Maech 21, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



451 



is said to be ' inside it and identical with 

 it' is an individual and particular mind, 

 and not the anima mundi, nor the mind 

 that presides over the universe. The no- 

 tion that each thing has its own mind, or 

 is a mind, has nothing in common with the 

 opinion that it is in one sustaining mind 

 that we and all things have being. 



The notion that now concerns us reaches 

 its logical culmination in Major Powell's 

 assertion that ' ' Every body, whether it 

 be a stellar system or an atom of hydrogen, 

 has consciousness as judgment and choice. ' ' 

 If a hen's egg would describe to us the 

 way in which it makes a chick, I should 

 be delighted to listen and learn from it; 

 but, until it does, embryologists must 

 struggle along in the old-fashioned way. 



If each thing has its own mind, and is 

 identical with it, there is, of course, no 

 chasm, because we are really studying psy- 

 chology, when we think we are studying 

 physics. But this way of escape from the 

 chasm leads us into new difficulties, which 

 are just as impassable as the chasm, and 

 very much more practical. 



Even if we admit that the hen's egg 

 may have, or be identical with, a mind as 

 good as a hen's mind, the hen's body is so 

 fearfully and wonderfully made that the 

 wisest man, whose mind is assuredly bet- 

 ter than a hen's mind, is at present utterly 

 incompetent to make, or even to under- 

 stand, a hen. If it is by wisdom that hens 

 are made, it must be by a higher wasdom 

 than a hen's, for this cannot attain to such 

 a work. 



It is not by studying the consciousness 

 of atoms and molecules, and material 

 things, that we have found out how to 

 make chemical compounds, and machinery 

 and books; and if we are ever to find out 

 how to make living eggs, one may safely 

 predict that it will not be through the 

 study of the judgment and choice of the 

 eggs of sea-urchins and frogs and hens. 



Haeckel, who declares that Berkeley, of 

 all men, believed that ' one thing only ex- 

 ists, and that is my own mind,' also tells 

 us of his own belief that ' ' the two funda- 

 mental forms of substance, ponderable 

 matter and the ether, are not dead and 

 only moved by extrinsic forces, but they 

 are endowed with sensation and will 

 (though, naturally, of the lowest grade) ; 

 they experience an inclination for conden- 

 sation, a dislike of strain ; they strive after 

 the one, and struggle against the Other." 

 Only they know nothing about it, for 

 Haeckel teUs us : "I conceive the elemen- 

 tary psycliic qualities of sensation and will 

 which may be attributed to atoms, to be 

 unconscious." Still, while they do not 

 know it, ' ' every shade of inclination, from 

 complete indifference to the fiercest pas- 

 sion, is exemplified in the chemical rela- 

 tion of the various elements towards each 

 other, just as we find in the psychology of 

 man, and especially in the life of the sexes. 

 This fundamental unity of affinity in the 

 whole of nature, from the simplest chem- 

 ical process to the most complicated love- 

 story, was recognized by the great Greek 

 scientist, Empedocles, in the fifth century 

 p.. c, in his theory of ' the love and hatred 

 of the elements.' It receives empirical 

 confirmation from the interesting progress 

 of cellular psychology, the great signifi- 

 cance of which we have only learned to 

 appreciate in the last thirty years. On 

 these phenomena we base our conviction 

 that even the atom is not without a 

 rudimentary form of sensation and 

 will." 



Words are democratic, and one is, in- 

 trinsically, as good as another. What com- 

 mon folks call things, may be called minds, 

 or abracadabra, or x, by any one who so 

 chooses, provided he know what he means, 

 and make himself understood; but if he 

 thinks that, by calling things minds, he 

 can find out anything which would not be 



