270 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
with languid curiosity. So long as it is not his own it 
does not matter. That it may be his own in a minute 
or two he can not foresee. 
The study of the development of mind in animals 
and men gives no support to the medieval idea that 
the mind exists as an entity apart from the organ 
through which it operates. This “cla- 
vier theory” of the mind, that the ego 
resides in the brain, playing upon the 
cells as a musician upon the chords of a piano, finds no 
warrant in fact. So far as the evidence goes, we know 
of no ego* except that which arises from the co-ordina- 
The clavier 
theory of mind, 
* That what we really know of human personality tells the 
whole story of it, no one should maintain. It is well, how- 
ever, not to ascribe to it entities and qualities of which we know 
nothing. Huxley well says: ‘‘ There can be little doubt that the 
further science advances, the more extensively and consistently 
will all the phenomena be represented by materialistic formule 
and symbols. But the man of science who, forgetting the limits 
of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formule and symbols 
into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me 
to place himself on a level with the mathematician who should 
mistake the x’s and y’s with which he works his problems for real 
entities; and with this further disadvantage as compared with 
the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no prac- 
tical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may 
paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of life. 
‘*We live,” continues Huxley, ‘tin a world which is full of 
misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is 
to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less 
miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he 
entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully pos- 
sessed of two beliefs—the first, that the order of nature is ascer- 
tainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlim- 
ited; the second, that our volition counts for something as a 
condition of the course of events. 
‘Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally as often 
‘as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest 
’ 
