THE Attempt to eliminate mind. i6i 



passages from Professor Tyndall's utterances of about 

 the same date which show that he too took much the 

 same line — namely, that there is no causative con- 

 nection between mental and physical processes ; from 

 this it is obvious he must have supposed that physical 

 processes would go on just as well if there were no 

 accompaniment of feeling and consciousness at all. 



I have said enough to show that in the decade, 

 roughly, between 1870 and 1880 the set of opinion 

 among our leading biologists was strongly against 

 mind, as having in any way influenced the develop- 

 ment of animal and vegetable life, and it is not likely 

 to be denied that the prominence which the mindless 

 theory of natural selection had assumed in men's 

 thoughts since i860 was one of the chief reasons, if 

 not the chief, for the turn opinion was taking. Our 

 leading biologists had staked so heavily upon natural 

 selection from among fortuitous variations that they 

 would have been more than human if they had not 

 caught at everything that seemed to give it colour and 

 support. It was while this mechanical fit was upon 

 them, and in the closest connection with it, that the 

 protoplasm boom developed. It was doubtless felt 

 that if the public could be got to dislodge life, con- 

 sciousness, and mind from any considerable part of 

 the body, it would be no hard matter to dislodge it, 

 presently, from the remainder ; on this the deceptive- 

 ness of mind as a causative agent, and the sufificiency 

 of a purely automatic conception of the universe, as of 

 something that will work if a penny be dropped into 

 the box, would be proved to demonstration. It would 



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