September 26, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



425 



below to complete the circuit (a solid cir- 

 cuit round the current). He would see a 

 sort of bridge or filament thus constructed, 

 from one shore to the other, and across this 

 bridge insect-like things crawling and re- 

 turning for no very obvious reason. 



Or let him look at the Nile, and recog- 

 nize the meritorious character of that river 

 in promoting the growth of vegetation in 

 the desert. Then let him see a kind of 

 untoward crystallization growing across 

 and beginning to dam the beneficent 

 stream. Blocks fly to their places by some 

 kind of polar forces; "we can not doubt" 

 that it is by helio- or other tropism. There 

 is no need to go outside the laws of me- 

 chanics and physics, there is no difficulty 

 about supply of energy — none whatever — 

 materials in tin cans are consumed which 

 amply account for all the energy; and all 

 the laws of physics are obeyed. The ab- 

 sence of any design, too, is manifest; for 

 the effect of the structure is to flood an 

 area up-stream which might have been use- 

 ful, and to submerge a structure of some 

 beauty; while down-stream its effect is 

 likely to be worse, for it would block the 

 course of the river and waste it on the 

 desert, were it not that fortunately some 

 leaks develop and a sufficient supply still 

 goes down — goes down, in fact, more 

 equably than before: so that the ultimate 

 result is beneficial to vegetation, and sim- 

 ulates intention. 



If told concerning either of these struc- 

 tures that an engineer, a designer in Lon- 

 don, called Benjamin Baker, had anything 

 to do with it, the idea would be prepos- 

 terous. One conclusive argument is final 

 against such a superstitious hypothesis — 

 he is not there, and a thing plainly can not 

 act where it is not. But although we, with 

 our greater advantages, perceive that the 

 right solution for such an observer would 

 be the recognition of some unknown agency 



or agent, it must be admitted that an ex- 

 planation in terms of a vague entity called 

 vital force would be useless, and might be 

 so worded as to be misleading; whereas a 

 statement in terms of mechanics and phy- 

 sics could be clear and definite and true as 

 far as it went, though it must necessarily 

 be incomplete. 



And note that what we observe, in such 

 understood cases, is an interaction of mind 

 and matter; not parallelism nor epiphe- 

 nomenalism nor anything strained or diffi- 

 cult, but a straightforward utilization of 

 the properties of matter and energy for 

 purposes conceived in the mind, and exe- 

 cuted by muscles guided by acts of will. 



But, it will be said, this is unfair, for 

 we know that there is design in the Forth 

 Bridge or the Nile Dam, we have seen the 

 plans and understand the agencies at 

 work; we know that it was conceived and 

 guided by life and mind; it is unfair to 

 quote this as though it could simulate an 

 automatic process. 



Not at all, say the extreme school of 

 biologists whom I am criticizing, or ought 

 to say if they were consistent, there is 

 nothing but chemistry and physics at work 

 anywhere; and the mental activity appar- 

 ently demonstrated by those structures is 

 only an illusion, an epiphenomenon ; the 

 laws of chemistry and physics are supreme, 

 and they are sufficient to account for every- 

 thing ! 



Well, they account for things up to a 

 point; they account in part for the color 

 of a sunset, for the majesty of a mountain 

 peak, for the glory of animate existence. 

 But do they account for everything com- 

 pletely? Do they account for our own 

 feeling of joy and exaltation, for our sense 

 of beauty, for the manifest beauty existing 

 throughout nature? Do not these things 

 suggest something higher and nobler and 

 more joyous, something for the sake of 



