Prof, E^ist Haeckel. 57 



merely attendantly co-related, or causally correlated, or how related 

 to or with this Unknowable, must, according to Mr. Spencer, be forever 

 unknown, because it by this explanation becomes an unknowable " por- 

 tion " of this unknowable. Therefrom Mr. Spencer informs us that 

 it " flows," but Mr. Fiske says it " wells up." We give it up ! Science, 

 philosophy, religion, have no refuge before this entical explanation 

 except the old awe, terror, or horror of the old superstition and devil 

 worship. The theologs, mediums, and " medicine men " very naturally 

 resume their ghost dance before this unknowable spook back of their 

 knowable world, which is always their god. How different are all 

 such feelings from the healthy, rational, sustaining, scientific, cosmic- 

 emotion excited by Goethe and the monistic theory of The All, the 

 world, as a possibly knowable, an ever-correlated and an ever-causal 

 cosmos of law and order ! Kead, for instance, Goethe's poem Inherit- 

 ance, to which I have referred. 



The doctor next tries to misappropriate the law of correlation so as 

 to exclude mind, because we can not " think " how its previous condi- 

 tions and correlates actually make it, and so he thinks that as an in- 

 dependent entity it " may persist everlastingly in some form." Well ! 

 what correlations are thinkable ? We have answered. None ! I have 

 pointed out, for instance, how the will can not think how it comes, and 

 so it is seemingly free. We learn by science to gradually think out 

 and know correlations, like the rainbow, music, or our thoughts, until 

 we can oversee, but probably never can exactly grasp, each detail of the 

 wonderful complexity. To grasp the law is the triumph of science ! 

 But how can a scientist, a correlationist, like Dr. Eccles, talk of mind 

 as not a correlate of the correlated world, and j-et as " persisting ever- 

 lastingly," and so consequently flitting about forever as persisting and 

 yet in " Erehwon " (Nowhere), and not see the absurdity of the situa- 

 tion ■? In a universe of solid correlation, where is the " needless point " 

 left for his uncorrelated spook ? 



If, as he says, I am " arrogant " and " preposterous " because I can 

 not appreciate this position except as an absurdity, remember that I 

 am not alone. The whole school of scientific psychologists from Bain 

 and Mill and Maudsley down to the last work of Prof. James,* of Har- 



* In justice to Prof. James, as he has been twice quoted by Mr. Wakeman in 

 Bupport of hi3 views, ho should be briefly heard in explanation of his own posi- 

 tion. In a note to Dr. Janes he says : •'Empiricallv, evervtliint? points to braiu- 

 activities as being conditions of our thoughts. There is thus a 'correlation' in 

 the sense of invariable antecedence or concomitance, which must be written 

 down as a scientific law. Such a law of concomitance says nothing of deeper 

 relations of causation, identity, etc.; nor, in scientific exactness, can we sav any- 

 thing rational about the relation of brain to thought. If we remain positiVistic, 

 we will write down the correlation and preteiul to no further knowledge. We 

 can t help postulating, however, that there is furtlier matter to be knon-n. . . . 

 Everything points to some sort of idealism. But the question of immortalitv 

 doesn t seem to be soluble either by science or philosophy ; it is a teleological 



