July 21, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



91 



basis of their interpretation of personality 

 and of life is incomprehensible unless it be 

 assumed that biologists are strongly prej- 

 udiced against the idealistic philosophy 

 through misunderstanding. But, since the 

 materialistic postulate is not only philosoph- 

 ically unsound and wholly unnecessary for 

 any ends which the mechanist has in view, 

 and since it is metaphysical, unscientific 

 and irrational — wholly inconsistent with the 

 lives of those who make it, as Conklin ( '1.5) 

 has said — biologists must reject it and ac- 

 cept the idealistic assumption as modern 

 philosophy has done. "We need to bring 

 back our scientific postulates to the touch- 

 stone of fact. Our biological premises have 

 been too narrow. We live in a larger 

 scheme of things than mechanism has been 

 able to discover. There is more in life than 

 is dreamed of in the materialistic philos- 

 ophy. 



The world of space and time, of physical cause 

 and effect, matter and finite mind is but a very- 

 subordinate part of reality (Eoyee). 



The way out of the blind alley into which 

 materialism has led us is, as D. G-. Brinton 

 has said, "not by the assumption of an 

 entity apart from attributes; but by the 

 indisputable truth that the laws of mechan- 

 ics and motion themselves are in final anal- 

 ysis nothing else but laws of thought of the 

 reasoning mind, and derive their first and 

 only warrant from the higher reality of that 

 mind. ' ' 



In the light of such considerations and in 

 view of the fact that the materialistic pos- 

 tulate has usually been the basis of the bio- 

 logical discussion of the problem of individ- 

 uality, and in view of the fact that upon 

 the materialistic assumption the vitalistic 

 interpretation of life is wholly excluded and 

 therefore has no experimental meaning, the 

 vitalist seems not unreasonable in his de- 

 mand for a rehearing of his case upon an 

 idealistic basis. For, upon this basis, the 



possibility of a vitalistic interpretation is 

 not excluded as it actually is upon the 

 materialistic basis. Upon the idealistic 

 premise the possibility is open that not all 

 of individuality (personality) is spatially 

 expressed, that is to say, mechanized. In 

 other words, upon this assumption the con- 

 tention of the vitalist may be valid — viz., 

 that from a knowledge of the physical con- 

 ditions alone "it would be impossible to 

 predict what w r ill happen under any given 

 set of physical conditions. " The case of the 

 vitalist depends wholly upon the overthrow 

 of philosophical materialism. The problem 

 of vitalism has thus become a philosophical 

 one. 



Many of the arguments used by vitalists 

 do not appeal to the writer as intrinsically 

 sound. I fully agree with R. S. Lillie ( '14) 

 and 0. Glaser ('12) that the argument of 

 the insufficiency of mechanism to "explain" 

 everything has been much overworked. 

 And yet there are a few considerations of 

 this sort which seem to me to have some 

 weight. Of these I will mention only two. 

 The first is the difficulty of explaining the 

 synthetic activity of the conscious mind on 

 the basis of brain structure. One of the 

 greatest weaknesses of mechanism in the 

 field of physiological psychology is the lack 

 of appreciation of the synthetic and corre- 

 lating activity of human consciousness 

 (will). 



The other difficulty relates to the phylo- 

 genesis of the rational human individual. 

 Is it possible for us to believe that a chaos 

 has become a cosmos without the effective 

 cooperation of a directive intelligence or 

 will? Is it possible to believe on rational 

 grounds that a material universe devoid of 

 mind has produced a mind capable of 

 judging mechanism? Says J. J. Putnam: 



If this were true it would seem possible for a 

 man to lift himself by his boot-straps. But if it 

 be impossible for mechanism (unguided by in- 



