246 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 



nature 1 are expressible in terms of matter and 

 motion. 



" Would that the rest of the phenomena of 

 nature could be deduced by a like kind of reason- 

 ing from mechanical principles. For many cir- 

 cumstances lead me to suspect that all these 

 phenomena may depend upon certain forces, in 

 virtue of which the particles of bodies, by causes 

 not yet known, are either mutually impelled 

 against one another and cohere into regular 

 figures, or repel and recede from one another; 

 which forces being unknown, philosophers have as 

 yet explored nature in vain. But I hope that, 

 either by this method of philosophizing, or by 

 some other and better, the principles here laid 

 down may throw some light upon the matter." 2 



1 So far as Descartes is concerned the phenomena of conscious- 

 ness are excluded from this category. According to his view, 

 animals and man, in so far as he resembles them, are mechanisms. 

 The soul, which alone feels and thinks, is extra-natural a some- 

 thing divinely created and added to the anthropoid mechanism. 

 He thus provided their favourite resting-place for the supra- 

 naturalistic evolutionists of our day. 



Descartes' denial of sensation to the lower animals is a neces- 

 sary consequence of his hypothesis concerning the nature and 

 origin of the soul. He was too logical a thinker not to be 

 aware that, if he admitted even the most elementary form of 

 consciousness to be a product or a necessary concomitant, of 

 material mechanism, the assumption of the existence of a 

 thinking substance, apart from matter, would become super- 

 fluous. [1894]. 



2 "Utinam csetera naturae phenomena ex principiis mechani- 

 cis, eodem argumentandi genere, derivare licet. Nam multa 

 me mo vent, ut nonnihil suspicer ea omnia ex viribus quibusdam 

 pendere posse, quibus corporum particulse, per causas nondum 

 cognitas, vel in se mutuo impelluntur et secundum figuras 



