2 1 4 Science Religion and Reality 



contact with the physical world. Intelligence in man and animals 

 has perhaps developed its idiosyncrasies through the operation of 

 natural selection ; and the dog whose intelligence had not the 

 characteristic of attributing value to permanent things like bones 

 would have short shrift \n the struggle for existence. 



Finally we come to direct interference of mind and spirit with 

 the course of events in the material world. (To avoid misunder- 

 standing it should be explained that no reference is made to spirit 

 manifestations commonly so called ; provisionally the writer's 

 attitude toward spiritualism is that of a disbeliever.) To-morrow, 

 very possibly, this sheet of paper on which I am writing will, as a 

 crumpled ball, describe a parabolic orbit ending in the waste- 

 paper basket. Does anyone seriously believe that this physical 

 motion is predictable to-day in the same sense that a future eclipse 

 of the moon is predictable ? Will a fuller knowledge of atoms, 

 electrons, and fields of force reveal the springs of an occurrence 

 which I in my egotism attribute to a mental decision on questions 

 of logical coherency and literary expression ? Is the motion of the 

 editor's pencil to grammatically amend the split infinitive in this 

 sentence simply the automatic response under physical laws of a 

 complicated configuration of electrons to the external stimulus of 

 this smear of ink on paper 1 Such an extravagant hypothesis might 

 conceivably appeal to the crude materialist who supposes that the 

 world of electrons is the fundamental reality. But we have seen 

 that the external world of physics is in the first place approached 

 by way of consciousness, that it derives actuality and value from 

 consciousness, and that it relates only to certain aspects of the 

 common basis of material and spiritual things. The dance of 

 electrons in the brain is only a partial aspect of the mental states 

 and resolutions occurring, and there is no reason why it should 

 claim to reveal the whole inner constitution by which one mental 

 state leads to another. 



Some reference must be made to the time-long difficulty of 

 understanding how a man can voluntarily produce or refrain from 

 producing effects in the physical world without (so experiment 

 teaches) setting aside any of the laws known to govern inorganic 

 nature. The difficulty is undoubtedly a grave one, and we cannot 

 offer a solution of it ; but it is somewhat modified by the newer 

 conception of the nature of the laws governing the physical world. 

 In the present stage of science the laws of physics appear to be 



