LUCRETIUS AND HAECKEL 22$ 



ous;" and the now ubiquitous appendix is honorably prominent at the 

 end of the enumerated instances. 



6. The Origin of Simple Sensation and Consciousness 



Upon the origin of simple sensation and consciousness, the fifth enig- 

 ma, we have alread touched so that we may make our treatment very 

 brief. Lucretius,^ posits an atom without sensation, insensile, and 

 states that from these insensible primordia arise all things capable of 

 sensation. Atoms of the same sort in different arrangements give us 

 inert logs and leaping flames and vital parts that can feel. He adduces 

 in evidence the childish belief that worms may arise from heaps of inani- 

 mate filth, and the change in the nature of material when grass becomes 

 part of the bodies of animals and these in turn part of our frame, or 

 we a part of theirs. That is, he argues that nature has a power of 

 turning inanimate matter into living substance capable of sensation, 

 or, to advance a couple of thousand years for a word, into protoplasm. 

 He asks how eggs can be changed into birds unless sensible things can 

 arise from insensible.^ Sensation in the human frame, he goes on, dis- 

 appears when the arrangement of the atoms is disturbed by a powerful 

 blow, so it must be due merely to that arrangement. Again, if the blow 

 was not strong enough to cause death, the original arrangement of the 

 atoms in the frame is gradually brought about again and sensation 

 returns. *'So that you may know that it is of great import with what 

 first-beginnings the same first- beginnings are combined and in what 

 arrangement, and what motions they mutually give and receive. "^ 



For Haeckel the answer to the present riddle is found in the nature of 

 his ultimate substance. The pyknatoms are credited with a certain sen- 

 sation and inclination, so that he finds no difficulty in the development of 



I De R. N., II, §65-1022. 



' Cf. Huxley in Science and Christum Tradition: "Granted a fowl feels; that the chick just hatched feels, 

 that the chick when it chirps within the egg may possibly feel; what is to be said of it on the first day,when itis 

 nothing but a flat cellular disk ? I certainly cannot bring myself to believe that this disk feels. Yet if it does not 

 there must be some time in the three weeks between the first day and the day of hatching, when as a concom- 

 itant, or a consequence of the attainment by the brain of the chick of a certain stage of structural evolution, 

 consciousness follows." 



3 It will be noticed that Lucretius does not use the power of swerving in the atom as a starting-point for 

 sensation and consciousness; the explanation probably is that he did not feel it necessary in this connectioB, 

 whereas for his doctrine of the freedom of the will it is indispensable. 



