THE BAFFLING PROBLEM 



us a more intimate sense of how closely mechanical 

 and chemical principles are associated and identified 

 with all the phenomena of life and with all animal 

 behavior. Given a living organism, mechanics and 

 chemistry will then explain much of its behavior — 

 practically all the behavior of the lower organisms, 

 and much of that of the higher. Even when we 

 reach man, our reactions to the environment and to 

 circumstances play a great part in our lives; but 

 dare we say that will, liberty of choice, ideation, do 

 not play a part also? How much reality there is in 

 the so-called animal will, is a problem; but that 

 there is a foundation for our belief in the reality of 

 the human will, I, for one, do not for a moment 

 doubt. The discontinuity here is only apparent and 

 not real. We meet with the same break when we try 

 to get our mental states, our power of thought — 

 a poem, a drama, a work of art, a great oration — 

 out of the food we eat; but life does it, though our 

 science is none the wiser for it. Our physical 

 life forms a closed circle, science says, and what 

 goes into our bodies as physical force, must come 

 out in physical force, or as some of its equivalents. 

 Well, one of the equivalents, transformed by some 

 unknown chemism within us, is our psychic force, 

 or states of consciousness. The two circles, the 

 physical and the psychical, are not concentric, as 

 Fiske fancied, but are linked in some mysterious 

 way. 



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