September 12, 1884. 



SCIENCE. 



241 



The hypothesis that consciousness has played a 

 leading part in evolution would seem to be negatived 

 by the well-known facts of reflex action, automatism, 

 etc., where acts are often unconsciously performed, 

 and often performed in direct opposition to present 

 stimuli. But while it is well understood that these 

 phenomena are functions of organized structure, it 

 is believed that the habits which they represent were 

 inaugurated through the immediate agency of con- 

 sciousness. It is not believed that a designed act 

 can have been performed for the first time without 

 consciousness, on the part of the animal, of the want 

 which the act was designed to relieve or supply. We 

 know, that, so soon as a movement of body or mind 

 has been acquired by repetition, consciousness need 

 no longer accompany the act. The act is said to be 

 automatic when performed without exertion, either 

 consciously or unconsciously; and in those functions 

 now removed from the influence of the unconscious 

 mind, such acts are called reflex. The origin of the 

 acts is, however, believed to have been in conscious- 

 ness, not only for the reasons above stated, but also 

 from facts of still wider application. The hypothesis 

 of archaestheticism, then, maintains that conscious- 

 ness as well as life preceded organism, and has been 

 the primum mobile in the creation of organic struc- 

 ture. It will be possible to show that the true defini- 

 tion of life is, energy directed by sensibility, or by a 

 mechanism which has originated under the direction of 

 sensibility. If this be true, the two statements, that 

 life has preceded organism, and that consciousness 

 has preceded organism, are co-equal expressions. 



Regarding, for the time being, the phenomena of 

 life as energy primitively determined by conscious- 

 ness, we may look more closely into the characteristics 

 of this remarkable attribute. That consciousness, 

 and therefore mind, is a property of matter, is a 

 necessary truth, which to some minds seems difficult 

 of acceptance. Clearly it is not one of the known 

 so-called inorganic forces. Objects which are hot, 

 or luminous, or sonorous, are not on that account 

 conscious: so that consciousness is not a necessary 

 condition of energy. On the other hand, in order to 

 be conscious, bodies must possess a suitable temper- 

 ature, and must be suitably nourished; so that ener- 

 gy is a necessary condition of consciousness. For 

 this reason some thinkers erroneously regard con- 

 sciousness as a form or species of energy. We all 

 understand the absurdity of such expressions as the 

 equivalency of force and matter, or the conversion of 

 matter into force. They are not, however, more 

 absurd than the corresponding proposition more fre- 

 quently heard, that consciousness can be converted 

 into energy, and vice versa. 



The energetic side of consciousness, however, may 

 be readily perceived. Acts performed in conscious- 

 ness involve a greater expenditure of energy than the 

 same acts unconsciously performed: the labor is di- 

 rectly as the consciousness involved. The dynamic 

 character of consciousness is also shown in its exclu- 

 siveness: two opposite emotions cannot occupy the 

 mind at the same moment of time. But there is no 

 fact with which we are more familiar than that 



consciousness in some way determines the direction 

 of the energy which it characterizes. The stimuli 

 which affect the movements of animals at first, only 

 produce their results by transmission through the 

 intermediation of consciousness. Without conscious- 

 ness, education, habits, and designed movements 

 would be impossible. So far as we know, the instinct 

 of hunger, which is at the foundation of animal being, 

 is a state of consciousness in all animals. 



On the other hand, as consciousness is an attribute 

 of matter, it is of course subject to the laws of neces- 

 sity to which matter and energy conform. It cannot 

 cause two solid bodies to occupy the same space at 

 the same time, make ten foot-pounds of energy out 

 of five foot-pounds of energy, nor abolish time more 

 than it can annihilate space. 



What is, then, the immediate action of conscious- 

 ness in directing energy into one channel rather than 

 another ? Why, from a purely mechanical point of 

 view, is the adductor muscle of the right side of the 

 horse's tail contracted to brush away the stinging fly 

 from the right side of the horse's body, rather than 

 the left adductor muscle ? The first crude thought 

 is, that consciousness supplies another energy which 

 turns aside the course of the energy required to pro- 

 duce the muscular contraction; but consciousness, 

 per se, is not itself a force (= energy). How, then, 

 can it exercise energy ? 



The key to many weighty and mysterious phenom- 

 ena lies in the explanation of the so-called voluntary 

 movements of animals. The explanation can only be 

 found in a simple acceptance of the fact, that energy 

 can be conscious. If true, this is an ultimate fact, 

 neither more nor less difficult to comprehend than the 

 nature of energy or matter in their ultimate analyses. 

 But how is such an hypothesis to be reconciled with 

 the facts of nature, where consciousness plays a part 

 so infinitesimally small? The explanation lies close 

 at hand, and has already been referred to. Energy 

 become automatic is no longer conscious, or is about 

 to become unconscious. What the molecular condi- 

 tions of consciousness are, is one of the problems of 

 the future. One thing is certain : the organization of 

 the mechanism of habits is its enemy. It is clear 

 that in animals, energy, on the loss of consciousness, 

 undergoes a retrograde metamorphosis, as it does later 

 in the history of organized beings on their death. 

 This loss of consciousness is first succeeded by the 

 so-called involuntary and automatic functions of 

 animals. According to the law of catagenesis, the 

 vegetative and other vital functions of animals and 

 plants are a later product of the retrograde metamor- 

 phosis of energy. With death, energy falls to the 

 level of the polar tensions of chemism, and the reg- 

 ular and symmetrical movements of molecules in the 

 crystallization of its inorganic products. 



It has been already advanced, that the phenomena 

 of growth-force, which are especially characteristic 

 of living things,* originated in the direction given to 

 nutrition by consciousness and by the automatic 

 movements derived from it. There remain, how- 

 ever, some other phenomena which do not yield so 

 readily to this analysis. These are, first, the conver- 



