66 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
For. without a modicum of it, the plant sinks its eager roots into the 
fruitful soil, lifts its slender stem into the luminous air, spreads wide 
and wider its verdant foliage to the chemic influx that elaborates life’s 
all-nourishing pabulum, and finally bursts into the gorgeous, sweet- 
scented splendor of insect-luring bloom—solemnizing thus, arrayed in 
delicate beauty, the hymeneal rites of creation. 
And all this rich fulfillment of far-reaching purpose without a trace 
of conscious participation. 
Now, is it not likely that man, sharing with his humbler brethren the 
vicissitudes of existence, with all its fateful round of doings from the 
hour of birth to that of death—is it not likely that his* consciousness, 
not less than theirs, however intently concerned in the shifting scenes 
of life, is witnessing them also as a mere unparticipating spectator? 
This, indeed, however surprising the conclusion, is the deeply con¬ 
sidered verdict, not only of extreme predestinarian theologians and de- 
terminist philosophers, but of the foremost scientists of the present time. 
Huxley, for example, emphatically declares that the conscious-auto¬ 
maton theory “holds equally good for man,” that “all state's of conscious¬ 
ness in ns are immediately caused by molecular changes in the brain- 
substance:” that “there is no proof that any state of consciousness is 
the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism;” and 
that, consequently, “our mental conditions are simply the symbols in 
consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the 
organism.” 
This, surely, is a plain-spoken, unmistakable statement. 
Tyndall arrives at the same conclusion. He says: “If we are true to 
the canon of science, we must deny to subjective phenomena all influ¬ 
ence on physical process.” 
These illustrious scientists, intimate friends and admirers of such 
confirmed transccndentalists as Carlyle and Emerson, and likewise given 
to idealistic views, find themselves, nevertheless, irresistibly caught in 
the meshes of the conscious-automaton theory. 
In fact, hardly a single leading scientist of our time has escaped the 
same fate. 
Du Bois Reymond paints a vivid picture of a mind capable of grasp¬ 
ing, with mathematical precision, the mechanical world-formula. Such 
a mind, realizing the exact relative positions and velocities of all ulti¬ 
mate material particles of the universe, would thus be enabled to fore¬ 
tell, with the same accuracy astronomical occurrences are at present 
foretold, all future events, inclusive of the minutest actions of all men; 
nay, would be able to calculate backward every change that had ever 
taken place in the past. 
Such prospective and retrospective omniscience would, of course, de- 
