122 SCIENCE AND MORALS. in 



Nobody, I imagine, will credit me with a desire 

 to limit the empire of physical science, but I really 

 feel bound to confess that a great many very fa- 

 miliar and, at the same time, extremely impor- 

 tant phenomena lie quite beyond its legitimate 

 limits. I cannot conceive, for example, how the 

 phenomena of consciousness, as such and apart 

 from the physical process by which they are 

 called into existence, are to be brought within 

 the bounds of physical science. Take the simplest 

 possible example, the feeling of redness. Phys- 

 ical science tells us that it commonly arises as a 

 consequence of molecular changes propagated from 

 the eye to a certain part of the substance of the 

 brain, when vibrations of the luminiferous ether 

 of a certain character fall upon the retina. Let 

 us suppose the process of physical analysis pushed 

 so far that one could view the last link of this 

 chain of molecules, watch their movements as if 

 they were billiard balls, weigh them, measure 

 them, and know all that is physically knowable 

 about them. Well, even in that case, we should 

 be just as far from being able to include the re- 

 sulting phenomenon of consciousness, the feeling 

 of redness, within the bounds of physical science, 

 as we are at present. It would remain as unlike 

 the phenomena we know under the names of mat- 

 ter and motion as it is now. If there is any plain 

 truth upon which I have made it my business to 

 insist over and over again it is this — and whether 



