146 PSYCHOLOGY. 



EVOLUTIONAEY PSYCHOLOGY DEMANDS A MIND DUST. 



Ill a general theory of evolution the iiiorganic comes 

 first, then the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life, 

 then forms of life that possess mentality, and finally those 

 like ourselves that possess it in a high degree. As long as 

 we keep to the consideration of purely outward facts, even 

 the most complicated facts of biology, our task as evolution- 

 ists is comparatively easy. We are dealing all the time with 

 matter and its aggregations and separations ; and although 

 our treatment must perforce be hypothetical, this does not 

 prevent it from being continuous. The point which as evo- 

 lutionists we are bound to hold fast to is that all the new 

 forms of being that make their appearance are really noth- 

 ing more than results of the redistribution of the original 

 and unchanging materials. The self-same atoms which, 

 chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and 

 temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains ; 

 and the * evolution ' of the brains, if understood, would be 

 simpl}- the account of how the atoms came to be so caught 

 and jammed. In this story no new natures, no factors not 

 present at the beginning, are introduced at any later stage. 



But with the dawn of consciousness an entirely new 

 nature seems to slip in, something whereof the potency was 

 not given in the mere outward atoms of the original chaos. 



The enemies of evolution have been quick to pounce 

 upon this undeniable discontinuity in the data of the world, 

 and many of them, from the failure of evolutionary expla- 

 nations at this point, have inferred their general incapacity 

 all along the line. Every one admits the entire incommen- 

 surability of feeling as such with material motion as 

 such. " A motion became a feeling ! " — no phrase that our 

 lips can frame is so devoid of apprehensible meaning. 

 Accordingly, even the vaguest of evolutionary enthusiasts, 

 when deliberately comparing material with mental facts, 

 have been as forward as any one else to emphasize the 

 * chasm ' between the inner and the outer worlds. 



" Can the oscillations of a molecule," says Mr. Spencer, "be repre- 

 sented side by side with a nervous shock [he means a mental shock], 

 and the two be recognized as one ? No effort enables us to assimilate 



