468 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



light on the mechanism itself, the working of which, 

 like that of a clock, can be described on purely mechani- 

 cal lines and without reference to the idea which preceded 

 its construction. 



According to many prominent naturalists, the evident 

 design and purpose which characterise so many pheno- 

 mena of living matter are explained on purely mechan- 

 ical lines by the inherent or forced teleology of living 

 things, which through over-production have to submit to 

 an automatic process of selection or survival. To others 

 this automatic process does not seem to suffice, and 

 they assume a principle of progress which acts in a 

 regulative manner. This vitalistic view is further sup- 

 ported by taking into account an extensive class of 

 phenomena which I have, so far, hardly noticed — 

 the marvellous properties of the higher creations of 

 the animal world which exhibit the phenomena of 

 3. consciousness or of an inner experience. That these 



Inner ^ 



experience, phenomena belong to the realm of natural science as 

 much as any other properties of living things cannot 

 nowadays be doubted. The division into natural and 

 mental science can no longer be upheld, or only with 

 a very different meaning from that which it had for a 

 bygone age. 



It will be my object in this chapter to give an account 

 of the various and changing aspects which this great 

 phenomenon of an inner or conscious life has presented 

 to naturalists — i.e., to those who have approached the 

 phenomena of Mind from the side of nature, and of the 

 different lines of research and reasoning along which 

 they have dealt with it. I shall comprise the whole of 



