Chapter X 
The Attempt to Eliminate Mind 
We it may be asked, were our biologists really 
aiming at ?—for men like Professor Huxley do not 
serve protoplasm for nought. They wanted a good many 
things, some of them more righteous than others, but 
all intelligible. Among the more lawful of their desires 
was a craving after a monistic conception of the universe. 
We all desire this; who can turn his thoughts to these 
matters at all and not instinctively lean towards the old 
conception of one supreme and ultimate essence as the 
source from which all things proceed and have proceeded, 
both now and ever? The most striking and apparently 
most stable theory of the last quarter of a century had 
been Sir William Grove’s theory of the conservation of 
energy ; and yet wherein is there any substantial difference 
between this recent outcome of modern amateur, and 
hence most sincere, science—pointing as it does to an im- 
perishable, and as such unchangeable, and as such, again, 
for ever unknowable underlying substance the modes of 
which alone change—wherein, except in mere verbal 
costume, does this differ from the conclusions arrived at by 
the psalmist ? 
“Of old,” he exclaims, “‘ hast Thou laid the foundation 
of the earth ; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. 
They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure ; yea, all of them 
shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt Thou 
change them and they shall be changed; but Thou art 
the same, and Thy years shall have no end.”* 
* Ps, cii. 25-27, Bible version. 
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