226 THE MECHANISM OF LIFE 



The appearance of the sky at dawn . may give one a feeling of 

 strong mental satisfaction. Now to describe that appearance in . 

 terms of form, colour, and intensity of illumination, and to 

 explain it by reference to sunlight falling obliquely through an j 

 atmosphere laden with water vapour and dust, may seem to 

 many to be an imperfect and sordid interpretation of a very 

 beautiful phenomenon. But that is all that we can do. If we 

 speak of the " dawn in russet mantle clad," do we express our 

 intuition in a manner that is essentially different ? Obviously 

 not. In either case the materialism is patent. 



The same kind of mental satisfaction may be experienced when 

 we listen to music. If we describe this in terms of rhythm, 

 pitch, and the relations between sounds heard simultaneously 

 and sounds heard consecutively, we may be told that the descrip- 

 tion is clumsy and inadequate. But the analysts are no more 

 successful. " Thus Fate knocks at the door," said Czerny. 

 "It is the song of the Yellow Hammer," said Beethoven, with 

 reference to the same melodic phrase. Necessarily, the analogy 

 or description, whatever it may be, makes use of materialism. 



Sometimes one is seized with a feeling of apprehension, and 

 even quite irrational fear, in walking along a lonely road at 

 midnight. The feeling itself is quite indescribable, and it, like 

 aesthetic ones, is private to the individual that experiences it.' 

 But try to describe it: one listens intently; moves as silently as 

 possible; the body is held tensely and in a posture of preparation; 

 heart-beat and respiration respond to the slightest stimuli. 

 Obviously we translate the emotion of fear in materialistic 

 terms. 



Our feeling of pleasure on looking at a dawn or sunset, or in 

 listening to music, and the dread that may possess one in a 

 strange situation are certainly experiences sui generis. But our 

 intellectual, communicable description of them is, and must be, 

 a materialistic one. " Sunset and evening star " we know to be 

 an atmosphere of a certain constitution penetrated by the radia- 

 tion from cosmic bodies. The C minor symphony, as we hear it, 

 is an exceedingly complex series of displacements of the molecules 

 of the atmosphere. Irrational fear is the emotional, afferent 

 reflexes from a body that is thrown into a state of preparation to 

 resist something material. And so on. Seek to understand and 

 express intellectual, emotional, or other intuitive experience, and 

 we find that we can do so only in terms of matter and energy. 

 Life passes into materialistic phenomena. Or, at least, that is our 

 " first approximation." 



