THE ATTEMPT TO ELIMINATE MIND. 157 



least, it was contended) it has no effect upon the resnlt ; 

 it does not matter as far as this is concerned whether 

 they feel and think or not ; everything would go on 

 exactly as it does and always has done, though neither 

 man nor beast knew nor felt anything at all. It is 

 only hy maintaining things like this that people will 

 get pensions out of the British public. 



Some such position as this is a sine qud non for 

 the Neo-Darwinistic doctrine of natural selection, 

 which, as Von Hartmann justly observes, involves 

 an essentially mechanical mindless conception of the 

 universe; to natural selection's door, therefore, the 

 blame of the whole movement in favour of mechanism 

 must be justly laid. It was natural that those who 

 had been foremost in preaching mindless designless 

 luck as the main means of organic modification, should 

 lend themselves with alacrity to the task of getting 

 rid of thought and feeling from all share in the direc- 

 tion and governance of the world. Professor Huxley, 

 as usual, was among the foremost in this good work, 

 and whether influenced by Hobbes, or Descartes, or 

 Mr. Spalding, or even by the machine chapters in 

 " Brewhon " which were still recent, I do not know, led 

 off with his article " On the . hypothesis that animals 

 are automata " (which it may be observed is the exact 

 converse of the hypothesis that automata are animated) 

 in the Fortnightly Review ?ov November 1874. Pro- 

 fessor Huxley did not say outright that men and 

 women were just as living and just as dead as their 

 own watches, but this was what his article, came to in 

 substance. The conclusion arrived at was that animals 



