January 27, 1899.] 



SCIENCE. 



135 



There is one other favorite idea in this 

 book which it is difficult to resist touching 

 upon, however lightlJ^ It is the doctrine 

 of hylozoism, which the author approaches 

 at first haltingly and doubtinglj^, but which 

 before the close assumes the form of a full- 

 fledged dogma without the acceptance of 

 which it is almost admitted the whole struc- 

 ture falls to the ground. Eeally there was 

 no occasion for the initial timidity, as the 

 doctrine is backed up by a long line of the 

 best thinkers of all ages. In fact, it is one 

 of those conceptions which cannot be es- 

 caped by the mind if only it goes on to the 

 logical term in its reasoning, and it has 

 never been gainsaid in any legitimate argu- 

 mentation. There need, therefore, be no 

 quarrel as to the notion itself that the high- 

 est attribute of nature, call it mind, soul, 

 spirit, thought, or what you may, resides 

 also in the lowest and simplest form of ex- 

 istence. No true philosopher will or can 

 deny this proposition. The ' fallacies,' to 

 use Major Powell's regular word for the er- 

 rors of human reasoning, all occur in the 

 mode of approaching this great truth. It 

 is so in the present case. His fallacy lurks 

 at the outset in the fifth and last term of 

 the first three or four series of cosmic prin- 

 ciples — in the terms judgment, conscious- 

 ness, concept, choice, etc. — terms which 

 connote psychic processes not introduced in 

 the course of evolution until the cosmic 

 stage had been passed and the organic stage 

 had been ushered in. The fallacy is most 

 manifest in the discussion of the terms ' affin- 

 ity ' and 'choice.' Here our author becomes 

 thoroughly metaphysical. On pages 40 and 

 41 he says : " We have now discovered that 

 there is an additional property of the inani- 

 mate particle when it is incorporated, and 

 that this is affinity. All we know of affinity 

 is that it is the choice of one particle for an- 

 other as its associate or as their mutual 

 choice. Here we are introduced to the 

 multitudinous phenomena of affinity which 



can be explained only as choice." On 

 pages 1S8 and 189 he further says : "The pri- 

 mal law of evolution seems to be psychic. 

 We shall call it the law of affinity and de- 

 fine it as choice of particles to associate in 

 bodies." Finally, on page 267, he asserts 

 that " the ultimate particles of inanimate 

 bodies have self- activity in so far as they 

 manifest choice or affinity." Now this is 

 not ' reification,' which belongs to the meta- 

 physical stage of thought in Comte's cele- 

 brated trois Hats; it is 'imputation,' which 

 belongs to the first or fetishistic phase of 

 the theological stage, which, as Major 

 Powell has elsewhere so ably shown, char- 

 acterizes the thinking of the primordial 

 savage. To the glorious company of Chuar, 

 Spencer and Hegel, Powell must surely be 

 added ! 



The whole idea of choice or affinity is 

 anthropomorphic. It is to be compared 

 with the popular idea of attraction, or 

 gravitation as produced by one body draw- 

 ing another through void space ; an idea, by 

 the way, which Major Powell justly assails 

 as essentially metaphysical, involving the 

 actio in distans, and demanding a belief in 

 some sort of magic. There is no difference 

 between the attraction of bodies and the 

 affinities of atoms, so far as this principle 

 is concerned. To call it ' psychic ' is an 

 anachronism. To say that the action of a 

 magnet or an attracting body, or the be- 

 havior of chemical substances toward one 

 another, is judgment, or consciousness, or 

 choice, except metaphorically, is to ignore 

 the vast series of steps in evolution which 

 separate the chemical atom from protoplasm 

 and span the chasm between the inorganic 

 and the organic worlds. Hylozoism simply 

 asserts that the elements and raw materials 

 are there, even at the bottom of the scale, 

 but it does not say that a bank of clay is a 

 house of brick, or that a block of marble is 

 a Venus of Milo. The worst feature of 

 this doctrine, which pervades the work and 



