that modern biological 

 research has in the past quarter century gone far 

 to show that the complicated processes of develop- 

 ment are rooted in mechanisms that obey physical 

 and chemical laws. The situation has in conse- 

 quence changed so greatly since the days of Bernard 

 that he would probably be among the first to admit 

 that significant breaches have been made in "the 

 past rampart of vitalism, " as he called the evolutional 

 forces of the egg and the cell. But there are many 

 biologists who have looked in another direction for 

 the irreducible residuum to the psychical reaction, 

 the phenomenon of consciousness. And it must be 

 owned that in this direction but little advance has 

 been made against what many would call the last 

 rampart of vitalism, or indeed of spiritualism. It 

 must be noted, too, that at this point physiologists 

 have shown a pusillanimous spirit, for have they not 



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