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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1125 



one would think that neither philosophy nor 

 theology had advanced during the develop- 

 ment of human thought. Idealism is not a 

 doctrine of those who "wish to lay the in- 

 tellect to rest on a pillow of obscure ideas, ' ' 

 nor is it an attempt to undermine mechan- 

 istic hypotheses. Many of the objections 

 are made by those who confuse modern crit- 

 ical idealism with solipsism or subjective 

 idealism. The limits of this paper do not 

 admit the presentation of these objections 

 and their rebuttal. I search in vain, how- 

 ever, for a real, valid, scientific objection 

 to the postulate of modern critical idealism. 

 That it is the dominant philosophy of our 

 generation has already been asserted. 



I shall not attempt to discuss the dual- 

 istic postulate, since it has little standing 

 among philosophers and none at all among 

 men of science — except upon such illogical 

 grounds as even scientific men are capable. 

 The dualistie hypothesis, therefore, doesn't 

 interest us. But if one were compelled to 

 choose between the postulate of dualism and 

 that of materialism the adoption of the 

 former would appear to be far more ra- 

 tional. 



It is well recognized that epiphenomenal- 

 ism is' but thinly disguised materialism and 

 the arguments against the latter apply 

 equally against the former. Of epiphenom- 

 enalism Minot ('02, p. 3) says: 



An epiphenomenon is something superimposed 

 upon the actual phenomena having no causal rela- 

 tion to the further development of the process. 

 There is no idea at all underneath the epiphenome- 

 non hypothesis of consciousness. The hypothesis is 

 simply an empty phrase, a subterfuge — which 

 amounts to this — we can explain consciousness 

 very easily by merely assuming that it does not re- 

 quire to be explained at all. 



Says W. McDougall ('11, p. 150) : 



Epiphenomenalism, though it may perhaps be 

 consistent with the law of the conservation of 

 energy, offends against a law that has a much 

 stronger claim to universality, namely the law of 



causation itself; for it assumes that a physical 

 process, say a molecular movement of the brain, 

 causes a sensation, but does so without the cause 

 passing over in any degree into the effect, with- 

 out the cause spending itself in any degree in the 

 production of the effect, namely, the sensation. 



Consequently, in our discussion of the 

 problem of individuality, we are compelled, 

 I believe, to make our choice between philo- 

 sophical materialism and idealism (spir- 

 itualism), that is to say, between mind and 

 matter (independent of mind) as the basis 

 of individuality. Our choice is to be made 

 between a postulate which is philosophically 

 disreputable and one which has been ac- 

 cepted by the great philosophers of recent 

 times from Berkeley and Kant to Emer- 

 son, Royce and James ; between the assump- 

 tion of a wholly unknowable and metaphys- 

 ical world and the indisputable assumption 

 that our one surest reality is consciousness ; 

 between the Haeckelian riddle and the as- 

 sumption that our world has moral and 

 spiritual meaning; between a world in 

 which the words and gestures of every indi- 

 vidual "would have been just what they 

 have been, the same empires would have 

 risen and fallen, the same masterpieces of 

 music and poetry would have been pro- 

 duced, the same indications of friendship 

 and affection would have been given in the 

 absence of consciousness" (C. Lloyd Mor- 

 gan, '05), and the "common sense" view 

 of the historian that human motives and 

 purposes have affected the course of human 

 events; between a fatalistic world of illu- 

 sion, on the one hand, and a world in which 

 choices are real and ideals count; between 

 an assumption which renders untenable the 

 great human ideas of God, freedom and im- 

 mortality and one which gives these unques- 

 tionable validity. 



That modern philosophy has repudiated 

 the materialistic postulate is not surprising 

 in the light of the considerations presented 

 above. Its adoption by biologists as the 



