PHILOSOPHY AND “ EVOLUTION ” : AN INQUIRY. 
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question, recourse must be had to other studies, that is to say, 
to philosophy, and especially to that branch of it which occupies 
itself with mental phenomena — psychology.” 
Mental faculties . — How do evolutionists try to account for 
man's mental faculties ? They tell us that consciousness is a 
something which somehow* “ arose ” out of unconscious matter,! 
“ or has been gradually evolved from the ‘ psychic reflex 
activity ; ’ ” that the notion of personal identity is an illusion, 
as is also that of free-will ; that human ivill is the resultant of 
nerve currents flowing together, or that it is produced (in its 
independent and higher phase) when the “ tricellular reflex 
organ” arises, and a third independent cell — the “psychic” or 
“ ganglionic ” cell — is interposed between the sense-cell and the 
“ motor-cell ” ; and so on. Leslie Stephen! gravely informs us 
that will is determined by character and circumstances, character 
being itself evolved from antecedent circumstances, and hence 
it follows that will is really the creature of circumstances. 
Is our Knowledge reliable ?■ — Ho such explanations really 
explain ? It was remarked in the President’s Address at the 
British Association Meeting in 1904, that, on the assumption 
that our intellectual faculties have been derived from uncon- 
scious§ modifications (as evolutionists assert and affirm) of 
* So Spencer and Haeckel. While refusing to ascribe consciousness to 
the atom, Haeckel yet attributes to the atom will, sensation, likings, and 
dislikings ! Buchner regards consciousness as only a molecular movement. 
t Lotze has well shown the “ absolute incomparability with one another 
of physical events and conscious states.” We shall agree with D. S. 
Cairns ( The Contemporary Review, October, 1904,) that “It is utterly 
impossible to explain psychic phenomena in terms of their physical 
conditions.” And, with Sir Oliver Lodge, that “ Matter is the vehicle of 
mind, but it is dominated and transcended by it and “It is intelligence 
which directs ; it is physical energy which is directed and controlled and 
produces the result in time and space.” ( Life and Matter , pp. 123, 169.) 
t Science of Ethics. 
$ On the attempted derivation of the conscious from the unconscious, 
Professor E. Armitage remarks — “ Order and law are only found without 
as they are first conceived within the mind, and man remains for ever 
the measure of the universe that he knows. A science therefore that 
dethrones man or that presents mind and thought as a late arrival in the 
world, has plainly missed its way, and is putting the cart before the 
horse.” (See “ The Scientists and Common Sense,” in The Contemporary 
Review , May, 1905.) Weinster, with reference to attempts to “ explain ” 
phenomena of consciousness by physical terms — attraction, molecular 
vibration, and the like, jwints out what utter folly it would be thought to 
“ explain ” in the same way the inertia of lifeless substances as caused by 
vibrations of the substance. (See p. 54 of Die Dhilosophischen 
Grundtagen.) 
