1909-] FULLERTON— DARWIN AND MENTAL SCIENCES. xxxv 



a few thoughts touching what has seemed to many a less alluring 

 aspect of the doctrine. In so far as we make man a part of nature, 

 and treat his mind as we treat other natural phenomena, do we not 

 deny his independence, the primacy which has been supposed to 

 be his? Do we not rob him of certain hopes and aspirations,, 

 which men in the past have counted as very dear possessions? I 

 cannot describe to you in a sentence the attitude of the worker in 

 the mental and moral sciences toward this problem, for opinions 

 still differ widely. 



There are those to whom a frank naturalism is not repugnant; 

 who accept man as a natural phenomenon, and trouble themselves 

 little about the consequences. There are those who welcome the 

 conception of the evolution of man, but wish to set limits to its 

 scope. Something they would save out of nature, a spiritual prin- 

 ciple, which they variously define, and of which they sometimes 

 admit they can say little that is definite. There are those who, 

 launching themselves upon the seas navigated by the speculative 

 philosopher, announce to us discoveries that sound to the natural 

 man like the tales told by early travellers. They inform us that 

 the whole course of the evolution of nature, physical and mental, 

 is spiritual throughout; that the only ultimate reality is mind, and 

 that the world of physical phenomena which unfolds itself before 

 our eyes has its source and being in the interaction of minds. I 

 should not bring such a speculative view as this to the attention of 

 a society which is composed of workers in the special sciences, 

 were it not that it has recently had the endorsement of those to 

 whom no one would deny the right to be called scientific men — 

 among others, of the man who, I suppose, in the minds of a major- 

 ity of those here present, would take his place as the leading repre- 

 sentative of the scientific study of the mind now living in Europe. 

 Lastly, there are those, and they happen to be popular leaders, who 

 are in open revolt against science ; and who try to save the freedom 

 and independence of man by setting up a new standard of truth, 

 and by refusing to recognize that this world is the orderly thing 

 that science assumes it to be. These last, I think, science will 

 scarcely take seriously. 



In the foregoing, I have tried to give a fair account of the 



