250 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



These are mere assumptions. Besides, if true of 

 matter, it might not be true of mind. 



Judging from psychic phenomena, the indications 

 are that if faculties are compound, they are composed 

 of many unlike units instead of simply one kind. 

 The many powers of the mind stand out sharply and 

 distinctly from each other, and we are totally unable 

 to explain one in terms of another. 



If, with Spencer, we say that all states of conscious- 

 ness are feelings, yet this does not identify them. 

 The question is, whence these feelings? Can one 

 feeling originate another? Can the nerve center of 

 one feeling produce a nerve center that can perform 

 an entirely different function? Unless it can, the 

 theory of evolution fails. The assumption that 

 mind is made up of simple units of feeling that are 

 fundamentally alike has nothing to justify it except 

 the necessities of the theory which it is made to 

 support. 



The fact that the mental powers work in harmony 

 and bear certain relations to each other is not proof 

 of their fundamental identity, nor that the one can 

 originate from the other, — no more than can the eye 

 from the ear, or the foot from the head. 



I cannot emphasize too strongly the fact that Mr. 

 Spencer's theory of the evolution of the various pow- 

 ers of the mind is built on the assumption that all 

 mental powers are made up of " units of feeling " 

 that are " fundamentally of one kind." 



By this mere assumption he sweeps away all essen- 

 tial differences between psychic phenomena. He in- 

 troduces us to his psychic laboratory, where by the. 

 use of the simple " units of feeling " as agents and 

 reagents, he proceeds to form as compounds all the 

 wonderful and widely different faculties of the mind. 



I may say just here that, so far as we know, the 



