The Attempt to Eliminate Mind 143 
processes would go on just as well if there were no accom- 
paniment 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 development 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 1860 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, consciousness, 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 deceptiveness 
of mind as a causative agent, and the sufficiency 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 be proved from the side 
of mind by considerations derivable from automatic and 
unconscious action where mind ex hypothesi was not, but 
where action went on as well or better without it than with 
it ; it would be proved from the side of body by what they 
would doubtless call the “ most careful and exhaustive ” 
examination of the body itself by the aid of appliances 
more ample than had ever before been within the reach 
of man. . 
This was all very well, but for its success one thing was a 
sine quad non—I mean the dislodgment must be thorough ; 
the key must be got clean of even the smallest trace of blood, 
for unless this could be done all the argument went to the 
