THE SEARCH FOR THE SOUL 465 



not seem to be in the direction of instincts exhibited by bees and ants, 

 but in quite another, namel}-, that of self-reflective intelligence. 14 



Something, then, more or less of a psychical nature, call it soul, call 

 it consciousness, call it sensibility, call it vital impulse or vital force, 

 or call it merely a psychic factor of progress, has been a primary factor 

 in organic evolution. " Life has preceded organization " and " con- 

 sciousness was coincident with the dawn of life." It has. been a kind 

 of " primum. mobile " of organic structure. Something like " effort " 

 has preceded upward changes. 15 Consciousness is not a function of 

 organization and is not an epiphenomenon. It is a bionomic factor of 

 the utmost importance. It is of the highest use in adapting organism 

 to environment. It changes the direction of energy. It intervenes be- 

 tween sensation and reaction in the realization of ends. " A frank 

 unbiased study of consciousness must convince every biologist that it is 

 one of the fundamental phenomena of at least animal life, if not, as is 

 quite possible, of all life." " Consciousness is a conspicuous, a com- 

 manding factor of adjustment in animals." 10 



Whether consciousness is thought of as a form of energy comparable 

 with heat and electricity, 17 or as an independent dimension of reality, is 

 or as some original and primary correlative of energy, 19 nevertheless it 

 is certain that it is a reality, a potency, a factor second to none other, 

 physical or metaphysical. 



Even the biological laboratory is offering a suggestive support to 

 the soul hypothesis. If one chooses to accept the theory, as old as the 

 history of thought, that something of a psychical nature bridges the 

 gap, still unspanned by natural science, between the organic and the 

 inorganic, his belief gains new and unexpected support from recent 

 biological studies. So much scorn has been cast upon the theory of 

 vitalism that its recent renewal by a whole school of able German biol- 

 ogists is exceedingly significant. Driesch bases his vitalistic conclu- 

 sions upon the most careful and long-continued laboratory researches. 

 He discards the machine theory of the origin of life. 



No kind of causality based upon the constellations of single physical and 

 chemical acts can account for organic individual development; this development 

 is not to be explained by any hypothesis about configuration of physical and 

 chemical agents. . . . Life, at least morphogenesis, is not a specialized arrange- 



15 I 



10 



Compare Bergson, " I/evolution creatrice," Chapitre II. 

 Cope, " Primary Factors of Organic Evolution.*-' p. 508 ff. 

 Chas. S. Minot, " The Problem of Consciousness in its Biological Aspects," 

 Science, N. S., Vol. XVI., No. 392, pp. 17, 19. 



17 Compare Ostwald, Monist, Vol. 17, p. 514, and Grimewald, " Zur Energetik 

 des Lebens," Annalen der A' aturphilcsophie, IX., 237. 



18 Compare Boodin, "Consciousness and Beality," Journ. Phil.. Psych, and 

 Sci. Meth. ; Vol. V., No. 7, p. 173. 



19 Compare Minot, loc. cit. 



vol. lxxviii. — 32. 



