THE SCIENCE OF LIFE 



times Democritus and Lucretius traced all phenomena 

 to the movements of dead atoms, as did also Holbach 

 and Lamettrie in the eighteenth century. This view- 

 is held to-day by most chemists and physicists. They 

 regard gravitation and chemical affinity as a mere me- 

 chanical movement of atoms, and this, in turn, as the 

 general source of all phenomena ; but they will not allow 

 that these movements necessarily presuppose a kind of 

 (unconscious) sensation. In conversation with distin- 

 guished physicists and chemists I have often found that 

 they will not hear a word about a "soul" in the atom. 

 In my opinion, however, this must necessarily be as- 

 sumed to explain the simplest physical and chemical 

 processes. Naturally I am not thinking of anything like 

 the elaborate psychic action of man and the higher 

 animals, which is often bound up with consciousness; 

 we must rather descend the long scale of the develop- 

 ment of consciousness until we reach the simplest pro- 

 tists, the monera (chapter ix.). The psychic activity of 

 these homogeneous particles of plasm (for instance, the 

 chromacea) rises very little above that of crystals ; as in 

 the chemical synthesis in the moneron, so in crystalliza- 

 tion we are bound to assume that there is a low degree of 

 sensation (not of consciousness), in order to explain the 

 orderly arrangement of the moving molecules in a defi- 

 nite structure. 



The prejudice against thepretical materialism (or mate- 

 rialistic monism) which still prevails so much is partly 

 diie to its rejection of the three central dogmas of 

 dualist metaphysics, and partly to a confusion of it 

 with hedonism. This practical materialism in its ex- 

 treme forms (as Aristippus of Cyrene and the Cyrenaic 

 school, and afterwards Epicurus, taught it) finds the 

 chief end of life in pleasure — at one time crude, sensual 

 pleasure, and at others spiritual pleasure. Up to a 

 certain point, this thirst for happiness and a pleasant 



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