December 29, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



909 



remnant saved from an infinite slaughter. 

 There exists, as we know, an alternative 

 point of view in regard to human selves; 

 one not reached by following the road that 

 leads from the facts of biological science; 

 one that gives the human self a very dif- 

 ferent position and relation to the rest of 

 the universe. Is that indeed a real 

 "view" or is it a mere refusal to look at 

 the view which is before us ? Is that view- 

 point one that could be reached in any way 

 from the biological field? Is there any 

 possibility of reconciling it with the data 

 with which we have been dealing? Can 

 we possibly give our own argument a dif- 

 ferent direction? 



With some ingenuity one might find a 

 parting of the ways at that point in our 

 argument where it was set forth that if I 

 did not exist, all the other combinations of 

 germ cells that are made woulii still pro- 

 duce the same result that they do produce 

 — namely, individuals that are not-/, so 

 that I would never have existed. It could 

 perhaps be maintained that, on the con- 

 trary, my existence is in some way one of 

 the determining factors for what shall be 

 produced by other combinations, so that if 

 I did not already exist, some of those com- 

 binations might produce a different result 

 from what they do produce; that they 

 might indeed in that case produce my self. 

 Granting this, I might have had my per- 

 sonal existence as a self, in connection with 

 some different combination of the living 

 strands, in case the one I am tied to had 

 not been formed. 



To work this out in detail, one would 

 apparently have to hold that the human 

 self is an entity existing independently of 

 the living material, and that it merely 

 enters at times into relations with one of 

 the knots of the living web. If one par- 

 ticular combination or knot should not be 



produced, it would enter into another. 

 Thus each of us might have existed with 

 quite different characteristics from those 

 which we have; it would be only our spe- 

 cific characteristics that were determined 

 by the chance combinations that happened 

 to be made, not our total existence as a self. 

 We have recently witnessed the phenom- 

 enon of a vice-presidential address before 

 a section of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, which set forth 

 that the facts of physiology suggest the 

 existence of an entity or soul that is essen- 

 tially independent of the body, merely act- 

 ing through it.* Could not those aspects 

 of genetics to which we have called atten- 

 tion be readily converted, likewise, into an 

 argument, convincing for those already 

 convinced, for the independent existence 

 of the self or soul ? The monstrous results 

 to which the straight-forward considera- 

 tion of the data leads us could be held to 

 demonstrate in themselves that we had 

 gone astray; that at the parting of the 

 ways we must follow the other road, lead- 

 ing to views in harmony with our convic- 

 tions drawn from other fields. Neglecting 

 all difiScult details as to when and how and 

 why the temporary union of self and the 

 body is made — how simple and satisfactory 

 to hold (if you can) that there is a limited 

 store of selves ready to play their part; 

 that the mere existence of two germ cells 

 which may (or may not) unite has no de- 

 termining value for the existence of these 

 selves, but merely furnishes a substratum 

 to which for mysterious reasons they may 

 become temporarily attached; and that 

 therefore there is no cancellation of billions 

 of inchoate human personalities, such as 

 the other view leads to; that nature does 

 not deal with human selves as with spores 



* Maedonald, J. S., Nature, September 14, 1911, 

 pp. 364-365. 



