CAN WE BE SURE 
 OF MORTALITY? 
 
 WM. A. CHENEY 
 
 Tr.de 
 
 Mark
 
 C LIBRARY I 
 
 L i Y OF 
 
 :.'A 
 
 o
 
 CAN WE BE SURE OF MORTALITY?
 
 CAN WE BE SURE OF 
 MORTALITY? 
 
 A LAWYER'S BRIEF 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. A. CHENEY 
 
 EX-JUDGE OP THE 8UPEBIOB COURT OP THE 
 
 STATE OP CALIFORNIA IN AND FOB 
 
 LOS ANGELES COUNTY 
 
 TRADE 
 
 MARK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 ROGER BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 
 
 1910 
 
 LONDON: L. N. FOWLER & CO.
 
 COPTRIGHT, 1910, BY 
 
 WILLIAM ATWELL CHENEY 
 
 THE TBOW PBE88, NEW YORK
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Preface vii 
 
 I. Introduction 1 
 
 II. Some Things Which Science Does Not Know 18 
 
 III. The Living Environment 33 
 
 IV. Eelationship 66 
 
 V. The Witnesses 80 
 
 VI. Consciousness and Pain 98 
 
 VII. Memory 117 
 
 VIII. Monism 134 
 
 IX. The Will 145 
 
 X. The Eternity of Individuality 151 
 
 XI. Conclusion. . 194
 
 PREFACE 
 
 If it be true that "you are not all included be- 
 tween your hat and your boots," then possibly the 
 residue or individual is not mortal after all. One 
 surmises many things about this selfsame indi- 
 vidual irrespective of biology, anatomy, or phys- 
 ics in general, and while a surmise is not a 
 datum, it often evolves an experience which re- 
 sults in the acquisition of a fact. Good guessing 
 is second cousin to an hypothesis, especially if 
 based on a fair amount of actuality. Are we sure 
 then that we are mortal? Furthermore, are the 
 professors of exact science quite certain that the 
 individual is annihilated when the body dies as 
 such and goes back to the elements whence it 
 came? The amount that we know is absurdly 
 small compared with that yet unexplained, and 
 the Riddle of the Universe is not so easy of solv- 
 ing as some of our professors may suppose. To 
 be sure, a key is a good thing, and we have one 
 already that unlocks many doors; but on ahead 
 are more and still more closed avenues not yet 
 explored. 
 
 The word science means to know, this term by 
 its very nature implying the unknown; and the 
 scientist is simply a human being conscientiously 
 
 vii
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 dealing with the negatives and positives of pos- 
 sible knowledge. He gropes about in the dark 
 with his torch of a fact, getting glimmers here and 
 there of new data or a law, like the pay streak in 
 ore-bearing rock that which is seen is but an in- 
 dication of that which is hid, and only the indi- 
 vidual who admits this is worthy the term of sci- 
 entist. Should we discover the secret of secrets, 
 the final or first principle the hidden mainspring 
 that once understood would reveal the Universe 
 with all its facts even then, man, being but hu- 
 man and a victim of time and space, must needs 
 keep busy through eternity, adjusting and relating 
 these infinite data one to the other. There is no 
 danger of a slump in the business of science or 
 the scientific man, for that in which he lives, 
 moves, and has his being is so much bigger than 
 himself that he can never retire from business 
 while time lasts. The living environment in which 
 each individual finds himself submerged forms a 
 sargasso of specialization that compels him to des- 
 perately flounder until a grasp on unity is at- 
 tained. In physics, with its hypothetical atom, 
 he is lost and well-nigh drowned. Not until he 
 discovers a dominant unit guiding and directing 
 its subjects of lesser units does the cosmic bal- 
 ance of things present itself. The word relation- 
 ship is a misnomer unless it really expresses its 
 true meaning. Things chaotically bumping to- 
 gether without let or hindrance, sympathy or 
 mutual understanding, are not in a true sense re- 
 lated. A universe of accidents like this would be 
 without coordination, without harmony, without
 
 PREFACE IX 
 
 inherent unifying law. We know of no such uni- 
 verse. Relationship is an established fact; cos- 
 mos and balance are everywhere in evidence. 
 Living things environ and are environed, estab- 
 lishing a true relativity, physically, mentally, and 
 spiritually. Dominant units control lesser units 
 and are in turn controlled by those above them. 
 There is a hierarchy, an ascending scale. All 
 things then are good in their initiative and final- 
 ity. The Alpha and Omega are absolute and true ; 
 only that which goes between presents itself to 
 the partial understanding as Evil; the Ultimates 
 are beyond cavil. 
 
 Which is the myth, then, considering our en- 
 vironment and relationships mortality or im- 
 mortality? Professor Haeckel claims that immor- 
 tality is a fable, an old man's dream; but many 
 another scientific witness argues against the myth 
 of mortality, and much of this argument hinges 
 on the fact of consciousness a problem which 
 staggers the materialistic monist and which he 
 certainly does not solve. An assumption of one 
 infinite eternal substance with innate property 
 of movement, minus eternal differentiation, is no 
 adequate explanation of consciousness. This 
 power of mind being beyond solution, by science 
 either heterodox or orthodox, is also beyond the 
 reach of judgment as to its mortality or other- 
 wise. Therefore, any scientist who would sum- 
 marily dispose of it is hardly worthy of serious 
 consideration. The miracles which we are asked 
 by orthodox Christianity to believe are simple 
 and childlike compared with the stupendous de-
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 mand on our credulity made by biology when we 
 are requested to accept the memory of the germ 
 cell, along with its storing capacity for holding 
 intact the complexities of the race memories and 
 impulses, as well as the innumerable physical 
 forms of motion ready to spring into multiform 
 life with the past in consciousness stretching 
 backward to simple plasm. And this cell a divis- 
 ible cell at that ! It may all be truth no doubt is, 
 but if so, the miracle of immortality or eternity of 
 being is not a hard one to swallow; for such ca- 
 pacity in an invisible cell would stamp it with the 
 hall-mark of continuity. Sterling and indestruc- 
 tible, what else could it be but individual? All men 
 are "as grass" yes. He "cometh up as a flower" 
 yes, yes. He is bound to walk over the spot 
 sometime in his life where he will be buried yes, 
 yes, yes. We have had this dinged into our ears 
 from childhood; funerals have been our night- 
 mares, coffins, lugubrious voices, crape ! If there 
 is anything in outer and auto suggestion, we 
 ought to die. Not a shred of the human or di- 
 vine would be left if mortality in toto were an as- 
 sumed fact. And there is an immense deal hi 
 auto and outer suggestion. A sick man can be- 
 come sicker and sicker by constantly reminding 
 himself in so many words that he is ill ; a well man 
 can even make himself sick by the same method. 
 To be sure, we have been informed by priests and 
 philosophers of a possible immortality, but with 
 such long faces, solemn airs, and so many condi- 
 tions, that the prospect held out is abnormal and 
 unalluring.
 
 PREFACE XI 
 
 If the human world would face about and look 
 at life instead of death; if it would affirm health 
 instead of sickness, the mortality of man would 
 dwindle to insignificance compared with the im- 
 mortality or eternity of being which is undoubt- 
 edly his. Mortality would then resolve itself into 
 a change of environment for the real man as re- 
 gards his physical structure. As a matter of fact, 
 that change is continually going on, even when he 
 is said to live, death being but a stronger pro- 
 nouncement in the same direction. We make but 
 little ado about moving from one house to an- 
 other; why then are we so doleful about this flu- 
 idic house of flesh, these colonies of individuals 
 amidst which we dwell f They are a shifting com- 
 modity at best, and that stable thing which we call 
 the individual is not necessarily tied to any spe- 
 cial order of vitalized being. Besides, this same 
 organized habitat is far more readily maintained 
 in approximate equilibrium when we cease to af- 
 firm that it is sick and dying. If one wants to 
 set up a revolution in that thing called his body, 
 creating chaos in the very central system itself, 
 let him suggest continually that order is impos- 
 sible, and sickness and death have already in- 
 truded. Of course we are mortal in so far as we 
 make ourselves so. Were it possible, we would 
 be utterly and irrevocably annihilated, and the 
 very philosophers that teach immortality help 
 man on to this doleful condition even more so 
 than the "rank materialist" who challenges the 
 immortal with an energy worthy of better things. 
 
 "Are we sure of Mortality?" According to the
 
 Xll PREFACE 
 
 priest and logician yes. "All men are mortal." 
 But what is a man? As before said, "you are not 
 all included between your hat and your boots." 
 Therefore, in face of the dominant assertions of 
 the ages past, the author of this book has the au- 
 dacity to ask, Are you sure? 
 
 A. E. C.
 
 Chapter I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The assurance with which some writers dealing 
 with biological and kindred topics have asserted 
 the scientifically demonstrated mortality of the 
 individual is a matter of profound astonishment; 
 and being a lawyer by profession, I undertook 
 for my own satisfaction and that of some of my 
 friends the task of writing a brief for the other 
 side. It appeared clearly to me that if any theory 
 or any number of theories could be presented 
 which were consistent with what Science knows, 
 and also with the idea of immortality, then the 
 claimed demonstration of man's mortality must 
 necessarily fail. While I was engaged in the 
 preparation of this brief, my attention was called 
 to the recently published opinions of leading sci- 
 entists upon the question, causing me to adapt 
 my argument to the position taken by them, par- 
 ticularly to that assumed by Professor Haeckel. 
 My reason for selecting the great Zoologist for 
 the purpose is because he presents the argument 
 for that side of the question with all the force of 
 which it is capable, and he marshals the evidence 
 to its minutest detail. He therefore represents 
 the scientific nonimmortalists. 
 
 I am not desirous of assuming an attitude criti- 
 
 1
 
 2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 cal of his scientific attainments in a chosen and 
 special field of thought far from it. I have found 
 his labors a source of great satisfaction when my 
 mind turned wearily from the sheep-bound books 
 containing the condensed wisdom of jurists; but 
 Professor Haeckel has written a book for the 
 world at large, one which is not a text-book, nor a 
 treatise on his special science. 
 
 I have read the work and am one of those for 
 whose benefit it may be presumed it was written. 
 I am one of the human beings whom he would 
 turn adrift on the sea of profound despondency, 
 with the cables of their vessels slipped, and the 
 sails idly slapping the yards and masts. 
 
 I therefore have a right to know why he has 
 assumed judicial functions and pronounced the 
 judgment of mortality upon man, what proofs he 
 possesses, why he has loaded down with an extra 
 weight of woe my fellowman who already found 
 life in this world discouraging, disappointing, but 
 who nevertheless kept a smiling face, because it 
 was hopefully turned toward either heaven or 
 some compensating change of environment in the 
 eternities. 
 
 The bearer of bad news is never welcome, 
 though that should not prevent a straightforward 
 presentation of science, provided it be science, on 
 the part of those men who seem to be set apart for 
 that especial work, neither should we be afraid to 
 face the truth, provided it be the truth, though 
 destructive of our ideals. 
 
 Who and what are scientists? They are men 
 who at the sacrifice of a generalized life special-
 
 INTRODUCTION" 3 
 
 ize the operations of their minds in some chosen 
 field for the purpose of gathering data, facts; 
 these they report to the general world of mankind, 
 which constructs therefrom its conclusions. A 
 man may be great as a specialist, as Darwin, Hux- 
 ley, Haeckel, or he may be great as a generalist, 
 as Herbert Spencer, but he is never great as both, 
 or so rarely that it is difficult to recall the name of 
 one to mind. 
 
 Witnesses, even experts, never occupy the 
 bench or the jury box on the trial of an issue of 
 fact ; they are respectfully requested to step down 
 if they are to bear witness, and leave the judicial 
 functions to be exercised by others. So Professor 
 Haeckel is a great witness to such data as he has 
 collected in his chosen field, but as judge or jury 
 his conclusions from them, when applied to an- 
 other and entirely different field, are of no more 
 value than are the reader's or mine. 
 
 The absolute negative can be proven never ; and 
 if any theory or theories, any hypothesis or hy- 
 potheses, any belief or beliefs, can start the pro- 
 jection of their lines of thought where the proof 
 ends, it is sufficient. 
 
 The cool nonchalance with which German sci- 
 entists of a certain school announce as a final con- 
 clusion the falsity of the doctrine of the immortal- 
 ity of man would be amusing if it were not for 
 the danger that the mass of busy men may accept 
 their assertion as truth. Judging from the en- 
 thusiasm with which they embrace the opportuni- 
 ties to attack it, it would seem almost as if the 
 destruction of this hopeful doctrine was the ob-
 
 4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 jective point to which they were aiming all their 
 researches. There are evidences of this to be 
 found in the fact that by his own admission, an 
 admission upon which he prides himself, Profes- 
 sor Haeckel holds the same opinion now that he 
 did thirty years ago, before the recent progress 
 had been made in biology. Are we to conclude 
 from this that he was a wonderful prophet thirty 
 years ago, or rather that his preconceived notions 
 concerning immortality have caused his conclu- 
 sions from data to be biased! The vehemence 
 with which the doctrine of immortality is as- 
 saulted but emphasizes the importance of the be- 
 lief to humanity. Either it is exceedingly dan- 
 gerous to the best interests of humankind, or else 
 those who assail it are. The opinions of special- 
 ists are of peculiar value, when expressed con- 
 cerning matters clearly within the limits of their 
 fields of observation and investigation. Outside 
 of those realms their opinions are but dicta and 
 possess no particular worth, and this for the rea- 
 son that the very concentration along the especial 
 lines of their work causes them to be peculiarly 
 weak in other directions. Darwin said of himself 
 that as he grew older while the capacity for ob- 
 servation in his chosen field of labor increased in 
 power, he completely lost the appreciation of tune, 
 harmony, and all that gives to music its soul-in- 
 spiring qualities. All of his marvelous scientific 
 attainment would not therefore qualify him as a 
 judge of music. 
 
 A study of the growth, development, complex- 
 ity, and functions of the brain and nervous system
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 emphasizes this position. Lines of least resist- 
 ance are established, facile connections made, and 
 others blocked and frequently inhibited. It is not 
 to be wondered at, then, that a man who spends all 
 his time over the microscope in the study of the 
 egg with its nucleus, polar bodies, and centre some, 
 or whose energies are altogether given to the 
 chemical analysis of the living machine and its 
 operations, should by such concentration to a per- 
 ceptible degree incapacitate himself for generali- 
 zation. Just as difficult is it for a man who is 
 bound by a creed to find truth anywhere outside of 
 his particular form of religion. This is because 
 of the establishment of preferred paths, which 
 become lines of least resistance; the mind oper- 
 ates only along these lines, the other channels are 
 clogged, paralyzed, atrophied, or undeveloped; 
 therefore, anything poured into the brain through 
 the senses seeks these lines and these only. The 
 opinion of the microscopist or the occult chemist 
 concerning the divinity of Christ has no added 
 value from his eminence in his special field of la- 
 bor, and the opinion of the creed-bound priest as 
 to the office of the centre some of the cell receives 
 no strength from his clerical calling. 
 
 The scientist may consistently demand that you, 
 in opposing him, furnish him with data incon- 
 sistent with his apparent science, but he may not 
 with propriety say that science declares your 
 facts untrue, for either his position is not scien- 
 tific or your declarations are not of facts. 
 
 The specialist is not the emperor of the world 
 of thought, he is merely king of his limited mon-
 
 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 archy. His duty is performed when he has un- 
 loaded the things he has discovered and the prin- 
 ciples evolved. His only value to the mental 
 world is measured by what he has added to the 
 sum of knowledge; where his contributions fit, 
 how they adapt, and what ethical or religious con- 
 clusions are to be drawn from them, are questions 
 better answered by the general constructor than 
 by the specialist himself. 
 
 The mountains of wisdom are honeycombed 
 with the old holes once filled with the surveying 
 flag poles of scientists. They, the scientists, are 
 sleepless surveyors; they never fold their hands 
 and cry, "It is finished"; they assume positions, 
 they abandon them, and enable the world of 
 thought to rear new structures upon the ruins of 
 the old. This positive assertion on the part of 
 materialistic or monistic specialists that the world 
 must part with its dream of immortality has a 
 familiar sound. We are all accustomed to the im- 
 perious verdict of some scientists; their "cannot 
 be" confronted with the "may be" of ordinary 
 mankind has more than once resulted in an aban- 
 donment of position and the acknowledgment "it 
 is." The solar system, aye, the universe, has been 
 constructed on various plans and reconstructed to 
 meet the demands of increasing knowledge; heat 
 and light have abandoned some of the various 
 methods of proceeding from the Sun to Earth 
 provided for them by physicists from time to 
 time ; many dog-eared leaves in the Geologic book 
 have been torn out; combating biologists have 
 found more hidden wheels in the machinery of
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 the ovum, and constructed man with his load of 
 inheritances upon several new theoretical plans 
 based thereon, but there does not walk upon the 
 earth one solitary scientist who is justified by the 
 joint investigations of them all in asserting, as 
 has been done, that the opening days of the Twen- 
 tieth Century confront us with demonstrative 
 proof that the idea of immortality is a dream. 
 
 One of the wisest and most persevering investi- 
 gators, George Romanes, the man who first sought 
 systematically for and found in the medusa what 
 is probably the primitive nervous system of living 
 creatures, says in "Mind, Motion, and Monism": 
 "Because within the limits of human experience 
 mind is only known as associated with brain, it 
 clearly does not follow that mind cannot exist in 
 any other mode." "There is no being without know- 
 ing. ... If there is no motion without mind, no 
 being without knowledge, may we not rather infer, 
 with Bruno, that it is in the medium of mind and in 
 the medium of knowledge we live and move and 
 have our being ? . . . Yet even here, if it be true that 
 the voice of science must thus of necessity speak 
 the language of agnosticism, at least let us see to 
 it that the language is pure, let us not tolerate any 
 barbarisms introduced from the side of aggres- 
 sive dogma, so shall we find that this new gram- 
 mar of thought does not admit of any construction 
 radically opposed to more venerable ways of 
 thinking that if a little knowledge of physiology 
 and a little knowledge of psychology dispose men 
 to atheism, a deeper knowledge of both, and still 
 more, a deeper thought upon their relations to one
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 another will lead men back to some form of re- 
 ligion which, if it be more vague, may also be more 
 worthy than that of earlier days." 
 
 The claim of thoughtful and hopeful humanity 
 has been that individuals may be immortal. He 
 would not be a rash man who should add to his 
 hope the expectation that sometime the certainty 
 of immortality should be scientifically manifest, 
 but he certainly goes to the verge of rashness who 
 asserts that it is now or ever will be demonstrated 
 by human science that individual life is not im- 
 mortal. We measure mortality by and in a dying 
 environment, we witness the protean changes of 
 form and expression, and the columns of mortal 
 figures which we add but result in mortal totals. 
 The very conception of immortality, indeed any 
 conception of it, must be, and is, always of an- 
 other and different environment. 
 
 All that science has measured, weighed, gauged, 
 or analyzed, to this day has been that which ap- 
 peals to our five senses, and even that has not as 
 yet found its limits. We do not know what energy 
 is, and the least in size and latest in discovery of 
 physical organisms reveals it operating with such 
 marvelous precision and selectivity that the last 
 words of science uttered with bated breath are: 
 "Energy may be conscious!" Possibly we may 
 yet shout in the positiveness of conviction, "En- 
 ergy is conscious, energy is consciousness, energy 
 is mind!" 
 
 Whether we may not reasonably postulate units 
 of energy as a substitute for the hypothetical hard 
 atoms and find in ether and motion the key to the
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 kaleidoscopic phenomena of nature, is a question 
 which I hardly think can be at present answered 
 in the negative. 
 
 Much of the intellectual fogginess surrounding 
 the idea of immortality may arise out of the fact 
 that we are prone to limit our conception of it to 
 the immortality of man qua man, whereas the true 
 question should be: Is the individual immortal? 
 A man is but a form of energy as presenting its 
 necessary phenomena in the existing environment. 
 He is an essential adaptation to changing sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 The transformation of energy is supplemented 
 by the reversibility of energy. When I speak into 
 the transmitter of the telephone, the energy forms 
 of my voice succeed one another in the various 
 vibrations of the tympanum and unseen and un- 
 heard traverse the long wire, the environing me- 
 dium is different, the energy forms are different 
 likewise, but upon reaching the enveloping atmos- 
 phere beyond the receiver they are again what 
 they were before in the same medium, contain the 
 qualities of my voice, and all along the line are in 
 changing forms, but retaining individuality of 
 energy. 
 
 We are what we are because of where we are. 
 
 The permissive suggestion of Socrates to his 
 mourning friends that they might bury him "if 
 they could catch him," savors of a profound in- 
 sight into the real nature of life. 
 
 With our microscopes and in our chemical labo- 
 ratories we are analyzing what we are with what 
 we are and in the where we are.
 
 10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 We are what we are in form and expression be- 
 cause of our relationship to the environment in 
 which we form and express ; we could not be other 
 than we are in that environment. If evolution has 
 not taught us that lesson, then we are remarkably 
 blind to its leadings. 
 
 Our forms, senses, arms, legs, chemical proc- 
 esses, methods of analysis, and expression of 
 ideas, all are but so many inevitable results of the 
 movement of the individual in this environment. 
 What would it be if operating in another and dif- 
 ferent one! Who can say? Certainly the scien- 
 tist, whose very science is measured in terms of 
 the environment, cannot be permitted to assert 
 that he has demonstrated that it could not exist 
 at all. As the expression of a unit of force in this 
 environment, man, undoubtedly he may demon- 
 strate the impossibility of its similar appearance 
 in a foreign environment, but that is as far as 
 reason permits him to go in condemning the hope 
 and expectancy of humanity that its life has no 
 death, but does have inherent power of adapta- 
 tion to any environment in which it may find it- 
 self. Until Biology is able to give some more lucid 
 explanation for the phenomena of thought and 
 memory than the hazy one of chemical action, or 
 phosphorescent gleams, it is not in a position to 
 declare an ultimate conclusion that the individual 
 is merely a machine and its mortality demon- 
 strated. 
 
 If mind is but the functioning of matter, if 
 thought but the secretion of the brain, then mem- 
 ory is utterly inexplicable, and consciousness is but
 
 INTBODUCTION 11 
 
 the immediate moment and unable to declare it- 
 self, for in functioning, a state or condition be- 
 comes another state or condition and the process 
 is already past. Indeed, upon such a foundation 
 I do not see how we may rationally speak of a 
 "state." Nothing would be static, it would be an 
 ever-becoming. The process is not like that of 
 the kinetoscope, where the pictures succeed each 
 other as independent forms, separate, distinct, but 
 producing the appearance of movement only by 
 the rapidity of successive presentation ; not so at 
 all. The progressive change in man is one move- 
 ment of a constantly evolving figure of one chang- 
 ing form. As a matter of common experience we 
 know that, whatever the unit of force may be 
 which is thus adapting itself to its environment, 
 we are not only aware of the moment's process, 
 but memory means that we compare each wave of 
 the flux with the wave which preceded it and, in- 
 deed, even anticipate the wave which will follow; 
 otherwise we could only be conscious of being, 
 not of having been, nor of becoming. 
 
 These may be old problems, but they ever re- 
 main unsolved to rebuke the effrontery of men 
 who think they have surveyed the universe of 
 mind by measuring along the straight line of spe- 
 cialty. 
 
 If we be logical in our analysis of the proposi- 
 tion that biological science demonstrates that mind 
 is but the functioning of organized matter and 
 therefore there is nothing to survive, we shall add 
 to the conclusion, "therefore there was nothing to 
 commence."
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 To limit the evidence for or against the im- 
 mortality of the individual to either physical or 
 psychical phenomena, or to biology or psychology, 
 is to reach a conclusion based upon one side of the 
 case alone. 
 
 I believe that every thoughtful man will recog- 
 nize the fact that it is to the failure to harmonize 
 the data of these parallel sciences that we must 
 look for the reason for the unjustified conclusions 
 reached by our great physicists and biologists. 
 
 A work upon biology is a text-book or a treatise 
 upon a special subject; so is one upon psychology, 
 but in the attempt to reach a conclusion concern- 
 ing the meaning of life or its continuity, one 
 surely betrays an unconscious prejudice if he re- 
 fuses to consider the bearing of the data of both 
 these sciences upon the matter. 
 
 Professor Haeckel frankly says that it is impos- 
 sible for any man to be master of all the sciences, 
 and that his own command of them is "uneven and 
 defective," though, of course, this is compara- 
 tively so only. So that when we read his latest 
 book we are not studying the well-digested data 
 presented in a text-book or a scientific treatise, 
 but rather the opinions of a scientist who, adding 
 to the legitimate products of a personal research 
 on his own part the declarations and opinions of 
 others, which he has exercised his own judgment 
 in selecting, has constructed a scheme of existence 
 which satisfies himself. This should be borne in 
 mind in reading his book, because otherwise we 
 may fall into the grievous error of supposing our- 
 selves compelled to accept his conclusions be-
 
 INTBODUCTION 13 
 
 cause of his great prominence in his chosen field 
 of research. 
 
 The latter part of his work consists of chapters 
 which deal with questions entirely outside of his 
 special sciences, as, for instance, those on "God 
 and the World," "Knowledge and Belief," "Sci- 
 ence and Christianity," "Our Monistic Religion," 
 "Our Monistic Ethics," and the "Immortality of 
 the Soul." 
 
 That Professor Haeckel, as any other scholarly, 
 influential man, has a right to form and express 
 his views upon these subjects, no one for a mo- 
 ment can doubt ; but that his religious, philosophi- 
 cal, and ethical opinions should be received and 
 given the same value as his theses on zoology or 
 evolution is open to grave doubts for the reasons 
 which I have suggested. 
 
 It is not my purpose to undertake the foolish 
 task of criticising Professor Haeckel in the line 
 of thought and research where he stands preemi- 
 nent, nor to review the caustic strictures placed by 
 him upon religion and the ordinarily accepted 
 articles of faith. I do, however, hope to be able 
 to give some reasons for not following him into 
 the marshes of absolute negation of individual im- 
 mortality. I cannot hope, nor shall I attempt, to 
 present any explanation of the Universe, nor ar- 
 rogate to myself the ability to understand it, but 
 merely to suggest that some avenues of escape 
 from despair are yet scientifically open to the im- 
 agination which will even bear the test of the ap- 
 plication of "pure reason." The great question 
 presented by Professor Haeckel's book is whether
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the individual can survive the wreck of its physi- 
 cal body, and, of course, that involves the other 
 questions, "What is an individual, and did it have 
 a beginning? 
 
 It is true that the immortality discussed by 
 Haeckel is the immortality of the soul, but as he de- 
 fines the soul to be a collective title for the sum of 
 cerebral functions, these to be determined by phys- 
 ical and chemical processes, it is apparent that he 
 treats the whole man, physical and psychical, as 
 the individual ; therefore, soul and individual are 
 for the purposes of his chapter on immortality 
 one and the same thing. The gist of his argument 
 is that soul being but the sum total of these cere- 
 bral functions, when they cease there is nothing 
 in the nature of an individual to survive. Much 
 of the discussion is directed to the annihilation of 
 the doctrine of immortality as presented by 
 Christianity and other dualistic religions. It has 
 seemed to me that a larger view of what an in- 
 dividual is, than that which narrows him to the 
 mere manifestation in the material body, is sci- 
 entifically possible ; and I have endeavored in the 
 pages which follow to outline the reasons why I 
 think so. Not that I claim that the particular 
 theories which I advance are exclusive, but that 
 they are subject to fewer serious scientific objec- 
 tions than the negative conclusions presented by 
 Professor Haeckel. They are possibly true, even 
 in the light of recent science, and if possibly so, 
 then the argument for the negative is invalid ; and 
 if the possibility trends toward probability, then 
 the negation disappears entirely.
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 Unless some such idea of what an individual is 
 as is presented in these pages is a true one, I 
 really do not see that science recognizes any in- 
 dividual at all. Professor HaeckePs definition of 
 an individual is that of a unity which cannot be 
 divided without destroying its nature, an indi- 
 visible entity; and as we know that the germ cell 
 of animal life does divide many times in segmen- 
 tation before birth and continues to do so after 
 birth in generation, it really would appear diffi- 
 cult to locate individuality, although he says that 
 there (in the cell) the individual begins his ex- 
 istence. Its production of the other generative 
 cells sexually can no more be "overgrowth" and 
 compatible with the preservation of the individ- 
 ual than is the segmentation of protists, which 
 Haeckel says destroys the individual. 
 
 I cannot resist the feeling that there is reason 
 to believe that there is meaning in the individual 
 life, a meaning which holds such a relation to the 
 Universe that its value must not be measured in 
 time and space, but in the time of times and space 
 of spaces Eternity. The existence of ether we 
 probably admit from necessity growing out of evi- 
 dent phenomena demanding it, but when Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel claims it to be "thinking substance" 
 which would appear to possess the essence of 
 thought, but does not think, that is his opinion, 
 demanded by his own preconceived notions and 
 which he supplies in his scheme to meet the de- 
 mand. 
 
 When he postulates an eternal, infinite ether, 
 which has a tendency to condense and otherwise
 
 16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 differentiate, that is his opinion again, and we are 
 left to ask, What is a "tendency?" Is it not a will, 
 and if it tends to differentiation, is it not a dif- 
 ferentiated will, and are we not again at a point 
 where we may just as scientifically as we postu- 
 lated all this, also postulate individual forces 
 units of force! 
 
 Before I surrender that which I have always 
 considered my great and overshadowing motive in 
 life, namely, my individual, eternal value in the 
 Universe, I must have something more than the 
 opinions of any man, however great. When Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel asserts that when the cerebral 
 functions cease, thought and consciousness do 
 likewise, that again is an opinion, it is a mere as- 
 sertion concerning the very question at issue. He 
 does not know that they cease, and from the very 
 premises upon which he constructs his conclu- 
 sions, it is evident that he cannot know. How can 
 he expect to measure the thought and conscious- 
 ness expressed in something which is not cere- 
 brum by cerebral activity in his own brain? 
 
 I will conclude this introduction by asking the 
 reader to consider, as he reads the succeeding 
 pages of this book, that the statement of Professor 
 Haeckel that this "ether," this "spirit" (force), 
 this "thinking substance," these "fundamental 
 postulates" are to be viewed as eternally produc- 
 ing the differentiated aspect of the Universe, so 
 that we are not to "hark back" to a point where 
 the two were equated in a homogeneous infinite 
 sea. That being so, of course it follows that the 
 present characteristic differentiation of the Uni-
 
 INTKODUCTION 17 
 
 verse has been eternally in existence now here, 
 now there, now this, now that and that, therefore, 
 a grand organization sufficient to eternally have 
 been the manifestation of one great organized 
 mind has never been wanting, and much that I 
 suggest in the following pages is, therefore, ra- 
 tionally conceivable; and being so, constitutes so 
 much of possibility to offset the dogmatic con- 
 clusions of Professor Haeckel.
 
 Chapter II 
 
 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES 
 NOT KNOW 
 
 A fair examination of the "demonstration" by 
 Haeckel and others of the mortality of man, when 
 examined critically by the application to it of the 
 rules of evidence as adopted and prevailing in 
 our courts of law, will result in the conclusion 
 that it does not meet the requirements of the rule 
 of circumstantial evidence. 
 
 If the evidence is of separate facts, they must 
 be so connected together in an unbroken chain of 
 continuity as that only one conclusion can flow 
 therefrom. There must be no missing links in 
 the chain, no unknown quantities which must be 
 supplied by hypotheses, unless they are them- 
 selves the conclusions sought for, and are irre- 
 sistible deductions. A chain of evidence, like one 
 of iron, is no stronger than its weakest link. 
 
 I fancy it will be admitted that when Science 
 undertakes the task of destroying the belief of 
 ages of nearly all men, one which arises without 
 external stimulation, which springs up within the 
 mind as a very part of its constitution, namely, 
 the belief that the individual is immortal, the bur- 
 den of proof is on Science to establish the fact of 
 mortality. 
 
 18
 
 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 19 
 
 This, I think, will be manifest when we remem- 
 ber that the idea of immortality finds its place in 
 the mind itself and appears to be as innate as any- 
 thing else; hence, to destroy it, to demonstrate 
 that it is false, requires a prior demonstration as 
 to what mind is in itself. Science asserts that we 
 know nothing except through" the senses; there- 
 fore, as the idea of immortality is of a life where 
 knowledge exists without the use of the senses as 
 we know them, and of an activity in a medium now 
 immeasurable by these senses, Science can know 
 nothing of immortality and can demonstrate noth- 
 ing concerning it pro or con. 
 
 Science asserts (Haeckel) that the atoms prob- 
 ably are endowed with will and feeling. I do not 
 dispute the fact, but Science has never seen, felt, 
 heard, smelled, or tasted an atom, or received any 
 knowledge of it through the senses except by in- 
 ference ; therefore, it knows nothing about the ex- 
 istence of atoms, and hence cannot endow them 
 with qualities of will and feeling, on his hypothe- 
 sis. 
 
 Scientists are disagreed as to whether the hy- 
 pothetical atoms are hard or soft, are matter or 
 force, are spirals or vortex rings, are eternal or 
 appear and disappear; hence, the hypothesis of 
 the existence of atoms includes a guess (a rational 
 one) at what they are if they exist. Therefore, 
 Science cannot tell us anything about atoms that 
 is not open to readjustment as to its truth. 
 
 Science relegates consciousness to the activities 
 of the cerebral cells, but it cannot construct a syn- 
 thesis of those activities which will result in a
 
 20 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 
 
 synthetic consciousness competent to explain what 
 we feel as to the unity of our consciousness. 
 
 Science begins its analysis of man in media res, 
 at the intricately organized, fertilized ovum cell, 
 smaller than the point of a needle; therefore, it 
 does not know the origin of his physical or mental 
 capacities. 
 
 It finds apparent, inherited traits, and is forced 
 to crowd them into this cell. 
 
 It is confronted with genius, and is compelled 
 to crowd the "race memory" into this cell. 
 
 It is aware that a man's wonderfully com- 
 pounded body comes from it, and perforce of ne- 
 cessity packs this cell with additional memories of 
 the human form, organs, central system, etc. 
 
 All of this is usually admitted to be a rational 
 theory, but Science does not know and cannot tell 
 what memory is, that it can be thus potential in a 
 microscopic speck; hence, the fertilized ovum cell 
 is a convenient closet in which to store any biolog- 
 ical problem. 
 
 Science asserts memory and consciousness to 
 be products, but starts with such a cell (fertilized 
 ovum) already loaded with memories, which do 
 not appear except as after products of the activi- 
 ties of changing syntheses growing out of the mul- 
 tiplication of the cell by division ; therefore, there 
 is as much reason for believing the memory to be 
 something aliunde the physical cell and which is 
 the activity behind the syntheses as to believe the 
 cell to be itself a bundle of potential memories. 
 
 Science claims (Haeckel) that the noblest love 
 of human hearts is precisely the same thing, on a
 
 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 21 
 
 larger scale, as the chemical affinities of atoms; 
 but Science cannot find in the whole universe an 
 atom which by reason of its affinity for another 
 will by the deliberate exercise of the will with 
 which it is endowed lay down its life and go out 
 of existence for another. Such an analysis of 
 love as that given by Haeckel is reductio ad db- 
 surdum. 
 
 Science (Haeckel) denies anything to soul, 
 mind, or spirit except as the result of chemical 
 activities of the cerebrum. 
 
 Everywhere atoms of specific character, asso- 
 ciated in similar ways and subjected to the same 
 stimuli chemically, act uniformly in an identical 
 manner. Science can differentiate brain cells by 
 localities, but it has not as yet been able to show 
 that the substance is not identical in all of them. 
 These cells are in the different localities subjected 
 to different stimuli, but Science cannot give a 
 known reason why the associative cells of the 
 cerebrum are enabled anywhere to land a unity 
 of consciousness. Science does not know what 
 either memory or consciousness is in itself. 
 
 Science knows nothing about the qualities, 
 forces, or organic potentialities of the ether one 
 single step beyond the point where it has wit- 
 nessed its supposed phenomena. If it did, it would 
 not be on the outlook for more discoveries every 
 year; hence, the increasing discoveries of the qual- 
 ities of ether may lead toward, instead of away 
 from, even an organized immortality. 
 
 Ignoring the theory that individuality may be 
 at last a form of energy and its various bodies but
 
 22 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 
 
 presentations of it, Haeckel makes light of a pos- 
 sible gaseous body to the soul and says that if it 
 were possessed of such a body, "we could then 
 catch the soul as it 'breathed out' at the moment 
 of death, condense it, and exhibit it in a bottle as 
 'immortal fluid.' . . . By a further lowering of 
 temperature and increase of pressure it might be 
 possible to solidify it to produce 'soul snow.' " 
 He then naively suggests that "the experiment has 
 not yet succeeded." Just so, it has not, and there- 
 fore we may not assume that it can be done. 
 Here Science betrays the weakness of its one- 
 sided method of reasoning, in that it is guilty of 
 the folly of seeking for the immortal in the vehicle 
 instead of in what it carries. Souls may have a 
 gaseous body for aught we know, and yet such 
 embodiment may be temporary. 
 
 It is just possible that even if such aeri- 
 form beings credited with "being," possessed of 
 the "physiological functions of an organism" 
 (Haeckel), existed, such a process might call forth 
 a comment from the individual soul of which it 
 was an "organism," similar to that of Socrates, 
 "You may bottle me, if you can catch me." 
 
 But Haeckel goes further and says that an 
 "etheric soul . . . cannot possibly account for the 
 individual life of the soul." Perhaps not, but 
 might it not be that Science does not know 
 whether the "individual life of the soul" can or 
 cannot account for an etheric body of the soul? 
 I perceive the radiant energy of ether as white 
 light, but if I pass its pencils through the prism, I 
 cause the phenomenon of white light to break up
 
 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 23 
 
 into its varying wave lengths and its combination 
 becomes apparent to me as rays of different 
 colors, and each will perform its different func- 
 tions and produce its different phenomena; so 
 with the Roentgen and N rays, and otherwise in 
 physics a few rather startling results reveal them- 
 selves as the days go on. Science knows only that 
 which it knows about the ether. 
 
 A theorist who will postulate an ether "not 
 atomistic, not made up of separate particles 
 (atoms), but continuous," but which can in some 
 manner be condensed into a structure (matter) 
 which is "atomistic," made up of infinitesimal, 
 distinct particles (atoms), discontinuous, should 
 not treat with dogmatic contempt any theory 
 which supposes an ether in which organisms may 
 exist. Ether is yet a mystery, and its unknown ca- 
 pabilities and potentialities will not support an 
 absolute denial of any rational theory. 
 
 Some Scientists believe experimentally in telep- 
 athy, or communication of mind impulses at a 
 distance, but they know nothing about its modus 
 operandi; others deny its existence without ex- 
 amination or experiment ; hence, Science is at war 
 here with itself. 
 
 Science denies any value to the transcendental. 
 
 It is transcendental that the germ cell can con- 
 tain all that we believe it does. Such "uncon- 
 scious memories" are transcendental. 
 
 It is transcendentalism to postulate eternal, in- 
 finite, thinking substance; the infinite itself is 
 transcendental. 
 
 It is transcendentalism to bestow will and feel-
 
 24 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 
 
 ing upon unknown atoms; will itself is transcen- 
 dental ; we only know it by what it does. 
 
 It is transcendentalism to postulate movement 
 as an "innate property" of substance ; innate prop- 
 erties are transcendental, so is substance itself. 
 
 It is transcendentalism to think of a commence- 
 ment, and we do not escape it by thinking "eter- 
 nity," for the thought of eternity is transcen- 
 dental. 
 
 Anything is transcendental which is absolutely 
 beyond our sense capacity, even though we find 
 reasons for postulating it. If there lives a Sci- 
 entist or lay thinker who can honestly say that 
 his senses give him proof demonstrative of these 
 things which I have mentioned, he has not as yet 
 had the temerity to say so in print. We believe 
 these things to be so, because we have no better 
 explanation of the phenomena witnessed by us 
 daily. 
 
 Science makes use of words as names of recog- 
 nized conditions and experiences, such as con- 
 sciousness, thought, memory, dreams, halluci- 
 nations, imaginations, etc., all of which are 
 absolutely essential for the purpose of distinguish- 
 ing one condition of mind from another ; but by giv- 
 ing names to conditions we do not at all analyze 
 or explain the conditions themselves. 
 
 The word "imagination" is a common word 
 enough, and so is the condition for which the word 
 stands. And we understand by it that it refers to 
 that experience of the human mind in which it 
 calls up to consciousness images or pictures in 
 the mind. When we have followed the process
 
 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 25 
 
 just as far as our knowledge of the action of the 
 cerebral cells permits U3, we remain with these 
 questions unanswered, viz. : What do we mean by 
 "images"? What is the medium in which they ap- 
 pear? Is it a substance? If so, what is a sub- 
 stance? Why do they possess the power of mo- 
 tion, change, and activity in themselves? Con- 
 sider, for instance, the dream state. Dreams are 
 of such common experience that the atmosphere 
 of mystery surrounding them is lost sight of in the 
 commonplace occurrence of the dreams them- 
 selves. 
 
 Here is a dream as an example in which I have 
 found an abundance of mystery, which even the 
 voluminous treatises on psychology do not enable 
 me to penetrate. I dreamed that upon the elec- 
 tion of certain officers to fill a number of public 
 positions a banquet was given, to which all the 
 fortunate individuals were invited, including my- 
 self and a friend, Judge B . Upon assembling 
 
 at the table we found that there had been placed 
 before each guest a soup tureen full of soup. Con- 
 sidering this to be a novel and rather ridiculous 
 innovation, I was guilty of making a most atro- 
 cious pun. Turning to my friend, Judge B , I 
 
 suggested that such a supply of soup was "su- 
 perabundant." Now this, so far, was not much 
 beyond ordinary experiences in a dream many 
 have made puns undoubtedly when enjoying good 
 company in dreamland but Judge B - laid his 
 finger waggishly against his nose and responded, 
 "No, Judge, this is superficial," which consider- 
 ing that the banquet was an official affair, was not
 
 26 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 
 
 bad for Judge B . Eight here, however, comes 
 
 that which I find difficulty in explaining to my sat- 
 isfaction. In the first place, I was conscious, self- 
 conscious, conscious of my dream surroundings, 
 conscious of the fragrant soup, and, so far as I am 
 concerned, I can perceive no distinction between 
 the character of the consciousness then and now 
 in wakefulness. 
 
 Next, I had the ordinary use of my faculty of 
 imagination. I evolved a pun, but 7 did not antici- 
 pate the pun which was hurled back at me by 
 Judge B . Indeed, I was rather piqued in real- 
 izing that his was a better pun than mine. The 
 point of his witty saying revealed itself only after 
 the utterance of the language by him, and I en- 
 joyed it and laughed heartily. 
 
 I realize that all this seems simple, it was "only 
 a dream," it can be analyzed by applying to it the 
 psychological methods, but I insist that the back- 
 ground of the whole experience lies in terra in- 
 cognita to Science. 
 
 If the "soul," the ego, is the "sum total" of the 
 activities of the cerebral cells, then, considering 
 that I was conscious of my individuality and en- 
 gaged in a punning duel with another "sum total," 
 which was only present in my mind, the "soul," 
 the ego, the individual, unloaded some of the units 
 which ordinarily go to make up the individual, 
 leaving the individual intact and supplying a suffi- 
 cient number to create another "sum total" as an 
 individual. 
 
 If it be an easy matter to explain how we per- 
 ceive moving, living, thinking forms in such a con-
 
 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 27 
 
 dition of dreaming, suppose we ask ourselves 
 again, in what substance do these images appear? 
 If they are not real, what is the unreal? If I 
 create them, out of what, in what, do I do that? 
 
 Science relegates all these phenomena to the 
 activities of the cerebral cells, but it cannot and 
 does not pretend to go further than to push the 
 mystery back. 
 
 Science declares subject and object to be one, 
 but somehow the subjectivity of the individual ap- 
 pears to succeed in keeping itself behind even the 
 objectivities of the imagination and recognizing 
 an objectivity correlated to a subjectivity which it 
 will not consent to acknowledge as itself. 
 
 If chemical analysis of the substance of which 
 cerebral cells are composed revealed the fact that 
 they are, in different localities of the cerebrum, 
 differently composed of varying elements, so that 
 a center of cells in one part should be of a differ- 
 ent chemical construction from another, we might 
 find some reason to declare individual conscious- 
 ness, mind, etc., to be the sum total of their activi- 
 ties, because we should have a basis for such a 
 differentiation as might account for the tremen- 
 dous variations in the substance of our thoughts 
 and consciousness; but the cells have not been 
 shown to be so differently composed of different 
 elements. 
 
 Great as has been the advancement of cytology, 
 we really know little about the substance proto- 
 plasm. As is said by J. A. Thompson in "The Sci- 
 ence of Life" : "We have no knowledge of the real 
 nature of living matter ; we cannot define any sub-
 
 28 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 
 
 stance physically or chemically and say this is 
 pure protoplasm. According to one view, proto- 
 plasm is a mixture of complex substances ; accord- 
 ing to another view, it is a single substance allied 
 to proteids; according to a third perhaps the 
 most probable view, there is no such thing as 
 living matter. The meaning of the last view, 
 which may appear paradoxical, is simply that 
 vital functions may depend upon the interactions 
 or interrelations of a number of complex sub- 
 stances, none of which by itself could be called 
 alive." 
 
 It is for that reason that Science cannot au- 
 thoritatively declare this wonderful individuality 
 to be the product of the chemical activities. It is 
 emphatically an open and undecided question. 
 No doubt the form of motion of these elements 
 differs in the various cells. 
 
 Again, although it be admitted that the stimuli 
 reaching these various cell centers are different, 
 and hence the different forms of activity, we do 
 not escape the dilemma. As I suggested before, it 
 leaves no room for the apex of an ultimate synthe- 
 sis, the individual, for we must at least reach a 
 cell substance where there certainly could be no 
 "sum total" of movements which could recognize 
 detail. 
 
 Science does not know but that the following 
 is the real truth, neither do I, neither is it to be 
 demonstrated that it is not. 
 
 Suppose it to be true that there is a substance 
 in which individual centers of consciousness func- 
 tion as forms of motion of it ( surely, while we are
 
 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 29 
 
 accepting ideas as forms of chemical activity, this 
 is not a violent assumption). Suppose this sub- 
 stance to be capable of a great variety of forms 
 (and here again, in view of the recent discoveries 
 in the realm of ether, this is not a foolish suppo- 
 sition) ; and suppose again that in order that such 
 an individual center of consciousness, never itself 
 departing from its eternal habitat, might be con- 
 scious of objects in a more dense medium, ponder- 
 able matter, it should be essential that the sensa- 
 tions produced by such objects should be refined, 
 should be accented, should be sifted through sub- 
 stance, which approaches by gradations up to the 
 imponderable substance in which it functions. It 
 would follow that only by such means could such 
 an individual be conscious of such objects and it 
 would likewise follow that any disturbance at any 
 point in the process of accentuation would result 
 in a distortion of the object in consciousness and 
 any destruction of the means of such a process 
 would cut off all consciousness of the objects as 
 such as surely as the removal of the prism from 
 the field of light puts an end to the spectrum. 
 
 Such a destruction of the means would not nec- 
 essarily result in the death of the individual, but 
 would merely remove the opportunity for further 
 consciousness of such objects as such. 
 
 The natural inquiry to succeed these supposi- 
 tions is whether we possibly have any such nexus, 
 any such mediator between ponderable matter 
 and such an individual center as I have postu- 
 lated. 
 
 I think we have, in the body, in the organs of it,
 
 30 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW ' 
 
 in the central system and culminating in the cere- 
 brum. 
 
 Certainly a science which can find sufficient in- 
 stability and delicate irritability in the cerebral 
 cells to establish a field for a "sum-total" soul 
 should admit that their substance is about as close 
 an approach to one end of such a bridge as can 
 well be imagined, and really the external termini 
 of organs of sensation reach the other extremity. 
 
 Such a theory is at least consistent with all the 
 theses of evolution. It accounts for consciousness 
 and unconsciousness of objects; it provides an 
 arena for the display of dreams; parallels in its 
 process what we know of the march of evolution 
 to and from established stations of automatism ; it 
 suggests a meaning to pain; it has a meaning in 
 itself; leaves the individual possessed of a soul; 
 and is even monistic, if properly comprehended. 
 
 Now, Science does not know this not to be the 
 truth, and, therefore, it may be approximately 
 true, notwithstanding the pseudo-demonstrations 
 of scientific men that man is necessarily mortal. 
 All I claim for it as a theory is its possibility. 
 
 What Science knows is of great value, because 
 its knowledge makes the ladder upon which we 
 climb for wider views, but what it does not know 
 is valuable, because it is worthy of our search for 
 it; our instinct protests against an abandonment 
 of it as a probable, or even possible, truth, merely 
 because it is not demonstrated and known. 
 
 Assuming such a theory as I have suggested to 
 be a rational one, it would then follow that the 
 "sum total" of the chemical activities of the cere-
 
 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 31 
 
 bral cells would be not the soul but the activity of 
 the soul at that point in its line of continuity from 
 objects in ponderable matter to their perception 
 by its activity in imponderable matter. Auto- 
 matic centers would then be in the nature of relay 
 stations. In this connection it may be said that 
 the unit cells of which the human body is com- 
 posed are themselves open to an application of 
 the scheme outlined, for what are they but masses 
 of protoplasm in which is situated a less-equi- 
 librated substance (the nucleus), which, for aught 
 Science knows, performs a function akin to the 
 cerebrum of the whole man. 
 
 Science does not know, and cannot therefore af- 
 firm, that mind and matter are not opposite poles 
 of the same thing, nor that mind may not be as 
 complex at its pole as is ponderable matter at the 
 opposite pole. The processes of evolution lend as 
 much color to that proposition as to any other, for 
 it may well be that for the appearance of complex 
 mind in ponderable matter as a mere phase, it must 
 proceed from the simplest and nearest form of 
 ponderable substance by the evolution of synthe- 
 ses, which in turn become automatic, to the pres- 
 entation in matter commensurate to itself and its 
 will, and that this process of evolution may be as 
 various in its applications as the known and un- 
 known properties of substance, ponderable and 
 imponderable, may demand. The smallest form 
 of ponderable matter is complex enough to allow 
 us to be true to even Monism. 
 
 Science does not yet know the real distinction, 
 if any exists, between living and so-called non-
 
 32 SOME THINGS WHICH SCIENCE DOES NOT KNOW 
 
 living matter. True, Haeckel declares the differ- 
 ence to be in the presence or absence of the power 
 of reproduction ; but, as Professor Shaler in "The 
 Individual" says : "In some unknown way the mole- 
 cule and the crystal alike tend to increase their 
 kind." 
 
 Verworn, in "General Physiology," asserts the 
 distinction to consist in the capability of living mat- 
 ter for the "metabolism of proteids" ; but while it 
 perhaps may not be properly called the "metabo- 
 lism of proteids," yet a similar action is noted in 
 crystals, and even may exist in molecular aggre- 
 gates. (Shaler, "The Individual.") 
 
 For all these reasons and many more which will 
 suggest themselves, a thoughtful man is still en- 
 titled, without losing his common sense, without 
 sullying the whiteness of "pure reason," to de- 
 clare that Science may have failed to discover the 
 great life, the eternal being, of the universe to be 
 that very unity of units, one and the many, whose 
 eternal processes of life it undertakes to measure 
 by a specialized evolution which begins and ends.
 
 Chapter III 
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 I have for some years pushed the search of the 
 microscopic into the substance of living things, ex- 
 pecting possibly somewhere and sometime to ob- 
 tain some light upon the organic ultimate unit, 
 and thereby justify such conclusions as have been 
 reached and promulgated by a class of mate- 
 rialistic scientists who, instead of standing in awe 
 at the sight of the ever-retreating mystery of life, 
 declare that they have demonstrated the hope of 
 man's immortality to be a delusion. I am frank 
 to say that, owing either to stupidity or lack of some 
 knowledge attained by them and unpublished to 
 the world for which they labor, I have found 
 neither the ultimate unit of life nor the evidence 
 of the delusion. 
 
 It is an easy matter to dismiss the whole mys- 
 tery of physical and psychical existence by the 
 assertion that the microscope or chemical analy- 
 sis has revealed the fact that all life is resolved 
 in its finality to the cell that there it begins, 
 there it operates in community, and there it ends. 
 If it were true that the so-called cell is the unit 
 of life, this might well discourage the further 
 search for light upon the subject, for we should 
 be compelled to admit that if life commences with 
 
 33
 
 34 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 the cell it will end with the cell. But it is not true ; 
 the unit cell is but the adopted unit of physiology. 
 It is the unit of its analysis in theory, and the 
 unknown sea of activities is thus far quite beyond 
 its reach. 
 
 Much depends upon what we mean by "cell" and 
 what we understand by "life." If by "cell" we 
 mean any primary physical appearance which 
 evidences life, then the cell might be the unit of 
 living matter, but in that case I should ask if we 
 have discovered the cell, and the answer would 
 have to be, no; because, aside from the "cell" as 
 understood physiologically, there are evidences of 
 life in portions when separated from it. If by 
 "life" we mean capacity for adaptive movements 
 responsive to stimulus, then, again, what is or- 
 dinarily understood as the cell is not the unit of 
 living substance. That which in itself is complex 
 is not a unit, except as it is considered relatively 
 to a unity in which it is embraced. There are va- 
 rious intricate movements in the cell, particularly 
 the segmenting cell, which are responsive to stim- 
 uli from within the cell. Life appears only where 
 there are two or more of something, unity and 
 units. 
 
 The accepted cell is for physiological pur- 
 poses the unit, but this is only so when consider- 
 ing the life processes of the whole body. Behind 
 all this is the "thing itself," that which manifests 
 in the cell, but which is not necessarily limited to 
 it, that which demands the process; there is ef- 
 fort, is will, is self. 
 
 Not that physiology or biology demonstrates
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 35 
 
 their existence, but that they do not demonstrate 
 their absence. The data of these sciences are not 
 only consistent with but compel the presence of 
 something akin to them, and the fact that this is 
 so arms the cohorts on the spiritual side of the 
 question and disarms the materialists, unless it be 
 finally conceded that mind and matter are but op- 
 posite poles of the same substance, in which case 
 we have the true basis for a monistic conception 
 of the universe. 
 
 Man, and for that matter any animal, is ap- 
 parently a simple machine enough in his last 
 analysis as physical animal. He is but a congre- 
 gation of cells operating in essential harmony, or 
 many cells operating as one cell ; but all this falls 
 far short of solving the mystery or putting an end 
 to serious inquiry into the origin and destination 
 of man. 
 
 The cell itself is not simple; it is as far from 
 being so as is that vast congregation of its kind 
 in man; it is tantalizingly complicated, exceed- 
 ingly intricate in its activities, wonderfully sur- 
 prising in its potentialities, either as a whole or 
 when separated into pieces, and it is infinitely 
 small in its ever-receding units. Nothing has yet 
 been found in the cell so little that there have not 
 been undeniable evidences of something yet more 
 minute behind or within it. Without the nucleus 
 the protoplasm exists for a while; without the 
 protoplasm the nucleus survives; with a bit of 
 protoplasm and a bit of nucleus you may have 
 continued life capable of repair and growth. The 
 nucleus is but a minute speck in the substance of
 
 36 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 the cell, and when it is examined tinder powerful 
 lenses is itself exceedingly complex and puzzling; 
 it has within its substance, small as it is, other 
 bodies, known as chromosomes, and these in turn 
 may be perceived to be constituted of yet smaller 
 bodies, and by parity of reasoning they probably 
 would, if we were able to see them, lead us down 
 a long line of changing forms within forms long 
 before we reached that elusive thing, the unit of 
 life. 
 
 We might as well expect a man to perform the 
 notoriously impossible feat of lifting himself by 
 his own boot straps as to expect the remarkable 
 activities of the cell to present themselves to our 
 observations in that body if it were the unit of 
 organized life. Nor am I here ignoring the prob- 
 able chemical factors which should be considered. 
 We know as little about occult chemistry as we do 
 about the mechanism of the cell, but we do know 
 that the tendency of chemical and physical ener- 
 gies is to an inevitable equilibrium, and that in 
 protoplasm quite the contrary is the fact. Its 
 growth and its activities all depend upon its lack 
 of equilibrium. 
 
 As the modern study of the germ cell pro- 
 ceeds, it results in a curious but not surprising 
 grouping of the biologists about different centers 
 of opinion. Of course the great puzzle which all 
 are seeking to solve is the cause of the develop- 
 ment of the fertilized ovum into the particular in- 
 dividual who appears to come from it, and this 
 mystery includes the inner ones of heredity and 
 its bearers.
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 37 
 
 It need not be said, for everybody knows it, 
 that the mystery has not been solved. No sooner 
 do the groping fingers of the scientist lay hold 
 upon a new discovery in the elements or activities 
 of the cell, and cause him to imagine that the goal 
 is at hand, than some other investigator in Eng- 
 land, Germany, or France, or here at home, lo- 
 cates with his microscope, or reveals by chemi- 
 cal experiments, some new factor which entirely 
 upsets the beautiful and apparently satisfactory 
 theory which has nearly been adopted. When it 
 was ascertained that the nucleus of the sperma- 
 tozoon and that of the ovum fused and became one 
 nucleus in which appeared certain bodies which 
 always were of a definite number in a given spe- 
 cies, and which were called chromosomes, it was a 
 natural conception that these bodies were the 
 bearers of heredity. They may be, probably are, 
 but many biologists do not think so. However, 
 upon this discovery Weismann reduced the opera- 
 tions of the cell to a system with an elaborate 
 division of the substance into "ids," "idants," 
 "biophors," etc., in which certain potentialities ap- 
 peared. Spencer indulged in the idea that there 
 were "physiological units" in the sperm and germ 
 cells ; Kyder advanced the dynamical hypothesis ; 
 others, unable to reach any satisfactory explana- 
 tion, rehabilitated the discarded idea of a vital 
 force under the somewhat apologetic title of "neo- 
 vitalism." We find by some experiments that the 
 substance of the cell is not differentiated so that 
 one part will not have all the potentiality of defi- 
 nite development which every other part has ; and
 
 38 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 by others that it is so differentiated. We are con- 
 fronted with these "physiological units" on the 
 one hand, as determining the outcome of the proc- 
 ess of development, and on the other by the state- 
 ment that the substance of the sperm cell and the 
 ovum cell coalesces. 
 
 As the substance of each cell is like the other, 
 it would almost seem that by such a fusion all 
 special inheritance from the parents would be lost, 
 particularly as we are asked to consider the cell so 
 produced by fusion to be a machine and all its op- 
 erations mechanical. 
 
 Indeed, it is difficult to perceive how there can be 
 any heredity except such as is the result of the char- 
 acteristic structure of the plasm belonging to the 
 particular form of animal life from which the egg 
 came. If we supply the chromosomes with a per- 
 sistent differentiation, then we have some pos- 
 sible bearer of heredity, or if we admit the "ids" 
 and "idants," etc., of Weismann ; but if these are 
 themselves but products of the mechanical opera- 
 tions of the cells, the mystery of heredity is as 
 dense as ever. 
 
 Now I do not know what the truth is as to he- 
 redity, whether it is a myth or not; whether it is 
 the result of association and suggestion or not; 
 whether the chromosomes are its bearers or not; 
 or whether at the fusion of the plasm of the nuclei 
 any definite, special bodies remain with undis- 
 turbed potentialities or not; these are problems 
 for the biologists, and so long as they range 
 themselves persistently upon opposite sides of 
 the question involved, plain men must be con-
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 39 
 
 tent to select such views as appeal to their 
 reason. 
 
 Certainly if a biologist commences a search for 
 the factors which control heredity and takes it for 
 granted that Eyder is correct when he says that 
 'Tendencies' and 'Proclivities' are words that 
 have no legitimate place in the discussion of the 
 data of biology any more than they have in natu- 
 ral philosophy or physics," he must of necessity 
 end in mere mechanics without a mind or soul. 
 If he predetermines with Haeckel that there is no 
 individual soul, he will find abundant reason in the 
 data of biology for reducing everything to con- 
 densing points of ether. 
 
 Biological data are very accommodating; they 
 will give an ample supply of arguments on any 
 side of the question; they only require that you 
 name your desired conclusion in advance. 
 
 The reason for this is that the ultimate springs 
 of life are hidden in the rock of Being itself. 
 
 Aside from its importance as an isolated sci- 
 ence for its own sake, Biology has a value not to 
 be properly measured by the special investigators 
 in that field, but as I have suggested before, by 
 the constructors in the work of generalization. If 
 it has any value to the average thinking man be- 
 yond the mere gratification of curiosity, it is be- 
 cause of what it adds to his general knowledge of 
 life. No man in making a survey of any object 
 contents himself with a measurement in one di- 
 rection only; he must ascertain not only length 
 but breadth, not only length and breadth but thick- 
 ness. In arriving at some rational conclusion con-
 
 40 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 cerning the probable duration of individuality, we 
 must consider not only the physical aspect but 
 the psychical, if we do not assume the extraordi- 
 nary attitude of considering the individual as a 
 being whose external dimensions are a full 
 measure of his contents. Either we have an irre- 
 pressible conflict between the two sciences of psy- 
 chology and biology, or they compensate each 
 other. Considered biologically and accepting the 
 cell as the unit of life, man and all animals have 
 their beginning in time, and, consequently, their 
 ending in time. But supposing, as is the fact, that 
 Science utterly fails to reach far enough back to 
 locate the dynamic force behind physical life 
 pushing it into manifestation, what then! Why, 
 we are justified in refusing to accept its one-sided 
 assertion that immortality is a delusion, and that 
 Science demonstrates that fact. 
 
 We appeal for an equation from the investiga- 
 tors of the outward manifestation to the students 
 of the manifesting and manifested, to the psy- 
 chologists. It is true that they cannot reveal to us 
 the unit, and we find ourselves merely reducing 
 the size of objectivities and segregating the or- 
 ganic centers of perceiving subjectivity. 
 
 Wherever we find psychological phenomena, 
 there we find running parallel with it physiologi- 
 cal phenomena, not occupying the relationship of 
 cause and effect, but as presenting evidently two 
 phases of the same activity. No intellect gigantic 
 enough to solve the problem of the distinction be- 
 tween mind and matter, if such distinction exists, 
 has as yet made its appearance. The profound
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 41 
 
 researches of our great specialists in the field of 
 cytology have and should have commanded our 
 respect and admiration, but the weight of a great 
 name in such labors should not crush our rational 
 hopes. To be able to demonstrate how the cells 
 work, to portray the machinery set up by them, 
 is not to make apparent why they work or why 
 they need the machinery. That the heart is the 
 force pump of the arterial system, that the liver se- 
 cretes bile, that the stomach and intestines digest 
 food, that the human body is in those respects a 
 machine, have been facts so familiarly known for 
 centuries as to no longer cause comment. Cer- 
 tainly this knowledge has not been sufficient in 
 the past to seriously disturb the thoughtful man 
 in his confidence in immortality. All, in addition 
 to these, that has been demonstrated in recent 
 years in the marvelous progress made by biolo- 
 gists is that this larger physical machine incloses, 
 or rather is resolvable into, smaller and smaller 
 machines until we arrive at the germ cell. True, 
 the battle now wages there, to ascertain if pos- 
 sible how, from this inconceivably intricate "ma- 
 chine," microscopically small, the wonderful, 
 thinking, acting, loving "machine" called man is 
 evolved. This battle, for battle it is, is being 
 waged not over the germ cell of man directly, but 
 the egg cell of the worm, the sea urchin, and others 
 whose eggs, by reason of their availability and 
 transparency, afford opportunities for research 
 without undue disturbance of the contents. In the 
 light of the deductions drawn by a few of the 
 great investigators in the field of cytology, an or-
 
 42 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 dinary man approaches the microscopic examina- 
 tion of such cells with fear and trembling, his 
 brave hopes of immortality are about to be de- 
 stroyed, and he is to find that, after all, the "for- 
 tuitous concourse of atoms" is before him, and he 
 will stand at the edge of an abyss beyond which 
 is no life. 
 
 If he be thoughtful, however, his approach is 
 the end of that fear, for he will find beneath his 
 eye such a wonderful complication full of startling 
 potentialities as will push that cumbersome, 
 gross, and tangibly apparent machine called man 
 far into the background as an evidence of prece- 
 dent will and consciousness. 
 
 Lest it be thought that a layman should not take 
 upon himself the liberty to draw his own infer- 
 ences from what he sees and from what others 
 have reported, it will not be out of place to sug- 
 gest that here, as in many other matters scientific, 
 the masters of specialty disagree most emphati- 
 cally among themselves as to even how this "ma- 
 chine" does its work. Many questions remain un- 
 answered and many problems unsolved ; and if the 
 study of the physical egg alone be relied upon for 
 explanation, will remain unanswered and un- 
 solved. The germ is a mighty small affair, yet 
 it contains within its invisible self problems which 
 will be the sphinxes of science for all time to 
 come. 
 
 That many of the questions which now puzzle 
 the scientists will sometime be answered, there 
 can be little doubt, but that there will ever remain 
 an unlifted veil is equally certain. If there be
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 43 
 
 heredity, what elements of the cell are the bearers 
 of it? Does the centrosome exist at all? If so, is it 
 an element of the egg, or is it an appearance only, 
 an effect, produced by the constriction of the 
 plasmic substance ? Does it enter with the sperm 
 cell or is it there already? Does it pull or push? 
 What is the unit of material life? Is there any? 
 Is the substance of the egg differentiated or not? 
 Do certain portions have specialized potentialities 
 or not? Is the unequilibrated condition of proto- 
 plasm the cause of consciousness or the effect? 
 What is the preforming principle involved in this . 
 microscopic particle which produces such inevit- 
 able, such unfailing results? 
 
 All these questions, with many others that I 
 will not mention, have engaged the attention 
 of earnest students and untiring investigators. 
 Some have been, some will be, and many never 
 can be, fully answered. And there are many rea- 
 sons why they cannot be satisfactorily settled with 
 demonstrations of the truthfulness of the answer. 
 The powers of the microscope are limited; beyond 
 a certain point we shall never be able to go with 
 the use of the lenses, and it must be said in that 
 connection that at the point where we must stop 
 we shall yet find complications, intricacy, and 
 marvelous evidences of organization. Even as- 
 suming that we should instead discover an ap- 
 parently undifferentiated substance as protoplasm 
 was once supposed to be, we should be no nearer 
 the demonstrative solution of life, but should 
 be compelled to resort to occult chemistry for 
 further investigation ; unless, indeed, the hitherto
 
 44 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 unaccomplished feat of producing spontaneous 
 generation should be performed. When con- 
 sciousness shall be produced in artificially manu- 
 factured living substance, and the unequilibrated 
 condition of such substance preserved thereby, 
 chemistry will have gone far toward disturbing 
 the serenity of our hopes concerning continuity 
 of individual life, but will not even then have de- 
 stroyed them utterly. Even in the artificial pro- 
 duction of such living substance we might yet be 
 able to assert that the successful chemist has but 
 produced an essential environment for a living 
 unit to find opportunity, as has probably been 
 done by Loeb in chemically assisting the segmen- 
 tation of the unfertilized ovum of the Sea Urchin. 
 Even Loeb's famous experiments begin with a liv- 
 ing organized cell. The mystery of life is elusive 
 and it slips away from the profoundest inquir- 
 ing savant as from the hungry minds of those who 
 are prone to accept the greatness of a name as a 
 guarantee of the incontestable certainty of deduc- 
 tions and conclusions presented under its author- 
 ity. 
 
 We should, however, not forget that the conten- 
 tion made in this work is not that the immortality 
 of the individual is a demonstrable fact in the 
 light of recent science, but that the contrary has 
 not been, as asserted, demonstrated. I have so 
 far failed to find in the forward movements made 
 in the biological and psychological fields any rea- 
 son to abandon my convictions in that regard, and 
 that there is no necessity for the uneasiness which 
 is apt to be engendered by the discoveries of the
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 45 
 
 biologists is admitted by C. 0. Whitman in his 
 prefatory note to "Biological Lectures," 1894, in 
 these words : "While Biology is certainly indebted 
 to physics for some of its metaphysics, it is to the 
 credit of physics to have made it clear that mech- 
 anism, indisputable as are its methods, affords no 
 fundamental explanation of anything. As Karl 
 Pearson has so well said, the mystery of life is 
 no less nor no greater because a dance of organic 
 corpuscles is at bottom a dance of inorganic 
 atoms. What dances and why it dances is not ex- 
 plained by reducing size to the lowest limit of di- 
 visibility and just as little by the assumption of 
 ultraphysical causes. . . . The ultimate mystery 
 is beyond the reach of both mechanism and vital- 
 ism. . . . Some place the secret of life in the cell, 
 others in smaller units, but no one, so far as I 
 know, has looked upon the unit as anything more 
 than the seat of the mystery." 
 
 If the memory of the gill clefts, those ghostly 
 reminiscences of our aquatic ancestors, appears 
 at a certain point in the progress of segmentation 
 of the cell and formation of the embryo, by what 
 conceivable process can it be said that thereafter 
 in the embryo arising from the same egg a "mem- 
 ory" of the characteristics of the parents make its 
 appearance, unless we recognize many units in the 
 one? 
 
 The gill-cleft "memory" does not appear until a 
 certain point in the synthesis is reached ; hence, it 
 is the memory (if it be a memory) of that particu- 
 lar synthetic organism as it stands at that point 
 of time constructed out of the daughter cells of
 
 46 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 one cell. The subsequent presentation of parental 
 characteristics is the memory of another synthe- 
 sis and the ultimate personality of still another. 
 We are dealing with the functions of cells, we 
 must bear in mind, which were set apart in the 
 living bodies of the parents as specialized genera- 
 tive cells. It would be fully consonant with bi- 
 ological data, not opinions, for the inference to be 
 made that the individual preceded and made pos- 
 sible the ultimate synthesis. Now, I do not at all 
 say that these changes are produced by memory, 
 for the "unknown factors" are unknown ; whether 
 a "dynamical theory of inheritance" is true; 
 whether there are units bearing specific motions, 
 or whether the very nature of the protoplasm com- 
 pels in some mysterious way the formation of the 
 body, I do not know, neither does anybody else, 
 but I do know that the field is yet open for reason- 
 able theories of any kind, not barring even that of 
 a dominant unit of force unifying as its own the 
 activities of the many. 
 
 If I indulge in a legitimate exercise of scien- 
 tific imagination, until some clearer explanation 
 has been given than has as yet appeared, of the 
 movements and functions of the centrosome, I can 
 even suppose that body to be in turn a congeries 
 of vast numbers of its kind of varying values, 
 units of infinitely small proportions, but as 
 capable of having ascribed to them will and sensi- 
 tiveness as is the atom, and of being laden with a 
 weight of memories as great as that ascribed to 
 the microscopically small ovum and sperm cells. 
 
 From such investigations as have been made
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 47 
 
 with the eggs of such lower forms of life as the 
 sea urchin and thread worm, the segmentation of 
 the egg is attended with the most marvelous activ- 
 ity of that exceedingly minute body, the centro- 
 some, which seems in some inexplicable manner to 
 preside over the separation of the cells and the 
 partition of the chromosomes. Whether we are 
 unable to see other bodies within it or not is not 
 so material ; inability is but a limitation measured 
 by our capacity of sight as increased by the use of 
 lenses. 
 
 Upon the entrance of the heretofore invisible 
 (to the unaided eye) spermatozoon into the minute 
 ovum egg, there appears accompanying it as a 
 section thereof, or at least contained in a section 
 thereof, an exceedingly minute body or point 
 which, when the nuclei of the ovum and sperm cell 
 coalesce into one nucleus, which they do speedily, 
 takes up a position on one side of the nucleus. 
 
 It divides, or appears to be divided, into two, 
 one of which goes to the other side of the nucleus, 
 and then a figure is formed, the Karyokynetic fig- 
 ure, in which rays reach from the cytoplasm to the 
 center of the nucleus proceeding from the centro- 
 some on either side. From that the division of 
 the cell commences, and the process is repeated 
 on and on through the segmentation of the cells. 
 
 It has the appearance of dividing itself at each 
 fission and supplying each daughter cell with a 
 like centrosome, unless, indeed, we may suppose 
 this remarkable body to be in reality a unity of 
 units, and that what to a certain point appears to 
 be the division of the centrosome is in fact a sep-
 
 48 THE LIVING ENVIKONMENT 
 
 aration into numbers of existing units, which ap- 
 pear to view upon separation from the other by 
 reason of rapidity of growth and expansion. 
 
 Of course I know the question of what the cen- 
 trosome is has been discussed by the ablest biolo- 
 gists in this country and Europe, but while the 
 question remains open, as I fancy it will for 
 a while, as to whether it is an ultimate organ of 
 the cell or, on the other hand, a derivative struc- 
 ture, I am at liberty to be true to my own thesis, 
 that wherever life is there are many in the One. 
 
 The astounding supposition that in it may be 
 many units of forces organic is no more a burden 
 for the intelligence to carry than is the supposi- 
 tion that the germ cell itself recapitulates from its 
 "unconscious memory" the history of evolution 
 from unicell to vertebrate, recalls in synthetic or- 
 der the fish gills, is burdened with "race memory," 
 and finally stands forth' with the recollections of 
 parental characteristics, both physical and mental. 
 Scripture advises the sluggard to "go to the ant," 
 and I ask consideration for a moment of what 
 George Eomanes says about its brain (p. 46, 
 "Mental Evolution in Animals") : "Knowing in a 
 general way that mass plus structure of brain is 
 necessary for intelligence, we do not know how 
 far the second of these two factors may be In- 
 creased at the expense of the first. (Italics 
 mine.) And as a mere matter of complexity, I 
 am not sure that even the brain of an ant is to be 
 considered more wonderful than the ovum of a hu- 
 man being. . . . While in the case of ants, Du- 
 jardin says that the degree of intelligence stands
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 49 
 
 in an inverse proportion to the amount of pedun- 
 cular bodies and tubercules." 
 
 Now, when we consider that with the highest 
 powers of the microscope this remarkable center, 
 the centrosome, is yet barely visible and recog- 
 nized as a factor in segmentation of the cell more 
 by what it does and by its attendant characteristic 
 figure than by its size, we may well pause be- 
 fore pronouncing finally upon its nature and 
 origin. 
 
 The cerebral activities of the brain are com- 
 paratively easy to map as to location, but when 
 we approach the most potential and mysterious of 
 all organized substance, the germ cell, we reach 
 limitations, owing to the infinitesimal smallness 
 of what we are studying. The results are big, the 
 seat of the causes recedes even from the micro- 
 scope's eye. 
 
 Is there any absurdity in the thought, then, that 
 in this body, the centrosome, may be more than 
 one potential unit of force, the manifestation 
 therein of more than one individual! 
 
 As I have stated hi another place, up to a cer- 
 tain number of cell divisions of the sea urchin's 
 egg they may be separated and two or more 
 smaller urchins produced; beyond that point se- 
 lective synthesis has proceeded so far that the 
 specialization of the units prevents any such re- 
 sults. The dominance of the one has prevailed; 
 the unity is its ; the living environment belongs to 
 it ; it remains the conscious unit of energy ; it pre- 
 sides ; it experiences ; it is the individual in activ- 
 ity.
 
 50 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 Shall such a supposition be shown to be an ab- 
 surdity? Certainly not by the mere urging of a 
 contrary opinion, but only by the reduction of our 
 present working units to yet smaller ones, and 
 even then they will appear as many in one. The 
 old distinction between soul and body can in my 
 view only be modified by modern science to the 
 extent of analyzing the units of a living environ- 
 ment and leaving unexplained the underlying 
 activity by reason of which it assumes the form it 
 has. Either this, or there is no individual, and 
 such a conclusion our consciousness contradicts. 
 The old saying that "the body is not the man" may 
 then well be paraphrased by "the environment is 
 not the individual." 
 
 Prof. Alfred H. Lloyd has called the individual 
 a "relationship." Professor Miinsterburg, of 
 Harvard, designates it as an "attitude," and be- 
 cause the word "relationship" appears to embrace 
 more of the idea which I wish to convey of the in- 
 dividual, I have adopted the word in preference to 
 the other. 
 
 Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that an attitude 
 may be taken and never repeated of necessity, 
 while a relationship is eternally self-existent, but 
 if I am, I shall make no mistake in adopting the, 
 to me, very pregnant word used by Professor 
 Lloyd. From the nature of individuality every 
 individual is apt egotistically to consider himself 
 as something separate and apart from the rest of 
 the universe of life. In a restricted sense this is 
 true, but in a wider and it seems to me more grat- 
 ifying one it is not true. Both from the revela-
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 51 
 
 tions of the microscope and the remarkable phe- 
 nomena presented during a rather extensive study 
 of experimental psychology I have become con- 
 vinced that we have not given sufficient recogni- 
 tion to the position in media res which the individ- 
 ual occupies. In fact, it now appears difficult for 
 me to understand what an individual is without at 
 the same time embracing in the term the idea of 
 many individuals. 
 
 Considered physically from the body of the ma- 
 ture man back to the last known analysis of the 
 cell, he is a mass of millions of living units intri- 
 cately associated together, to no one of which has 
 it as yet been possible to ascribe the dominant 
 ascendency, and if we were to attempt to look for 
 the conscious individual in the midst of this vast 
 concourse of physical units we should find our- 
 selves confronting the necessity of finding some 
 physical center of control which must be a unit to 
 which all stimuli must report and from which all 
 motive force must issue. The moment we en- 
 deavor to avoid this by the creation of a hypo- 
 thetical synthesis, or by contemplating man as a 
 syncytium, we have abandoned the physical side 
 of the question so far as "physical" goes in biolog- 
 ical terminology, as we are looking for unity of 
 consciousness or self -consciousness. 
 
 Physically it is not difficult to construct a syn- 
 thesis. We may conceive of the various centers 
 as forming a community in which, while each is 
 laboring for its self-preservation, its situation 
 necessarily compels it at the same time to perform 
 its functions for the benefit of others. There is
 
 52 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 thus an exchange of force, an interplay of func- 
 tional activity which makes it easy to build the 
 synthesis. 
 
 When we undertake, however, the task of con- 
 structing a mental synthesis or rather a synthetic 
 consciousness, we are confronted with insur- 
 mountable difficulties from the start. The psychi- 
 cal activities of the cell centers of the brain are 
 not a common product, a sum total, unless, in- 
 deed, we are prepared as suggested before to ad- 
 mit of some one center in which all discharges or 
 their psychical products are added together syn- 
 thesized and recognized. 
 
 The same stimulus applied to the optic nerve 
 and the auditory nerve results in entirely differ- 
 ent products one is light, the other sound. I do 
 not know of any manner in which the cognizing 
 center which receives the impression of light can 
 report its sensation as light to the center which re- 
 ceived the sensation as sound, nor vice versa. As 
 I view a beautiful landscape, the sweet smell of 
 the wild flowers salutes my olfactory nerves, the 
 waving of the yellow corn, the mist of the distant 
 mountain side, the sparkling spring pour their 
 light into my eyes with a multitude of color effects 
 to be recognized; the humming of the bees, the 
 song of birds, and a dozen other sounds call for 
 recognition. Different centers are reached; dif- 
 ferent effects produced. It may seem easy to say 
 that the whole man perceives the whole picture, 
 but what is the whole man physically or psychi- 
 cally? To lodge these various sensations in cen- 
 ters foreign to each other, though connected, each
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 53 
 
 speaking a different language, does not and can- 
 not make one inclusive sensation. 
 
 This difficulty of constructing a synthetic con- 
 sciousness has been recognized and conceded by 
 no less a psychologist than Professor James, of 
 Harvard University. 1 
 
 Because of the comparatively unequilibrated 
 condition of the cortical cells of the cerebrum and, 
 therefore, their probable capacity to receive any 
 and all forms of motion set up by sensation and to 
 return again to their former condition as tdbla 
 raza, so far as sensation is concerned, they prob- 
 ably are the seat of the arranging and analyzing 
 of this multiplicity of stimuli products. 
 
 This does not remove the difficulty, however, 
 for there are millions of these cells that, while 
 adapted to intricate connections, are yet separate 
 and individual. If there is at last some one cell in 
 which a final unification- of consciousness resides, 
 we may fall back upon even the physical perse- 
 verance of the cell microscopic, dried, and the 
 sport of the winds, as is the case with some of the 
 tardigrada. This, of course, is but the improbable 
 but possible result if we seek for the individual 
 consciousness as a unit in the material cells. The 
 whole physical life is a living environment, a rela- 
 tionship of numbers. Where there are two, there 
 is an invisible third uniting them; where three, 
 the fourth and so on from the physical unit to the 
 
 1 Since writing this book I have read Professor James's Pluralistic 
 Universe, and I refer the reader to it for consideration of his present 
 attitude on this matter, and also for information as to how this 
 master views life from the psychological data.
 
 54 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 vast concourse of atoms in the living man ; thence 
 on to the Unity for aught that all the deductions 
 so far drawn from the data accumulated under 
 the microscope and in the chemical laboratory 
 may rightfully say to the contrary. The indi- 
 vidual from this standpoint is never born, he is 
 there when the unified living environment is there, 
 and he is what he is physically because of where 
 he is. 
 
 If, as contended by Cope, all development is 
 preceded by effort, and effort imports energy, and 
 energy is conscious, then the individual may be 
 an energy form, a unit in that unity which so mys- 
 teriously energizes the ether or substance with a 
 force unknown to our mundane physics. 
 
 The organic is not a result, an effect, but that 
 by reason of which the organism is produced, it 
 is inherent determinate force. So with the syn- 
 thetic ; it is not the result but a determinate caus- 
 ing force ; the synthesis is a process and a result. 
 Neither the organic nor the synthetic are in ap- 
 pearance at any time; they are above, beneath, 
 within, and always unseen and untouched. The 
 individual is and must be the same. He is never 
 visible or tangible except in the forms of his ac- 
 tivity; he is never born, he can never die. The 
 synthesis of the two or any number of units is the 
 product of the synthetic activity behind them, and 
 it is immaterial whether that activity is mechani- 
 cal or chemical, for, after all, chemistry is the me- 
 chanics of nature. . The indisposition of materialis- 
 tic scientists to in any manner recognize or acknowl- 
 edge the reality of anything in the nature of spirit
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 55 
 
 or soul or mind transcending the known forms of 
 matter and their action and interactions is, it 
 appears to me, far more irrational than even the 
 old-fashioned orthodox conception of a specially 
 created soul. If the individual mind is the mere re- 
 sult of the "fortuitous concourse of atoms," then 
 something has been produced which is different 
 from atoms, greater than them, and, as an effect, 
 greater than its cause, and which cannot be ac- 
 counted for by the individual activities of atoms. 
 To merely call it phenomenon gives us nothing but 
 a word in place of explanation. 
 
 Even if we were able theoretically to resolve 
 consciousness into units of sentience, Science has 
 no formula which, without destroying the unit as 
 such, can organize consciousness out of units of 
 sentience, unless, as I have intimated elsewhere, 
 we drive the sentience of the units finally into 
 some one cell center which is no longer a unit but 
 by reason of its unified consentience is a unity. 
 
 But this results from prejudiced attempts to ac- 
 count for the individual only by physics. Hydro- 
 gen and oxygen H 2 is water. Hydrogen is not 
 water ; neither is oxygen ; but the product is a third 
 something which is neither it is water. That is 
 tangible, visible third and if by reason of the ad- 
 dition thereto of another proportion of oxygen 
 the formula reads H 2 2 , we have no longer water, 
 but another which is neither hydrogen, oxygen, 
 nor water, but peroxide of hydrogen. 
 
 It is evident enough in physics that the con- 
 struction of synthetic visible forms of motion is 
 the measure of utility in many machines, but it is
 
 56 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 because the forms of motion are compensated and 
 modified and climaxed in an ultimate unit of mo- 
 tion which is localized and visible. 
 
 But this is precisely what we cannot do with the 
 conscious cells as units. Each is more or less spe- 
 cialized, and by reason of its position and limita- 
 tions is responsive to stimuli in a given manner 
 and only so. If consciousness of light follows in 
 one center of cells from a physical vibration of a 
 wire, and a musical sound is the result of the 
 same impulse in another, there must be either a 
 third center which from them receives both and 
 recognizes one cause with a variety of sensations, 
 or we must abandon the attempt to measure the 
 individual consciousness by physics and admit 
 that the third is always beyond and transcenden- 
 tal to the two. 
 
 All this is metaphysical, to be sure, but then all 
 that I desire is to record the conviction that not- 
 withstanding our remarkable advance in science, 
 there are yet fields unexplored and grounds for 
 belief yet rational and undisturbed. 
 
 That the method by which a physical synthesis 
 is constructed which mechanically operates as 
 one will not result in the production of a soul is 
 evident from Haeckel's own data. 
 
 Keferring to the psychological phenomena ob- 
 served in the formation of the blastula, he says: 
 "The sensations also fall into groups: (1) The 
 sensation of the individual cells, which reveal 
 themselves in the assertion of their individual in- 
 dependence and their relation to neighboring cells 
 (with which they are in contact, and partly in
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 57 
 
 direct combination, by means of protoplasmic 
 fibers) ; (2) the common sensation of the entire 
 community of cells, which is seen in the individual 
 formation of the blastula as a hollow vesicle." 
 Again, commenting upon some "modern repre- 
 sentatives" of the earliest "cell communities," he 
 says: "In all these coenobia we can easily distin- 
 guish two different grades of psychic activity: (1) 
 the cell soul of the individual cells (the 'elemen- 
 tary organisms') and (2) the communal soul of 
 the entire colony." 
 
 It is easy to put into simple language and say, 
 that, given a number of cells bound together by 
 protoplasmic fibers and in contact with each other, 
 we have each cell limited as to how, where, and 
 when it shall move, by its position relative to 
 those in contact with it and by the character and 
 direction of the stimulus which causes the sensa- 
 tion. 
 
 Let one cell be stimulated, it will respond by its 
 own specific form of motion only limited by its 
 neighbors; it will forward the stimulation along 
 the "protoplasmic fiber" connecting it to its next 
 neighbors, each of whom will respond by its own 
 specific form of motion limited only by its neigh- 
 bors, and when all the cells receive the impulse, 
 which they do practically simultaneously, the 
 whole mass must move in one direction with a spe- 
 cific movement which is the synthesis of all these 
 motions. This is mechanics, and all we have done 
 is to bind together by "protoplasmic fibers" a 
 number of cells which individually may move spe- 
 cifically and have created one general movement
 
 58 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 which may have originated with any one of the in- 
 dividual cells. 
 
 No doubt the living environment of man does 
 physically something similar, but how does that 
 help us to create a soul? By increasing the com- 
 plexity of the community by the introduction of 
 cell centers and the ganglionic function we cer- 
 tainly never get away from the law which governs 
 this primitive type, for we have simply multi- 
 plied the communities and increased the connec- 
 tions. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that one cell in the com- 
 munity when touching a curved, smooth, hard ob- 
 ject should be by its primitive simplicity able to 
 be sensitive only to smoothness; let us imagine 
 its neighbor gifted similarly with the faculty of 
 sensitiveness to hardness, and yet another, the 
 curved surface, and so on throughout the com- 
 munity. 
 
 The first one touches the object ; if it thinks, its 
 only thought is "smoothness"; it passes the im- 
 pulse along to the next cell; this one then, if it 
 could speak, would say "hardness" ; the stimula- 
 tion goes to the next and it will respond with 
 "curvature." Now here we have three separate 
 cells with their individual sensations, but by what 
 process will the whole community rise up and say : 
 "It is a smooth, curved, hard object"? 
 
 It may move away from it by reason of the 
 hard impact or it may glide over it as the result 
 of the curved smooth surface, but it will not be 
 able to give any reason for it. No such process as 
 this, however intricate the combination of factors
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 59 
 
 engaged in it may be, can account for the unity of 
 consciousness or memory. 
 
 Haeckel himself clearly draws the line between 
 facts and theories, between demonstration and 
 "provisional hypothesis," and properly declares 
 that "the man who renounces theory altogether, 
 and seeks to construct a pure science with certain 
 facts [italics mine] alone, as often happens with 
 wrong-headed representatives of our 'exact sci- 
 ences,' must give up the hope of any knowledge 
 of causes, and, consequently, of the satisfaction 
 of reason's demand for causality." 
 
 Yet notwithstanding his full recognition of this 
 broad distinction between what is tentatively as- 
 sumed and clearly demonstrated facts, he sur- 
 mounts his structure, which is almost entirely 
 founded upon tentative assumptions, with such 
 capstones as these : "The belief in the immortality 
 of the human soul is a dogma which is in hope- 
 less contradiction with the most solid empirical 
 truths of modern science," and "it was the gigan- 
 tic progress of biology in the present century, and 
 especially in the latter half of the century, that 
 finally destroyed the myth." 
 
 I have prefaced what I wish to say further 
 concerning the profound mystery of conscious- 
 ness and its unity with this reference to Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel's admitted position concerning the 
 method by which a pure science should be con- 
 structed, because I think it will be apparent that 
 he has been guilty of a violation of his own rule. 
 
 To a mind which is satisfied with a normal phys- 
 ical synthesis resulting from evolution and which
 
 60 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 is capable of producing an effect astoundingly 
 greater than any known cause, the chemical activi- 
 ties of the cerebral cells and the organs of sense 
 may produce a "sum total" equivalent to all we 
 recognize as soul. 
 
 In referring to the senses of man, Haeckel says : 
 "In harmony with the great law of 'division of 
 labor' the originally indifferent 'sense cells' of the 
 skin undertook different tasks, one group of them 
 taking over the stimulus of the light rays, another 
 the impress of the sound waves, another the chem- 
 ical impulse of odorous substance, and so on. In 
 the course of a very long period these external 
 stimuli effected a gradual change in the physio- 
 logical and later in the morphological properties 
 of these parts of the epidermis, and there was a 
 correlative modification of the sensitive nerves 
 which conduct the impressions they receive to the 
 brain. Selection improved, step by step, such 
 particular modifications as proved to be useful, 
 and thus eventually, in the course of many million 
 years, created those wonderful instruments the 
 eye and the ear, which we prize so highly; their 
 structure is so remarkable that they might well 
 lead to the erroneous assumption of a 'creation on 
 a preconceived design.' The peculiar character of 
 each sense organ and its specific nerve has thus 
 been gradually evolved by use and exercise that 
 is by adaptation and has thus been transmitted 
 by heredity from generation to generation. . . . 
 Without the senses there is no knowledge." 
 
 Thus, then, without the evolution during mil- 
 lions of years, resulting in those modifications of
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 61 
 
 the conducting nerves and the development of the 
 appropriate senses, there could be no knowledge. 
 Possibly this would be true if the assumption that 
 the individual, as well as his knowledge, con- 
 sciousness and mind, was the product of such an 
 evolution were true also. 
 
 Each individual is then a specific machine, and 
 these products, consciousness and knowledge, can 
 only come because of this intricate, inherited, 
 evolved machinery. 
 
 I am somewhat puzzled, however, to know why 
 knowledge, self -consciousness, and memory put in 
 their appearance in abnormal cases where this es- 
 sential machinery has been seriously injured, de- 
 stroyed, and its coordination rendered impossible; 
 where these inherited "correlative modifications 
 of the sensitive nerves which conduct the impres- 
 sions they receive to the brain" no longer remain, 
 and where the final and most essential links in the 
 chain of evolution are wanting. 
 
 One of the brightest scholars in the college 
 which she has honored with her attendance is the 
 well-known Helen Keller. Owing to serious ill- 
 ness when an infant of about nineteen months, she 
 lost the use of all her sense organs except those of 
 smell, taste, and touch; yet in spite of this fact 
 she is a learned young woman, who is familiar 
 with three languages, at least, and who in every 
 study which she has undertaken has demonstrated 
 that knowledge may be acquired on a large plan 
 without all the senses, and, indeed, with only those 
 which are usually considered the lower ones. 
 Music reaches her soul, not through the ears, but
 
 62 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 by means of the tactile sense only. The simple 
 "sense cells" of the skin are sufficient to convey to 
 her mind not only the mere physical vibrations of 
 the musical instrument, but sufficient characteris- 
 tic stimulation to arouse all the feelings, create all 
 the enthusiasm, and produce all the evidences of 
 similar emotion felt by the more fortunate mortal 
 who is in possession of all the "soul cells" of a 
 normal human being. 
 
 It is not my purpose to enter into any elaborate 
 discussion of the phenomena in her case; I must 
 refer anybody interested in the further study of 
 the matter to Dr. Walderstein's work on "The 
 Subconscious Self," and to her own story of her 
 life. It serves my purpose to illustrate the con- 
 tention that we by no means reveal the mystery 
 of consciousness and memory by dissecting the 
 organs by which they seem to work, and that we no 
 more readily construct a synthetic consciousness 
 which will account for it as we know it by build- 
 ing a physical synthesis of its ordinary phenome- 
 nal activities in the cells of the central system. 
 
 There seems to be something in the nature of 
 the human individual which enables it to do in a 
 few years that which it took the associating proto- 
 zoa millions of years to accomplish. This indi- 
 vidual appears to be able to get along, when nec- 
 essary to do so, without the tools which evolu- 
 tion labored for ages to supply him with and to 
 adapt, when essential, by substituting others for 
 them. 
 
 It is conceivable that our senses are limitations 
 rather than extensions, for the reason that spe-
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 63 
 
 cialization is limitation, and all use of the senses 
 a specialization upon objectivities in ponderable 
 matter. As we know little about the qualities of 
 imponderable matter, our knowledge is equally 
 small of our capacities therein. 
 
 It is this conscious unity in us all, and as I think 
 in the universe, which appeals to me as giving 
 form always to the unification which it transcends. 
 
 Without such an individual there i$ no explana- 
 tion for that internal universe which has been con- 
 structed within the living environment, the grand 
 multitude which awaits the command of the indi- 
 vidual to paint the conscious dreams and to con- 
 struct the syllogisms of individual life. 
 
 Whatever may be the method of storage of this 
 vast congregation of experience and thoughts, it 
 is evident that its character receives whatever 
 value it has by reason of passing through the 
 portals of the living environment of the individ- 
 ual. It is he who weighed, gauged, analyzed, and 
 catalogued them, and he alone who can rationally 
 utilize them. That a multitude of impulses are re- 
 ceived and not perceived at the time of their en- 
 trance is an undoubted fact, but it is also a fact 
 that their value does not appear until they are 
 lifted to the level of the consciousness of the in- 
 dividual. 
 
 As the individual may select and cull from the 
 multitude of objects in the environment without, 
 rejecting from his attention the repulsive and dis- 
 agreeable, so is he able to exercise the same de- 
 liberation and choice from those within. Both are 
 environment the great universe without which
 
 64 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 
 
 bombards his senses incessantly with its colors, 
 sounds, and odors ; its never-ceasing, heaving, and 
 surging impulses, its shadows and lights; indeed, 
 all that goes to make up the visible, tangible uni- 
 verse ; and the counterpart within which is the po- 
 tential recapitulation of all through which he has 
 passed. It is the history in full of his life ; every- 
 thing which he has encountered is builded into it ; 
 it is the living environment grown, developed, 
 filled out, but it is not the individual. It, the in- 
 ternal, like the external, environment, bombards 
 him constantly with its unnumbered impulses; as 
 the external may not be avoided but insists upon 
 making its impressions, whether in the light of 
 consciousness or not, so do these from within. 
 From without we see and hear and feel innumer- 
 able things of which consciousness knows nothing, 
 and they are buried in the teeming abyss of the 
 interior environment, to again steal past the 
 portals of consciousness to the external as in- 
 voluntary acts. The individual acts when from 
 this lake filled by the sea he empties forth where 
 and what he wills and selects, or when from the 
 swelling sea without he invites to the waiting lake 
 within some particular crested wave. Neither the 
 sea nor the lake is the individual. 
 
 Whether these experiences and thoughts are of 
 permanent value to the individual, whether they 
 persist after the dissolution of the community of 
 the living environment, is a subject which I may 
 not discuss at this point, but will content myself 
 with suggesting that perhaps thoughts themselves 
 are attended with forms of motion. "We may be
 
 THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT 65 
 
 able to find them capable of rendering themselves 
 potential in more than one place, and that at the 
 same time. If so, we may say that at the disso- 
 lution of the community of units each takes its de- 
 parture with what is its own.
 
 Chapter IV 
 
 EELATIONSHIP 
 
 There is a host of reasons for holding stead- 
 fastly to the belief in the immortality of the indi- 
 vidual to those who can recognize the force of 
 George J. Romanes's suggestion that because we 
 are only familiar with mind in association with 
 brain it does not necessarily follow that that is the 
 only form of substance with which mind is con- 
 nected. We may postulate one universal mind, and, 
 from the wondrous beauty, the play of forces, the 
 unfailing regularity of rhythmic movements, the 
 everywhere-present life, and the ethical advances 
 of the world, hug the conviction that the world it- 
 self lives, "the world thinks"; yet we shall find 
 from the very nature of mind itself, even from its 
 kaleidoscopic combinations, strong grounds for 
 asserting that the individual cannot be lost. When 
 I say that the individual cannot be lost, I do not 
 mean to hide behind a veil of transcendental mys- 
 ticism and fail, as is too often done, to clothe this 
 individual with consciousness, self -consciousness. 
 Self-conscious individuality does not necessarily 
 demand an attendant memory of the experiences 
 of the past; it does include the past in the con- 
 scious present, however, and the capacity of re- 
 calling by association and relationship of ideas 
 
 66
 
 RELATIONSHIP 67 
 
 the train of experiences which as prior causes 
 have built up the effect of the present. Mind is a 
 good forgetter as well as a good rememberer; a 
 good specializer, as well as a good generalizer. 
 The past may be drawn into consciousness by an 
 effort of the will and by attention, but it presents 
 itself always by association and relationship with 
 the present whether we will or not. 
 
 All that I know of mind, its operations and its 
 qualities, is measured by what I know of myself. 
 I know nothing, but as I stand in the halls of my- 
 self and watch the play of lights and shadows 
 cast there by objectivities about me, I can con- 
 ceive of no qualities of mind which I have not; 
 my definition of mind is given in terms of self- 
 experience. All the learned and exhaustive works 
 upon psychology are the results of self -analysis. 
 No man knows what is going on in the mind of an- 
 other except as he witnesses the phenomena of 
 that mind and translates it into the reflection of 
 his own. The qualities of mind are the same 
 wherever we find them ; if this were not so, there 
 could be and would be no understanding of the 
 motives of our fellow-men, no such thing as justice 
 or practical government. We study and attempt 
 to analyze the phenomenal activities of animals 
 by reason of our recognition of this fact that the 
 qualities of mind are the same everywhere. This 
 force which animates us, which glistens in the eye, 
 moves the muscular arm, springs in the tiger, and 
 demonstrates its presence in all living things, is 
 what we understand as mind, and its peculiar 
 qualities are known to us only as our own meas-
 
 68 BELATIONSHIP 
 
 lire of it is filled. Whatever may be the effect pro- 
 duced by the exercise of these qualities in diverse 
 environments, they remain the same. 
 
 Mind may be, and there is much reason to be- 
 lieve it is, one great force-pervading substance. 
 Abstruse and profoundly metaphysical as the 
 thought seems, it does not appear to me to be ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to grasp that the consciousness 
 of the one is absolutely dependent upon its paral- 
 lel manifestation as the many. 
 
 Potentiality is but a word to cover the great fact 
 that nothing can be added to or taken from the 
 universe, and all individuals are therefore the 
 output of what is and must be in potentiality 
 eternally in the one mind. The life of the indi- 
 vidual is therefore not to be measured in its mere 
 objectivity in this environment, but in that which 
 it really is. 
 
 Its individuality is necessarily an experience of 
 the universal mind, its consciousness a part of 
 that experience, and, being in the life of the one, 
 is not and cannot be lost. 
 
 "The fortuitous concourse of atoms" is an ex- 
 planation of phenomenal activities which our ig- 
 norance uses only when we have exhausted our- 
 selves in scientific research along one avenue of 
 investigation to the exclusion of others. To the 
 man who allows the particles to blind his eyes to 
 the force behind the flying dust, there probably is 
 absurdity in the suggestion that the lives of the 
 many are in the life of the One. To him, however, 
 who can find in natural science, in biology, and in 
 psychology evidences strong and convincing that
 
 RELATIONSHIP 69 
 
 the mystery of life is redolent with mind, comes 
 the assurance that the relationship, which makes 
 his consciousness, his individuality, can, from the 
 very law of relationship and association, never be 
 lost from the mind of the one, but is an essential 
 to its existence. 
 
 It has not appeared impossible to me to stand 
 squarely upon the theses presented by Haeckel in 
 his chapter on The Evolution of the World, 
 and reach an opinion diametrically opposed to his 
 concerning the value and immortality of the in- 
 dividual. Indeed, to my mind, he has presented 
 hypotheses which result in strengthening the con- 
 viction long existent that the true monistic philos- 
 ophy demands the indestructibility of the individ- 
 ual in its relation as such to the universe and 
 the process of evolution itself. I shall try to give 
 my reasons in this chapter as based upon the the- 
 ses in question offered by Haeckel. Abbreviated, 
 these theses are as follows : 
 
 "I. The extent of the universe is infinite and 
 unbounded; it is empty in no part, and every- 
 where filled with substance. 
 
 "II. The duration of the world is equally in- 
 finite, etc. 
 
 "III. Substance is everywhere and always in 
 uninterrupted movement and transformation ; no- 
 where is there perfect repose and rigidity, yet the 
 infinite quantity of matter and of eternal chang- 
 ing force remains constant. 
 
 "IV. This universal movement of substance in 
 space takes the form of an eternal cycle or of a 
 periodical process of evolution.
 
 70 RELATIONSHIP 
 
 "V. The phases of this evolution consist in a 
 periodic change of consistency, of which the first 
 outcome is the primary division into mass and 
 ether the ergonomy of ponderable and impon- 
 derable matter. 
 
 "VI. This division is effected by a progressive 
 condensation of matter as the formation of count- 
 less infinitesimal centers of condensation in which 
 the inherent primitive properties of substance 
 feeling and inclination are the active causes. 
 
 "VII. While minute and then larger bodies are 
 being formed by this pyknotic process in one part 
 of space, and the intermediate ether increases its 
 strain, the opposite process the destruction of 
 cosmic bodies by collision is taking place in an- 
 other quarter." 
 
 The eighth lays down the proposition that the 
 heat generated by the collision of these bodies 
 "represents the new kinetic energy which effects 
 the movements of the resultant nebulae and the 
 constitution of new rotating bodies." 
 
 Of course this is a theory, a scientific theory, 
 based upon observation within the limitations of 
 the senses, but for the purposes of this chapter I 
 accept it. 
 
 We are not to think of a time when these two, 
 ether and thinking substance (force), were spread 
 out in infinity as quiescent or homogenous sub- 
 stances, but as set forth in III and VII, the proc- 
 ess of transformation and organization (for the 
 word organization applies here as much as to the 
 concourse of atoms in my body) as going on eter- 
 nally.
 
 RELATIONSHIP 71 
 
 This eternal differentiation has to be assumed 
 in order to get rid of the idea of an extra force, a 
 creative Divinity. I do not think it accomplishes 
 the purpose except as far as it may subtract the 
 word "creative." These theses supply the very 
 eternal conditions essential to the conception of 
 an eternal thinking One and supply all the requi- 
 site qualities and quantities for eternal individ- 
 uals whose number may not be increased or di- 
 minished. 
 
 In the first place, we have an eternal complica- 
 tion, an intricate combination of thinking sub- 
 stance and condensing ether. Such an eternal 
 activity may well be an eternal mind, forever pre- 
 senting itself as an eternal body; indeed, as it 
 embraces all there is of mind, it could not well be 
 anything else. The mere fact that the vast bodies 
 of ether break up in other parts of the infinity is 
 not an insurmountable barrier to the thought, for 
 as we see in the theses, the heat generated thereby 
 represents new kinetic energy for the construction 
 of rotating bodies. 
 
 While we are called upon to try to think in the 
 regions of eternal space and conceive the eternal 
 conditions, we need not hesitate to suggest that for 
 aught we know the vast infinity of ether crackling 
 as "thinking substance" may be (and I think it is) 
 the cerebrum of the One all may be there, the 
 history of the clash of spheres, the "collision of 
 swiftly moving bodies," all of the changing pic- 
 tures, may, as the epitomized history of my life 
 repeats itself in memory, roll its majestic circle 
 in this infinite abyss of "thinking substance" and
 
 72 RELATIONSHIP 
 
 ether. What is the character of its subjectivity 
 and objectivities? Who am I that I should go so 
 far as to measure the infinite! I can no more "by 
 searching find out God" than Haeckel by a word 
 can give the "Lord God his conge" But I can see 
 in HaeckePs provisional eternal substances just 
 that which I have suggested, and more. As sug- 
 gested in the Introduction, when I am told that 
 there is a "tendency" in anything to move, even 
 my comparatively feeble knowledge of physics 
 compels me to understand by that that a force 
 resides in that which feels the tendency and that 
 what the tendency results in is the measure of the 
 exercise of the force. Even if it were possible to 
 conceive of the ether as undifferentiated, having 
 a "tendency" to move, and about to be for the first 
 time differentiated by countless infinitesimal cen- 
 ters of condensation, then, by virtue of the very 
 law of force, it would condense in a determinate 
 manner and a definite differentiation, and that 
 would mean that the "thinking substance" in the 
 ether which has a "tendency" to condense is dif- 
 ferentiated and not homogenous. 
 
 Professor Haeckel dismisses Du Bois Bey- 
 mond's second "world enigma," viz., the first 
 "origin of movement," in these words: "In our 
 opinion, this second 'world enigma' is solved by 
 the recognition that movement is as innate and 
 original a property of substance as is sensation." 
 (P. 241, "The Eiddle of the Universe.") Now 
 the trouble is in getting my mind to the stick- 
 ing point of the "recognition." "Innate and 
 original" properties are as enigmatic as the
 
 RELATIONSHIP 73 
 
 enigma which he tells us is so easily "solved" by 
 them. 
 
 "Movement" is not demonstrated as an "innate 
 property" of anything within our experience, but 
 as the result of something else, and that is force, 
 or, if it serves a better purpose to call it so, "think- 
 ing substance," and we know that any first move- 
 ment is likewise definite as the product of definite 
 forces. 
 
 If we are to consider "movement" as an "innate 
 property" of substance, it appears to me that we 
 must abandon the thesis that "forces are not com- 
 municated from one thing to another, but move- 
 ments are." 
 
 If we are to think of "feeling and inclination" 
 as the "active causes" of this differentiation of 
 substance into countless "infinitesimal centers of 
 condensation," we shall not, I apprehend, escape 
 that enigma of Du Bois Beymond, What caused 
 the first movement? 
 
 A substance, infinite, saturated with sensitive- 
 ness, in the absence of something to arouse its 
 sensitiveness by stimulation of some sort, unless 
 it remain quiescent, immovable, is unthinkable. 
 The moment we supply that "something," force, 
 it may respond exactly in commensuration to that 
 force, and we have a commencement of differen- 
 tiation with a tendency to return to equation. 
 
 But when, as is the case with the thesis pre- 
 sented by Haeckel, this differentiation never com- 
 mences, but is eternal (this being his only reply 
 to Du Bois Beymond), then we have no longer the 
 reason for assuming this "force," this "thinking
 
 74 EELATIONSHIP 
 
 substance" as being a unit, merely a v force, but 
 rather unity of units of force, the force of forces, 
 eternally. The "infinitesimal centers of condensa- 
 tion" of substance would then be eternal, inde- 
 structible motion forms in the ether. 
 
 A universe constructed on these theses without 
 this recognition of units of force would in the 
 course of eons run down and equate itself. 
 
 Unless what Professor Haeckel means by the 
 "division into mass and ether the ergonomy of 
 ponderable and imponderable matter," is covered 
 by the expression "motion forms in the ether," in- 
 cluding continuity of the ether into every part of 
 the mass, it will be difficult to see how the "inter- 
 mediate ether increases its strain," or how there 
 could be any strain at all. 
 
 Assuming these "infinitesimal centers of con- 
 densation of the ether," these units of force, these 
 individual forms of motion in the ether to be thus 
 in the substance, a continuity of the substance, 
 and not detached from it, and there is a strain, an 
 eternal strain, and the basis for a belief that the 
 relationship is eternal. 
 
 What an immense complexity of relations is 
 thereby established, what immeasurable capacity 
 for thought, consciousness, and memory, and a 
 means of intercommunication as far transcending 
 the human nerves as the traverse of light tran- 
 scends the rapidity of sound waves, we do not know 
 and cannot know. Eef erring again to Eomanes's 
 declaration that it is a non sequitur, that because 
 we only know mind as associated with brain, 
 therefore there is no other form of mind, we find
 
 KELATIONSHIP 75 
 
 mind associated in us with ganglionic centers, but 
 Romanes in an experiment made upon the Naked- 
 eyed Medusae found that the manubrium or tongue 
 of the bell-shaped animal would deflect toward 
 the exact spot which he irritated on the edge of 
 the bell or body. Thus far the existence of gangli- 
 onic centers was assuredly known, but he cut out 
 the manubrium or tongue and to his astonishment 
 found (as he says on pp. 110-111, "Jelly Fish, Star 
 Fish, and Sea Urchins") that "no matter how 
 small a portion of this organ I used, and no matter 
 from what part of the organ I cut it, this portion 
 would do its best to bend over to the side which I 
 irritated. . . . We have here, then, a curious fact, 
 and one which it will be well to bear in mind dur- 
 ing our subsequent endeavors to frame some sort 
 of a conception regarding the nature of these 
 primitive nervous tissues. 
 
 "The localizing function, which is so very effi- 
 ciently performed by the manubrium of the Me- 
 dusa, and which if anything resembling it oc- 
 curred in the higher animals would certainly have 
 definite ganglionic centers for its structural co- 
 relative (italics mine), is here shared equally by 
 every part of the exceedingly tenuous contrac- 
 tile tissue that forms the outer surface of the 
 organ." 
 
 Now this is a diffusion of ganglionic function, 
 not a mere sensitiveness such as in the lowest or- 
 ders of life withdraws its substance away from 
 the irritation. 
 
 That may or may not be suggestive of a little 
 consideration of the thought that, because we are
 
 76 EELATIONSHIP 
 
 accustomed to perceiving the exercise of the gan- 
 glionic functions as associated with definite gan- 
 glionic centers, it does not necessarily follow that 
 ganglionic function may not be exercised without 
 such centers, and hence, to go further, that be- 
 cause we are accustomed to find mind so associ- 
 ated, it does not necessarily follow but that it may 
 exist not so associated. 
 
 Possibly Haeckel does not consider that this 
 opinion of Eomanes's bears upon an "important" 
 point in the monistic philosophy, and therefore 
 may not wish to be taken as "at one" with him in 
 that matter; but when Eomanes tells us that be- 
 cause we are only familiar with mind in associa- 
 tion with brain it does not necessarily follow that 
 that is the only form of substance with which mind 
 is connected, he does not have in view Haeckel's 
 idea of incipient mind or mere "mind stuff." This 
 is evident when we recall that Eomanes suggests 
 that such a mind may so transcend the human as 
 to be a form of mind beycnd our analysis. This 
 is a difference from Haeckel upon a very "impor- 
 tant" matter; indeed, it involves the very soul of 
 Haeckel's work. 
 
 Consciousness of abstract things requires life in 
 abstract things; we actually build them into our- 
 selves and they are our living environment. As 
 I have gone at length into the subject in the chap- 
 ter on The Living Environment, I will not mul- 
 tiply words by discussing it at this point. Stand- 
 ing squarely upon the idea of the One as being the 
 foundation of true Monism, I insist that as we also 
 find the many, and as we likewise are aware that
 
 RELATIONSHIP 77 
 
 mind as we know it is one in character, notwith- 
 standing that we find it expressing in many, we 
 are justified in assuming the one mind to be in its 
 operations similar to that mind with which we are 
 familiar in the many. 
 
 When we consider the Universal Mind we find 
 reasons to believe that just that character of as- 
 sociated objectivities existing in the human mind 
 in unbroken association and relationship makes 
 the living environment of it, and just that char- 
 acter of associated ideas found to constitute the 
 conscious memory of the human mind is in un- 
 broken association and relationship in it. 
 
 I think it is evident that in the case of the indi- 
 vidual human mind the consciousness of the One, 
 the individual, is dependent upon the parallel con- 
 sciousness of the many. We are in the world of 
 vast differentiation, active in millions of cortical 
 cells, each of which, as we have endeavored to 
 show elsewhere, is a unit in itself, and our con- 
 sciousness of the world is dependent upon the uni- 
 fication of these. This is not equivalent to admit- 
 ting what is asserted by Haeckel, that the sum of 
 their activities constitutes consciousness, but quite 
 the contrary, that the unification of their activities 
 provides us with the object of consciousness. 
 Sleep comes with its apparent loss of conscious- 
 ness when the senses cease to receive impressions 
 from without, and the connections of the cortical 
 cells are withdrawn from each other within. 
 
 In sleep the many prevail; in wakefulness to 
 the world the one. That this is comparative and 
 not absolute is within the experience of us all.
 
 78 BELATIONSHIP 
 
 So far as we know, for untold eons of time in- 
 finite space has been filled with the evidences of 
 the many ; our knowledge of the vast systems upon 
 systems which fill it is, great as it is, exceedingly 
 limited. Certainly all we know is based upon the 
 uniformity of law, the loyalty of force, and the 
 evidences of unity. Here on this little world, our 
 environment of to-day, we find mind, and it is one 
 thing, one force, loyal to its law, and it does not re- 
 quire undue effort of scientific faith to grasp the 
 conception that it is the same coextensive with all 
 its manifestation in the universe. 
 
 The one and the many may be rationally con- 
 ceived as ever in existence. Time and Eternity 
 may keep the one and the many in eternal balance 
 of unification so far as our present scientific inves- 
 tigations can inform us. 
 
 What we know as the association of ideas is, 
 otherwise expressed, the law of relationship. We 
 are also all tolerably familiar with the phenomena 
 of associated memories. The odor of the carna- 
 tion will, with the passing of a second of time, 
 bring into the present the dim and misty past ; all 
 that went with the fragrance of the pink, however 
 small a part it may have itself played in the expe- 
 rience, comes trooping to the memory houses, 
 rooms, familiar faces of the past, long-forgotten 
 voices, feelings, griefs, pleasures, all are so linked 
 together that they form one picture in the now. 
 Such associative links will even thrust before the 
 memory facts to the nonexistence of which, with- 
 out the suggestive link, we would take our solemn 
 oath.
 
 RELATIONSHIP 79 
 
 This law of relationship, it is not irrational to 
 assert, is the law of mind, and if such be perceived 
 to be its action in your mind, there are no scien- 
 tific data which demand of you that you deny it to 
 the One Mind. 
 
 "In Him we live and move and have our being" 
 is more than a religious assertion ; it is a scientific 
 declaration. 
 
 The One Mind is infinite, true, but it is because 
 of this that I insist that we cannot be taken out 
 of it. Its infinity is ours; it surely has not less 
 than my mind, and while we must acknowledge 
 that its intellect is so transcendentally beyond our 
 conception as to be a mystery, yet its hold upon all 
 its relationships must likewise transcend our ex- 
 perience.
 
 Chapter V 
 
 THE WITNESSES 
 
 The weight of a great name usually lends force 
 to an expression of opinion on any subject of 
 general interest, and we are sometimes given to 
 unreasonably yielding our own views on that ac- 
 count. Anything Mr. Gladstone might have to 
 say concerning the inspiration of the Scriptures, 
 the divinity of Christ, or the ethical value of the 
 phonograph was hailed with approving nods a 
 few years ago, notwithstanding the fact that his 
 transcendent greatness consisted in qualities of 
 mind bearing in an entirely different direction. 
 We do not think sufficiently for ourselves and lean 
 too confidingly upon others merely because of 
 their prominence in the world of thought, no mat- 
 ter how that prominence was obtained or in what 
 field of labor. For instance, the views of ex- 
 President Harrison concerning the relations 
 which should exist between the United States 
 and her possessions in the Atlantic and Pacific 
 oceans have profound value, and ought to have, 
 expressed as they were by a man whose whole 
 life training had qualified him to form rational 
 conclusions on the subject, but his opinion as to 
 the probability of communicating with the pos- 
 sible inhabitants of Mars might or might not be 
 as valuable as yours or mine. 
 
 80
 
 THE WITNESSES 81 
 
 When such a grave question as the one upon the 
 answer to which hang the hopes of all humanity 
 is propounded, any opinion adverse to the inbred 
 expectancy of the human mind should be expressed 
 at least tentatively and with hesitating modesty. 
 It should never be clothed in the brazen armor 
 of dogmatic assurance, nor confidently asserted 
 even, until all probabilities as to individual im- 
 mortality are exhausted. 
 
 Even if the whole faculty of physicists and psy- 
 chologists should assure us that there was no 
 other alternative, we would yet have the feeling 
 that, after all, they are but men like ourselves, 
 confessedly by their own theories but expressing 
 the evanescent products of machines, and have not 
 reached any further into the mystery of being 
 than you or I in our own consciousness. 
 
 It is quite a cheering thought, nevertheless, that 
 the scientific thinkers do not agree in such a 
 conclusion as Professor Haeckel has reached; 
 quite the contrary; and, strange to say, as he 
 frankly admits in his own book, the older they 
 grow in their work the wider the field of their 
 mental vision, the more voluminous the data which 
 they gather, usually the more convinced are they 
 that the conclusions to which they leaped eagerly 
 in the freshness of youth were prematurely 
 reached and rested on an insecure foundation. 
 
 Nearly every man of great scientific attainments 
 in biological, physiological, and psychological re- 
 searches has found it convenient and sometimes 
 necessary to write something about the immortal- 
 ity of man. It is a subject which suggests itself
 
 82 THE WITNESSES 
 
 frequently in the study of the origin, development, 
 and life of mankind, and I have, like many others, 
 interested myself deeply in the task, a pleasurable 
 one, of discovering how these great thinkers 
 viewed that question, and have been contented 
 in finding that just as there are always conflicts 
 of opinion upon scientific constructive theories, 
 so there are in relation to this. If you are prone 
 to believe that our biologists are a harmonious 
 family in relation to the conclusions to be reached 
 from the facts ascertained, or even as to the mean- 
 ing of the phenomena themselves, you have but to 
 read the theses of the various writers upon the 
 subject, or the lectures delivered from time to 
 time at the laboratories, to find out for yourselves 
 that while great strides have been made, the mean- 
 ing of the wonderful egg and its characteristic 
 activities is largely a subject of discussion by 
 learned men with divergent views. This is 
 likewise the case in the field of psychology, 
 although we certainly have approached nearer 
 to the time when it may properly be called a 
 science. 
 
 The scientific world is really in too much of a 
 hurry; just as it has for the first time in a few 
 thousand years of man's history begun to open 
 the cases of Nature's sealed mysteries, the first 
 few cans have so swelled its dignity that it is 
 too much inclined to assume the attitude of know- 
 ing all about it. The world has but commenced 
 its era of science; it yet rocks the cradle of ex- 
 perimental knowledge ; it has but outlined the tre- 
 mendous future, and many of the pioneers in this
 
 THE WITNESSES 83 
 
 wonderful work, as they cool down in their de- 
 clining years, fully realize these facts and have 
 the courage of their greatness to come forth and 
 say so before the great doors of the Hereafter 
 clang behind them. They admit their ignorance 
 of some things and ask the world to wait. 
 
 The idea of another life, immortal, freed from 
 the distresses, crosses, and suffering of this, with 
 the associated idea of a God, is an old one. It 
 has inspired the poet's song; has been the theme 
 from which all the grandeur, sublimity, and power 
 of harmony in modern music drew their vitality. 
 Mozart, Handel, Haydn, all voiced their great 
 hope and ideal of mankind. It gave to the world 
 its first impulse in painting. Michelangelo and 
 Raphael threw this expectation of humanity upon 
 the screen in living colors; it has fired the soul 
 of eloquence; it has been the warp and woof of 
 human government, and has been enlarged, be- 
 littled, distorted, modeled and remodeled, diluted 
 and crystallized in creeds by theologians it is old. 
 It has no longer the charm of novelty. Science 
 has. Its new light has for a time, and will for a 
 greater time, outshine the old, and it is not strange 
 that in the freshness and vigor of youth, with 
 the prizes of fame and preferment alluringly held 
 up before them, the students of science should 
 find in its newness, its fresh impulses, its novel 
 revelations, its doorways opening into strange 
 paths, a substitute for the old. They seem to 
 forget that even the doctrine of Monism is in- 
 clusive, and that the universe is still sparkling 
 with many facets.
 
 84 THE WITNESSES 
 
 The results of this newness of modern science 
 are not novel in the world's history, for every 
 new departure, whether in literature, art, music, 
 poetry, government, economics, or education, has 
 commenced in just the same all-absorbing, exclu- 
 sive, repudiating, self-assertive manner. Such 
 changes in the direction of the world's thought 
 push everything else out of the way for a time, 
 but this cannot and does not last. 
 
 The world has its rhythm; it is much like the 
 man; its progress is in the attaining of the new, 
 but it always retains the old, and eventually builds 
 it into its life. 
 
 The new is almost always exclusive in its ef- 
 fects upon its possessor, and it is difficult to find 
 a human being who is not compelled, because of 
 his greater tendency to specialize than to gener- 
 alize, to subscribe to some ism. Isms are always 
 exclusive, and by their formulated rules compel 
 a repudiation of anything which appears to be 
 antagonistic. 
 
 Now, when we come to the constructive work 
 of modern science, we find that it is of necessity 
 first destructive. It cannot easily build upon the 
 old foundations; biology abandons Bonnet, and 
 psychology has little use for the works on mental 
 science of the early part of the nineteenth century. 
 But this abandonment is for science and for scien- 
 tific purposes only; it is not because there was no 
 truth in the old masters, but because it is easier 
 and perhaps more conducive to the attainment of 
 harmony to put the wine in "new bottles." In 
 this work of construction, among the useless ma-
 
 THE WITNESSES 85 
 
 terial is seemingly found the idea of God and 
 immortality, but that is only because modern sci- 
 ence has not builded up to its capstone quite yet. 
 The sound of contesting languages is not yet over ; 
 there are indications of Babelistic confusion of 
 tongues even now. This will not last, but possibly 
 it will be found finally that the "stone which the 
 builders rejected" is the "chief stone of the cor- 
 ner." 
 
 The greatest achievement of modern civilization 
 has been in the development of the spirit of tol- 
 eration, and, as Professor Haeckel justly claims, 
 the marvelous progress of Science owes its im- 
 petus to the full untrammeled liberty conceded to 
 thinkers to express themselves without fear of 
 the rack or the stake. It is certainly true that 
 enlightened people do not any longer hurry such 
 men as Giordano Bruno and John Huss out of 
 the world in a blaze of glory, nor does the holy 
 inquisition seek its victims among the unbelievers 
 and heterodox. The days when to express an 
 opinion adverse to the ruling of the ecclesiastics 
 was equivalent to signing one's own death war- 
 rant have departed, probably forever. Such eru- 
 dite and intellectual giants as Haeckel, Spencer, 
 Huxley, Darwin, Wallace, Lodge, Crookes, James, 
 and many more who tower above all others in 
 their special fields of labor, have found the nine- 
 teenth century a most fortunate and advantageous 
 era in which to live. Their privilege to speak, 
 their opportunity to be heard, the respect with 
 which their utterances are treated, are all owing 
 to the spirit of toleration and the fact that the
 
 86 THE WITNESSES 
 
 general level of intelligence has slowly but surely 
 risen. Yet I am very certain that there are strong 
 indications that the same spirit which, when in its 
 unbounded and unlicensed cruelty, found an op- 
 portunity to glorify God by burning at the stake 
 such as refused to wear the yoke of orthodoxy, 
 prevails to a great extent to-day. I mean to say 
 that persecution is a weapon as freely used in this 
 day and generation as ever it was in the history 
 of the world, but its wielders are no longer the 
 Church and the priests alone, but the scientists 
 themselves. Not all, but some. It is remarkable, 
 too, that the victims of their wrath and intolerance 
 are of their own number. Broadest of all men 
 should the true scientists be, and broadest of all 
 men the true scientist is. Yet we are to-day face 
 to face with the fact that if a thinker thinks too 
 far, so far that he is unfortunate enough to get 
 a trifle away from the beaten path of a cult or a 
 theory or a school, he must make up his mind that 
 his worst enemies and most uncompromising an- 
 tagonists will be those of his own school of sci- 
 ence. 
 
 "Orthodox" and "heterodox" are rather curi- 
 ous words to apply to science, yet they have crept 
 into our vernacular in that association. 
 
 Science is knowledge, knowledge acquired by 
 and through the use of the senses ; it should fling 
 wide open the doors which give ingress to data; 
 there should be no such thing as forbidden fruit, 
 and no fences across rights of way. Merely be- 
 cause we have accepted a theory as in all probabil- 
 ity a rational one because based upon facts which
 
 THE WITNESSES 87 
 
 appear to demand it, we should not shut out eyes 
 to other pressing data which seem not to fit into 
 the theory ; neither should an investigator be com- 
 pelled to go into Coventry because he happens to 
 be the one who sincerely believes that he has evi- 
 dence of the existence of such facts. 
 
 Evolution and Monism are widely accepted to- 
 day as rational hypotheses; indeed, they almost 
 approach demonstration; but the fact that they 
 just fail of absolute demonstration leaves always 
 open the possibility that, after all, they may be 
 entirely unfounded and erroneous. But even con- 
 ceding that they have all the force of demonstra- 
 tion, yet they are very inclusive, and have not as 
 yet entirely explained the workings of the Uni- 
 verse, and presumably never will. 
 
 It is a matter of profound regret that the mys- 
 terious realm of psychic phenomena, telepathy, 
 and what is commonly known as spiritualism, 
 should be not only unknown territory to Science, 
 but unrecognized and forbidden. 
 
 In common with most other men who feel that 
 nothing is so vulgar that it will not bear investi- 
 gation, I had hailed with delight the advent into 
 the field of the occult of men of such standing in 
 the scientific world as Wallace, Crookes, James, 
 Lodge, Myers, Hodgson, and Hyslop, because I 
 felt that they would be able to make such thorough 
 and unflinching investigations as would reveal 
 either its absolute worthlessness or its profound 
 value. 
 
 How have the results of the efforts of some 
 of them been received by the scientists? With
 
 88 THE WITNESSES 
 
 contumely and contempt. Haeckel voices the opin- 
 ions of many scientific men when he considers 
 that they have been led astray by "excess of im- 
 agination and defect of critical faculty." 
 
 Now the modern theory of evolution owes fully 
 as much to Wallace as to Darwin, yet nobody ever 
 considered it necessary to charge him with "ex- 
 cess of imagination or defect of critical faculty" 
 in connection with that matter. It required a keen 
 observer and one possessed of critical faculty of 
 a high order. If this is not so, of what value is 
 all his labor in gathering data tending to sustain 
 the evolutionary doctrine? 
 
 Crookes and Lodge certainly appear to tran- 
 scend most of their contemporaries in physics, yet 
 the same faculties which gave them their position 
 in the scientific world become "excess of imag- 
 ination" the moment that they apply them to the 
 study of anything which is unpopular and hetero- 
 dox to Science. 
 
 These abnormal phenomena demand explana- 
 tion, and so long as they remain unexplained by 
 Science they are standing obstructions to the 
 demonstration of anything by Science concern- 
 ing the psychic side of life. If they are un- 
 certain and spasmodic, then those elements are 
 to be read into the scheme of evolution and 
 Monism, and it no longer remains true that 
 Science is positive and definite in its analysis of 
 life. 
 
 It is a simple matter of a few words for a sci- 
 entist to declare that telepathy has "no more 
 existence than the groans of spirits," but what do
 
 THE WITNESSES 89 
 
 words amount to in the solution of such a ques- 
 tion? Many men of no mean attainments say 
 that it does exist, and that they have proved it. 
 If it does exist, it very materially affects the atti- 
 tude taken not only by Haeckel but others as to 
 the properties of the etheric substance and the 
 modification of the forms of motion in the cere- 
 bral cells by stimuli reaching them by channels 
 other than via the senses. Unsolved, it remains 
 a possible contradiction even to the monistic con- 
 ception of brain and soul as presented by Haeckel. 
 Probably that is why it seems to have no more 
 existence than "the groans of spirits," for it 
 might require a rather serious alteration of the 
 whole schematic framework of mechanical life. 
 Personally, I regard such men as James, Lodge, 
 Crookes, Hyslop, Wallace, and the others whom 
 I have mentioned with profound admiration, for I 
 think that the consideration of such matters be- 
 longs preeminently to Science. It is not strange 
 when we recall how some of them have been treat- 
 ed by the "orthodox" among the scientists that 
 these men hold a warm corner in the hearts of 
 the people. They are bringing their precise and 
 logical methods to bear upon questions of vital 
 importance to humanity, and whatever their ulti- 
 mate decision may be, it will be received with 
 respect. 
 
 Why have I indulged in this strain of philoso- 
 phy? Because I have in mind a much more ra- 
 tional explanation than Professor Haeckel for the 
 recantation on the part of so many of the masters 
 in science who have enjoyed (?) the felicity of
 
 90 THE WITNESSES 
 
 standing with him in his, to me, hopeless views 
 of life and its meaning. 
 
 I quote first from Haeckel himself (p. 93, "The 
 Eiddle of the Universe") : 
 
 "Rudolph Virchow, the eminent founder of cel- 
 lular pathology, was a pure Monist in the best 
 days of his scientific activity. . . . Virchow pub- 
 lished his general biology views on the processes 
 of man, which he takes to be purely mechanical 
 natural phenomena." I have abbreviated the quo- 
 tation, for it speaks for itself in the chapter on 
 the Nature of the Soul. It is sufficient to say 
 that twenty-eight years afterwards Virchow "rep- 
 resented the diametrically opposite view." 
 
 E. Du Bois Eeymond, whom Haeckel calls one 
 of the "most famous living scientists," after hav- 
 ing done his great part in the destruction of 
 transcendentalism and vitalism, recanted, and 
 declared that consciousness was an insoluble 
 problem. 
 
 Haeckel cites a similar change from the mere 
 mechanical theory to the spiritualistic on the part 
 of the great Wilhelm Wundt, whom he calls the 
 "ablest living psychologist." To them he adds 
 Kant and Baer, and suggests even others who 
 after having found all the truth, found some 
 more. 
 
 I am at this point constrained to say that even 
 George John Romanes, whose opinion seems to 
 Professor Haeckel to coincide with his own (per- 
 haps he does not mean concerning immortality), 
 gave strong evidences of an approaching change 
 in his views, if indeed any change was necessary,
 
 THE WITNESSES 91 
 
 shortly before his death, if the preface to the 
 posthumous volume "Mind, Motion, and Monism" 
 is of any value as evidence. I quote the words 
 of C. Lloyd Morgan, principal of University Col- 
 lege, Bristol: "The subjects here discussed fre- 
 quently occupied Mr. Romanes's keen and versa- 
 tile mind. Had not the hand of Death fallen upon 
 him while so much of the ripening gram of his 
 thought still remained to be finally garnered, some 
 modifications and extensions (italics mine) of the 
 views set forth in the 'Essay on Monism' would 
 probably have been introduced. Attention may 
 be drawn for example to the sentence on page 
 139, italicized by the author himself, in which it 
 is contended that the will as agent must be iden- 
 tified with the principle of causality. 
 
 "I have reason to believe that the chapter on 
 the World as an Eject would, in a final revision 
 of the essay as a whole, have been modified so as 
 to lay stress on this identification of the human 
 will with the principle of causality in the world 
 at large, a doctrine the relation of which to the 
 teaching of Schopenhauer will be evident to the 
 students of philosophy." 
 
 It is with a considerable degree of confidence in 
 the correctness of my understanding of the testi- 
 mony of Professor Romanes that I quote also 
 from the volume of his "Essays" edited by Prof. 
 C. Lloyd Morgan, and particularly from the pa- 
 per entitled "Mind in Men and Animals": "On 
 the side of its philosophy I am in complete agree- 
 ment with the most advanced idealist, and hold 
 that in the doctrine of self -consciousness we each
 
 92 THE WITNESSES 
 
 of us possess not alone our only ultimate knowl- 
 edge, or that alone which is 'real in its own right,' 
 but likewise the only mode of existence that the 
 human mind is capable of conceiving as existence, 
 and therefore the conditio sine qua non to the 
 possibility of an external world. With this as- 
 pect of the matter, however, I am not here con- 
 cerned. Just as the functions of an embryologist 
 are confined to tracing the mere history of devel- 
 opmental changes, and just as he is thus as far 
 as ever from throwing any light upon the deeper 
 questions of the how and the why of life, so in 
 seeking to indicate the steps whereby self-con- 
 sciousness has arisen from the lower stages of 
 physical development, I am as far as anyone can 
 be from throwing any light upon the intrinsic na- 
 ture of that the probable genesis of which I am 
 endeavoring to trace. It is as true to-day as it 
 was in the days of Solomon, that "As thou know- 
 est not how the bones do grow in the womb of 
 her that is with child, thou knowest not what is 
 the way of the Spirit." 
 
 What the particular individual views were which 
 these great men finally held does not concern us 
 in the discussion, because the object of this book 
 is not to present a new or an old special theory, 
 but merely emphatically to combat the assertion 
 that the individual has been proved to be scien- 
 tifically mortal, or the imagination that any proof 
 exists which is at all of a character to disturb our 
 spiritual equanimity. I only desire to show that 
 these masters of science when the fire for making 
 bricks had burned down found that they had good
 
 THE WITNESSES 93 
 
 bricks, but that the plans of the building which 
 some of them had in mind showed bad archi- 
 tectural designs. 
 
 My reading of physiology has taught me that it 
 is difficult, for some of the very reasons set forth 
 by Professor Haeckel in his general analysis of 
 the cellular brain, for men past the prime of life 
 to change their habits of thought; hence, they 
 rarely are able to acquire a new art or learn an 
 unfamiliar language, but adhere to the ideas 
 formed in earlier life. Most old men live much in 
 the past, the sensitivity of the cells is not as keen, 
 new sensations fail to arouse them, and the cur- 
 rent events are not so interesting. 
 
 "The power of visualization is lost, pleasure in 
 music disappears, memory becomes weak save in 
 narrow lines (italics mine) ; a new language, a 
 new science, or a new handicraft appears as a 
 very serious undertaking, and, as a rule, is only 
 indifferently acquired." (Donaldson, "The Growth 
 of the Brain.") 
 
 How often, may I ask, do we find a politician 
 changing his party lines in old age? Or a church- 
 man his creed? 
 
 I may be permitted to suggest also that these 
 men so criticised by Haeckel were of unusually 
 strong intellects, concededly so, and if they did 
 achieve the new, recast the old, cease to think on 
 former lines, it was because they were giants and 
 exceptions to the general rule and hence ex- 
 ceptions to Haeckel's rule of senility. 
 
 It is hardly consistent to suggest that these sci- 
 entists changed from their early positions, pos-
 
 94 THE WITNESSES 
 
 sibly because of the approach of old age, and, in 
 addition, to advance as a reason for the spiritual- 
 istic tendencies of such men as Zollner, Pechner, 
 Wallace, and Crookes the suggestion that they 
 have been led astray by the "powerful influence of 
 dogmas which a religious education printed on the 
 brain in early youth." The rule ought to work 
 either one way or the other either early impres- 
 sions should prevail in old age or should not. 
 
 If "purified monism" has returned "after a 
 lapse of two hundred years" to the "profound 
 thought of Spinoza," I question whether we may 
 not be compelled to look elsewhere than to "The 
 Kiddie of the Universe" to find the evidences of 
 the return. Not that I doubt the fact, but fail 
 there to find the evidences. The solution of "The 
 Riddle of the Universe" as presented by Haeckel 
 strikes me as a far reach away from the majestic 
 thesis of Spinoza. Contrast the absolute denial of 
 any individual immortality presented by Haeckel 
 in his statement that the "Godless world system" 
 of Atheism "substantially agrees with the monism 
 or pantheism of the modern scientists" and his 
 express limitation of his conception of immortal- 
 ity in these words, "When we take the idea of im- 
 mortality in the widest sense and extend it to the 
 totality of the knowable universe, it has a scien- 
 tific significance; it is then not merely acceptable 
 but self-evident to the monistic philosopher," with 
 the propositions of Spinoza. Prop. XXI (Part V, 
 The Ethics) : "Nevertheless, in God there is nec- 
 essarily an idea which expresses the essence of 
 this or that human body under the form of eter-
 
 THE WITNESSES 95 
 
 nity." l Prop. XXIII : "The human mind cannot 
 be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there 
 remains something of it which is eternal." 
 
 A portion of Spinoza's note under the last prop- 
 osition reads as follows: "But notwithstanding, 
 we feel and know that we are eternal. For the 
 mind feels those things which it conceives by 
 understanding no less than those things which it 
 remembers. For the eyes of the mind whereby 
 it sees and observes things are none other than 
 proofs. Thus, although we do not remember that 
 we existed before the body, yet we feel that our 
 mind, in so far as it involves the essence of the 
 body, under the form of eternity, is eternal, and 
 that thus its existence cannot be defined in terms 
 of time or explained through duration." Prop. 
 XXXIX: "He who possesses a body capable of 
 the greatest number of activities possesses a 
 mind whereof the greatest part is eternal." 
 
 I quote also from a letter of Spinoza to Olden- 
 berg (Letter XV) for fear that these propositions 
 may be considered as standing by themselves not 
 ? satisfactory expression of Spinoza's monistic 
 idea of immortality of the individual mind: "As 
 regards the human mind, I believe that it is also 
 a part of nature ; for I maintain that there exists 
 in nature an infinite power of thinking, which, in 
 so far as it is infinite, contains subjectively the 
 whole of nature, and its thoughts proceed in the 
 same manner as nature that is, in the sphere of 
 
 1 All the quotations from Spinoza in this book are from the trans- 
 lation by R. H. M. Elwes in Bohn's edition of the " Chief Works of 
 Benedict de Spinoza."
 
 96 THE WITNESSES 
 
 ideas. Further, I take the human mind to be iden- 
 tical with this said power, not in so far as it is in- 
 finite and perceives the whole of nature, but in so 
 far as it is finite and perceives only the human 
 body. In this manner I maintain that the human 
 mind is a part of an infinite understanding." 
 
 The spiritual feeling which pervades the works 
 of Spinoza, notwithstanding the cold, formulated 
 propositions in which his philosophy is set forth, 
 bears a striking contrast to the pessimism which 
 colors the ethics of Haeckel. However little we 
 may agree with Spinoza, his work makes upon 
 us a profound impression ; we feel the earnestness 
 and human sympathy which warms it, while, on 
 the other hand, one leaves "The Riddle of the Uni- 
 verse" depressed and filled with wonder that even 
 if the doleful conclusions of the whole matter were 
 true, and Haeckel a final judge of the case, he 
 should have felt it necessary to write it. In any 
 event, Spinoza, it seems to me, was a poor wit- 
 ness to summon. 
 
 I take the liberty here to quote a few lines from 
 Professor Shaler's recent work ("The Individual," 
 p. 304) : "The point is that we know properties of 
 matter are so complex and our ignorance as to 
 the range of these properties so great, that the 
 facts of death cannot be made a safe basis for a 
 conclusion as to the survival of the intelligence." 
 
 These words and many more are cheering and 
 hopeful coupled with the true scientific mental at- 
 titude of expectant waiting. 
 
 I shall not multiply the pages of this chapter 
 by further quotations, but content myself with the
 
 THE WITNESSES 97 
 
 suggestion that advanced scientists, with hardly 
 an exception, find in their widening field of knowl- 
 edge great and cogent reasons for waiting before 
 springing the trap which executes final judgment 
 upon the hope of the world. 
 
 In the note to a lecture upon Immortality de- 
 livered by Professor James, of Harvard, he ex- 
 presses surprise that, contrary to his expecta- 
 tions, he could not find in recent scientific books a 
 single positive denial of man's possible immortal- 
 ity. He had not at that time the opportunity of 
 reading "The Riddle of the Universe."
 
 Chapter VI 
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 As an introduction to what I wish to say re- 
 garding consciousness, I shall put and try to re- 
 ply, to some extent at least, to a question which 
 has often been asked and remained unanswered to 
 our satisfaction: What is pain? 
 
 Probably, like many other queries, this will re- 
 main unsettled just to the degree that we are 
 unable to explain what consciousness is, but I 
 think it will yet be evident that just so far as we 
 are able to understand what consciousness is, we 
 shall have a comprehension of the nature of pain. 
 I believe there is reason to consider pain as a 
 phase rather than an object of consciousness it- 
 self. I might define consciousness as the sense of 
 effort, and pain as the consciousness aroused by 
 the disturbance of automatic action. Professor 
 Cope, in "Primary Factors of Organic Evolution," 
 says: "Whatever be its nature, the preliminary 
 to any animal movement which is not automatic 
 is an effort. And as no adaptive movement is 
 automatic the first time it is performed, we may 
 regard effort as an immediate source of all move- 
 ment. Now, effort is a conscious state, and is a 
 sense of resistance to be overcome. When an act 
 is performed without effort, resistance has been 
 
 98
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 99 
 
 overcome, and the mechanism necessary for the 
 performance of the act has been completed. The 
 stage of automatism has been reached." 
 
 As the same author has in another place sug- 
 gested, that energy become automatic is uncon- 
 scious, we are able to conceive the effort to have 
 been conscious in the long stages of evolution in 
 building up the complex machines within machines 
 which constitute what I have called the living en- 
 vironment ; desire producing effort, effort leading 
 to adaptation, and the resulting adaptation becom- 
 ing automatic, and, therefore, unconscious. We 
 can readily comprehend, as he suggests, that the 
 heart, the lungs, the stomach, and all the organs 
 were brought into existence as such consciously, 
 and thereafter performed their functions auto- 
 matically. 
 
 If this be a reasonable theory, and it seems to 
 me to be such, then any disturbance of the auto- 
 matic movements of these organs or any organs 
 of the body results in an awakening of conscious- 
 ness in the repair of the injury causing the dis- 
 turbance. Such repair is a revival of effort, the 
 same in kind as the original effort which created 
 the organ, and not being effort directed rhythmic- 
 ally in response to repeated stimulations, is ef- 
 fort demanded suddenly and out of the regular 
 procession of evolution. All such effort is a state 
 of consciousness, and as consciousness may be 
 said to have abandoned the processes of the organ 
 in its automatic condition and to have been di- 
 rected regularly in order to efforts in response to 
 stimuli upon the periphery of the living environ-
 
 100 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 ment coming from the external and assailing it 
 from many points, its sudden and unwonted direc- 
 tion to the demands of repair in the hitherto auto- 
 matic center results in a centralization, or rather 
 a specialization and intensification of conscious- 
 ness in one direction. To all efforts of energy 
 which demand specialization of consciousness just 
 to the degree of expenditure of energy, we give 
 the name of pain, or its opposite, pleasure. If 
 the specialization is in the direction of the at- 
 tainment of the new, we call the consciousness 
 pleasure; if directed to the rehabilitation of a 
 disturbed automatism, we call it pain. 
 
 Such a unit of force as we have conceived the in- 
 dividual to be is limited, limited to what it is in 
 itself, and it is only by virtue of the successive 
 layers of automatic centers in its living environ- 
 ment that it may be said to always be able to 
 utilize practically its entire consciousness in the 
 acquiring rather than the retaining. The with- 
 drawal of it in any degree from this creative, or- 
 ganizing field of effort and its specialization upon 
 the reorganizing is pain. 
 
 Perhaps I may make the idea clearer by saying 
 that in this view, ecstasy, pleasure, and pain are 
 but so many gauging marks upon the thermometer 
 of consciousness. The touch of the point of a pin 
 may be pleasurable, a slight prick by it annoying, 
 because consciousness is to a degree withdrawn 
 from its generalization and more or less special- 
 ized, while the deep penetration by the instrument 
 would be pain. This is all, however, the ex- 
 pression of the degree to which consciousness
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 101 
 
 is withdrawn from generalization to specializa- 
 tion by effort on the part of the particular cen- 
 ter in doing over again what it has done in or- 
 ganizing the automatic action of the epithelial 
 cells. 
 
 Pain and pleasure are but names for direction 
 and degrees of consciousness. They are one and 
 the same thing consciousness. The beating of 
 my heart is an automatic movement, and I am 
 unconscious ordinarily of it, but if I direct my 
 attention fixedly to it, the rhythmic pulsations be- 
 come disturbed and there is more or less pain as 
 a result. The act of swallowing is automatically 
 performed by the muscles of the esophagus, and I 
 am unconscious of their movements under ordi- 
 nary circumstances, yet if I pay attention to the 
 act of swallowing and attempt to analyze the proc- 
 ess, I shall find it exceedingly difficult to resist the 
 desire to expel the food or liquid which I am at- 
 tempting to swallow ; there is pain. 
 
 Pain is only possible when there is a degree of 
 generalization on the part of consciousness. 
 
 If the disturbance of the automatic process is 
 sufficient to centralize the entire consciousness of 
 the unit of force, unconsciousness results, and we 
 find an evidence of this in the fact that the indi- 
 vidual succumbs at a certain point and syncope or 
 fainting results. If the consciousness be with- 
 drawn by artificial helps, from generalization, as 
 in the administration of anaesthetics, there is no 
 pain, and in true sleep, however induced, whether 
 naturally or by hypnotic suggestion, there is no 
 pain. From this position we should not say "con-
 
 102 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 sciousness of pain," but "consciousness is pain." 
 To attempt to explain the absence of pain in such 
 a state by merely saying the individual is uncon- 
 scious is to give but half an explanation. It ap- 
 pears more probable that the individual cannot 
 carry the weight of such a centralization of con- 
 sciousness, and hence there is an inhibition of the 
 connectivities between the sense organs and the 
 cerebrum. 
 
 A man suffering severe pain, and who at the 
 same time is in the condition which we usually call 
 conscious, has but a feeble power to generalize. 
 He exhibits a disposition to avoid conversation; 
 he cannot read with profit ; he is unfitted for busi- 
 ness, and there is a general incapacity for 
 thought ; consciousness is otherwise engaged ; it is 
 specializing upon a work which is a return to the 
 organization of automatic processes. 
 
 I have said that conscious effort in acquiring 
 the new is pleasure, and it may be objected to this 
 that there is also pleasure in repeating the old, 
 and likewise pain sometimes in acquiring the new. 
 To this I shall suggest that if by repeating the 
 old is meant the reviving of past sensations, we 
 do so by building them upon the basis of the pres- 
 ent ; they are never the same as they were before ; 
 they are added to the horizon of our environ- 
 ment as new factors. In acquiring the new there 
 can be no pain unless in the acquisition there is a 
 disturbance of the automatism and therefore the 
 necessary readjustment. There is no pain except 
 where consciousness is comparatively withdrawn 
 from the external world environment of objects
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 103 
 
 and an unwonted consciousness of the living en- 
 vironment of the body aroused. 
 
 The peace and pleasure of the individual de- 
 pends upon the harmonious, undisturbed action 
 and interaction of his living environment. 
 
 Such a theory as I have outlined to explain the 
 nature of pain would more rationally lend sup- 
 port to the conception of the unit of consciousness 
 as the synthesizing force rather than the synthetic 
 product of the activities of the cells. The prog- 
 ress made by physiological and biological investi- 
 gation in the vast complexity of cells in the physi- 
 cal animal, the division and subdivision into spe- 
 cialized centers, the inability to frame any scheme 
 that will construct such a synthesis out of them as 
 will account for the unity of consciousness only 
 adds force to the suggestion that the unit of con- 
 sciousness is the unifying and synthesizing force 
 as a cause of organization. 
 
 The abandonment by biologists of the idea of a 
 vital force does not necessarily include an abridg- 
 ment of belief in a vital unit, and if it did, it would 
 not be the first time in the history of Science when 
 it has abandoned a truth to again return to it as 
 clad in different garments and called by a differ- 
 ent name. 
 
 I again suggest that consciousness demands two 
 or more, and cannot reside in the one nor in any 
 number of units, but is the quality of a force al- 
 ways found in the unit of unification and that is 
 the individual; it is always above, beyond, and 
 something organic rather than the sum total. It 
 is never born and consequently can never die, and
 
 104 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 as units and unity are conceived of as always as- 
 sociated, it is indestructible. 
 
 It would seem apparent that if consciousness 
 was the result of the synthetic activities of the 
 sentient cells, that where any disturbance of their 
 automatic action occurs, as in the case of injury, 
 there should be an abbreviation of consciousness 
 during the interference, but this is not so. There 
 is rather an increase of intensity of it, a distinc- 
 tive specialization which we call pain up to the 
 point of comparatively complete focusing of it, 
 where, as I have before suggested, syncope and 
 unconsciousness supervene. Here, I should say 
 that the word unconsciousness is really a mis- 
 nomer, for it is in reality the cessation of general- 
 ization on the part of consciousness. We have 
 various names for such centralization of con- 
 sciousness in the ordinary affairs of life; we call 
 it concentration, absorption of mind, and absent- 
 mindedness, and any such intensity of conscious- 
 ness in one direction really results in comparative 
 unconsciousness. This may seem paradoxical, but 
 it is clearly true. When one concentrates his at- 
 tention upon a single object for the purpose of the 
 attainment of the new, if it be only to study the 
 microscopical cell, he is oblivious to his surround- 
 ings ; he is unconscious relatively to them just to 
 the degree that he is conscious of the object which 
 he is examining. This is elemental, of course, and 
 within the experience of everybody, but it often 
 happens that the commonplace is very suggestive 
 and frequently offers the basis of solution for 
 problems which have long puzzled the world.
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 105 
 
 Such a concentration of consciousness as I have 
 just referred to is, of course, pleasurable, but if 
 we reverse the conditions and conceive of such 
 concentration as directed to the theretofore auto- 
 matic centers we have but consciousness again 
 shading into unconsciousness in the same manner, 
 and up to a point where generalization ceases we 
 call it "pain." 
 
 Consciousness of environment in the unifying, 
 organizing unit is dependent upon the sentience 
 of interacting, automatic organs, and its compara- 
 tive specialization in utilization of the organism is 
 pleasure, while the same specialization upon the 
 reorganizing of automatic centers is pain. 
 
 The consciousness aroused by the stimuli of new 
 sensations up to the point of disturbance of auto- 
 matic centers is pleasure; the consciousness im- 
 puted to the individual by aroused consciousness 
 in automatic centers is pain. 
 
 It would not be out of place to ask, if when we 
 speak of consciousness of the individual, we have 
 in mind the idea that he is supposed to be con- 
 scious of everything, that nothing may be sup- 
 posed to take place around him or within his en- 
 vironment of which he has no knowledge? If we 
 accept the definition given by Professor Haeckel, 
 that it is best conceived as "internal perception," 
 then the measure of consciousness is not what it 
 perceives but its capacity for perception. 
 
 The vast number of occurrences in the environ- 
 ment of an individual are not, by any means, all 
 counted in the area of consciousness, but while 
 producing their physical effects are salted down,
 
 106 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 if I may be permitted to use such, an apt illustra- 
 tion, to be possibly at some future time freshened 
 in the area of consciousness. For instance, the 
 events occurring immediately about me as I walk 
 the streets of a large crowded city appear to have 
 made no intimate acquaintance with my conscious- 
 ness, yet if some demand, say growing out of a 
 necessity for my testimony in a lawsuit, is made 
 upon me, I find myself able to lift into conscious 
 memoiy the details of events which otherwise 
 would have remained buried in the abyss of my 
 central system. 
 
 Now my consciousness does not in such a case 
 depend upon conscious impressions made at the 
 time of the occurrence, but rather upon its own 
 capacity to recover from the environment within 
 (the preserved experiences, the epitomized events 
 which make up the chain of my life, the living 
 environment), a necessary and valuable incident, 
 and build it into the selected life of self. In other 
 words, I mean to accept without cavil the truth 
 of the statement (p. 184, "The Eiddle of the Uni- 
 verse") that "the momentous announcement of 
 modern physiology that the cerebrum is the or- 
 gan of consciousness and mental action in men 
 and the higher mammals, is illustrated and con- 
 firmed by the pathological study of its diseases." 
 
 Thus, there is a great difference between de- 
 claring the cerebrum to be the cause of conscious- 
 ness and asserting that it is, on the contrary, the 
 organ of consciousness. Consciousness is not the 
 contents which it holds, but the holder itself, and 
 therefore, in discussing what we are conscious of,
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 107 
 
 we are not discoursing upon consciousness itself, 
 but the objects of consciousness. This is precisely 
 the distinction which exists between subject and 
 object and the one which Du Bois Eeymond and 
 others have found to involve a problem which is 
 insoluble. 
 
 George John Eomanes, in his essay "Origin 
 of Human Faculty," as presented in the volume 
 of essays edited by Professor Morgan, says : "For 
 it is the faculty of self -consciousness which thus 
 enables a mind to set one idea before another 
 as an object of its own thought ; by means of this 
 faculty the mind is able, as it were, to stand out- 
 side of itself (italics mine) "and so to perceive 
 objectively the ideas which are passing subjec- 
 tively, and this just as independently as if it were 
 regarding an external series of dissolving views. 
 How is it that such a state of matters is possible 
 whereby a mind can thus, as it were, get outside 
 of its own existence" (italics mine) "and so re- 
 gard its own ideas as objective to itself? This is 
 the mystery of all mysteries, the bottomless abyss 
 of personality" (italics mine). 
 
 Professor Haeckel freely admits that the physi- 
 ological theory of the nature and origin of con- 
 sciousness is by no means generally adopted, so 
 that the question whether the individual is im- 
 mortal would rather, so far as consciousness is 
 concerned, resolve itself into a query whether the 
 contents of individual consciousness are depend- 
 ent for continuity upon the organs which mediated 
 them and which will ultimately disappear. 
 
 Inasmuch as we know nothing about the nature
 
 108 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 of consciousness in its last analysis, and appar- 
 ently cannot, it is evident that while a scientist 
 undoubtedly has the right to his own opinion as 
 to its continuity after death of the organs, he 
 should hesitate to declare any other opinion im- 
 possible in the light of modern science. 
 
 We know little about the qualities of conscious- 
 ness, whether it is rhythmic in its character or 
 not, whether it rests or not, whether it shines with 
 diffusive light which reaches everything at once or 
 rather focuses its rays in successive directions. 
 
 Here I am speaking of consciousness itself, not 
 of its activity through its organs in the cerebrum ; 
 there we find that it is rhythmic, that it does rest, 
 that it focuses its perceptive rays of light; it is 
 in an environment of objects, and therefore de- 
 mands successive objects to perceive. It is not 
 omniscient and general; certainly not when op- 
 erating in these organs, but limited, special. 
 
 That it should therefore find difficulty in per- 
 ceiving objects in its environment by reason of 
 breaks in the connection with it, such as injury 
 to the cerebrum, is not strange, nor is it a con- 
 clusive evidence that it itself is caused by the 
 organs so injured. I am not conscious of being 
 in my office when I am at home, yet my conscious- 
 ness has not died; my consciousness of that par- 
 ticular office is inactive, I admit. 
 
 This is elementary, but has no less force for that 
 reason. 
 
 The fallacious argument from cerebral injury, 
 stimulation of the organs, multiplicity of appar- 
 ent personalities, appears to me to merely amount
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 109 
 
 to this : consciousness does not know everything, 
 and it is not omniscient, does not perceive objects 
 which it does not perceive; therefore, it is the 
 effect of its own incompetent organs as the cause 
 of its existence. 
 
 This mysterious consciousness again seems to 
 have the power to select for its own perception 
 and to choose from the physical centers such as 
 it desires to lift into its own area, nor will the 
 mere physical explanation of association of ideas 
 completely satisfy the call for a cause. Such an 
 explanation as the physical association of received 
 impressions is founded upon the idea of the estab- 
 lishment of paths of least resistance, established 
 as perceived impressions and associations of them, 
 and presumably such a physical phenomenon oc- 
 curs simultaneously with the psychological one of 
 recalling an experience forming a unit in the chain 
 of associated events which have made their previ- 
 ous impression, however slight, upon the organs 
 of consciousness. What, however, are we to do 
 with the events that have not at the time of their 
 occurrence made any impression upon the organs 
 of consciousness, when we find them coming up 
 out of the depths of unconsciousness to conscious- 
 ness f The conclusion readily reached, of course, is 
 that they made their impression upon the subcon- 
 sciousness, and, from the view which I take tenta- 
 tively, of the one and the many both physically 
 and psychically, I am prepared to admit that these 
 stimulations did produce effects in subconscious- 
 ness. That is not the difficulty which at present 
 confronts us, but that other which calls for some
 
 110 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 physical explanation of how and why conscious- 
 ness afterwards deliberately selects these particu- 
 lar sensations and perceives them. 
 
 As an illustration of what I think to be a com- 
 mon experience enough to be practically beyond 
 denial, I refer to the phenomena witnessed in hyp- 
 notic experiments. I have seen a person hypno- 
 tized and such liberties taken with his person and 
 apparel as would have been indignantly resented 
 in the normal condition, injuries inflicted which 
 would have caused instant and excruciating pain, 
 but which were submitted to without a word of 
 protest or a sign of objection. Just prior to 
 arousing him the operator informed him that 
 upon awakening he would remember all that had 
 taken place ; needless to say, he did. He, for the 
 first time, berated the operator for permitting 
 such acts and taking such liberties with him, and 
 declared that he had suffered pain. 
 
 I am aware that we have been inundated with 
 accounts of such performances until they are com- 
 monplace and tiresome, but that does not remove 
 the fact out of the way, that such a subject brings 
 up at suggestion a "familiar spirit" from the 
 region of subconsciousness and introduces him to 
 consciousness. The point upon which I wish to 
 lay stress is that the "organs" of consciousness at 
 command of the will select out of unconnected im- 
 pressions one which it wants, and find in it an 
 object of present consciousness with the element 
 of pastness in it. 
 
 I have linked together pain and consciousness 
 in this chapter, not because the suggested theory
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 111 
 
 proves anything, but because it has appeared to 
 me to present more clearly and to my mind most 
 forcibly the insolubility of the problem of con- 
 sciousness. It is our experience that the auto- 
 matic is always the result of the conscious, and as 
 I have before stated, Professor Cope considers all 
 adaptive movements as effort, and effort as at- 
 tended with consciousness, the consciousness 
 merging into automatism when effort ceases. If 
 this is so, my consciousness is an effort of energy 
 toward adaptation and is not now and cannot have 
 been automatic, but considering that the move- 
 ments of unicells are "impulsive and automatic" 
 (Haeckel), the question arises, how did conscious- 
 ness arise out of any combination of such cells 
 with nothing but automatism as a precedent 
 cause ? 
 
 Of course if we follow Haeckel far enough to 
 coincide with his "conviction that even the atom 
 is not without a rudimentary form of sensation 
 and will" (p. 225, "The Eiddle of the Universe"), 
 then we are at liberty to conceive of units of force 
 in substance which are as true to the law of their 
 being as are atoms, unless we admit what he calls 
 the extreme probability that "they (the atoms) 
 are not absolute species of ponderable matter 
 that is, not eternally unchangeable particles"; 
 only in that case I must ask what brought these 
 differentiated atoms into existence! Professor 
 Haeckel's reply undoubtedly is found in these 
 words: "We adhere firmly to the pure, unequiv- 
 ocal monism of Spinoza; matter or infinitely ex- 
 tended substance, and spirit (or energy), or sensi-
 
 112 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 tive and thinking substance, are the two funda- 
 mental attributes or principal properties of the 
 all-embracing divine essence of the world, the uni- 
 versal substance" (p. 21, "The Kiddle of the Uni- 
 verse"). 
 
 Does this in the last analysis explain differenti- 
 ation 1 ? I find myself here just where I do at the 
 close of another chapter in this book, unable to 
 understand how infinite substance and infinite 
 spirit (energy) can produce variety and individu- 
 ality. It strikes me that without another and ad- 
 ditional force, aliunde, we should have eternally 
 an immovable sea of substance. The very moment 
 that we conceive it as condensing, or breaking up, 
 or differentiating, we have imported a foreign 
 force, one unknown to science and not recognized 
 by Monistic philosophy. 
 
 If Monism demands, as is claimed by some, that 
 all manifestation should come from one thing, 
 then the assumption of One Infinite Eternal Sub- 
 stance and "Spirit," or force, does not and can- 
 not account for the differentiation in the Universe 
 on such a monistic theory. We do not know what 
 force is, neither have we any real knowledge of 
 the nature of "Spirit" ; they are words, and words 
 only, used by Professor Haeckel, as by all, to oc- 
 cupy a relation to the problem similar to the X in 
 algebra. Movement is summarily disposed of by 
 Haeckel by calling it an "innate property" of sub- 
 stance. These again are only words; what is an 
 innate property? It is something, and if Monism 
 demands that all things shall come from one thing, 
 then such a state of substance does not consti-
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 113 
 
 tute it, but is clearly a dualism, or I should rather 
 suggest, a trinity. We have infinite eternal ex- 
 tended substance, which, according to the defini- 
 tion, cannot exist without force or spirit, and then 
 we have the "innate property" of substance or 
 "movement." 
 
 If we are to rely upon mere words, it seems to 
 me that it will require but a substitution of names 
 for these words and we shall have all the requi- 
 sites of even the orthodox trinity, Father (sub- 
 stance), Holy Ghost (spirit or force), and Son 
 (innate property of movement). I do not, of 
 course, say that this is the Trinity, but that it 
 could be, and further, that such an hypothesis as 
 Haeckel presents is no more Monism than is such 
 a conception of the Trinity. It has always been 
 claimed that "In Him we live [Force] and move 
 [innate property of movement] and have our 
 being [substance]," so that even trinitarianism is 
 Monism. 
 
 It is not at all necessary in order to escape 
 dualism (if it be essential that we escape it) that 
 we postulate the inconsistent hypothesis of un- 
 differentiated eternal substance, undifferentiated 
 eternal force, and innate property of movement, 
 for by assuming "innate property of movement" 
 as eternally in manifestation, we have either dif- 
 ferentiated substance or force, and I can see no 
 reason why we should be compelled to encumber 
 ourselves with the conception of "innate property 
 of movement," when we may as reasonably con- 
 ceive of eternal units of "force" or "spirit" as a 
 differentiation amply sufficient to account for all
 
 114 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 the phenomena of the Universe. "Movement" 
 would follow such a differentiation of force, but 
 with undifferentiated substance and force it might 
 be innate in some transcendental manner, but 
 would hardly manifest itself. 
 
 Perhaps I am wrong, but my reading of Spi- 
 noza has not resulted in the same construction of 
 his meaning as that given by Professor Haeckel. 
 The "thinking substance" of Haeckel which can 
 think by being organized is, it seems to me, vastly 
 different from the "thinking thing" which Spinoza 
 says God is. Spinoza's "thinking thing" thinks. 
 Its modes of thought are the individualizations 
 which fill the universe. 
 
 Haeckel's "thinking substance" is like the 
 "mind stuff" of Professor Clifford, a substance 
 which does not think as a whole, but breaks up or 
 rather condenses and by reason of such conden- 
 sation bestows upon variety a faculty of thinking. 
 I have presented a few of Spinoza's propositions 
 in the chapter on The Witnesses. 
 
 That the modes of thinking are in eternal, in- 
 cessant process of change there is no doubt; that 
 nothing remains as it is is equally free from 
 doubt; that the panorama of the universe is 
 change, I freely admit, but may it not be that the 
 act of changing itself constitutes consciousness? 
 
 A fair summing up of this suggestion would be 
 this : change implies effort, effort is consciousness. 
 We should then look for consciousness, not in the 
 operation of complexities, that is, in the "chemical 
 activities" of the cerebrum, but in the act of the 
 building of the complexities themselves. The very
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 115 
 
 fact that, when accomplished and the complexity 
 established, consciousness subsides into automa- 
 tism is a strong indication that consciousness is 
 associated with effort and may be, therefore, said 
 to be the sense of effort. Death of the body is the 
 result of consciousness, and, therefore, death is 
 necessary to life. 
 
 Again I may conclude that as consciousness is 
 not the complexity, but the changing attitude of 
 that selective synthesis whose activity produces it, 
 and as, therefore, that which possesses it cannot 
 be born or come into existence, but ever is, we 
 have no reason to say that because its complexity 
 of environment has ceased as such, that it likewise 
 has done so. 
 
 This activity, this unit of force, is the individ- 
 ual, and because he walks past the windows of our 
 eyes in the very apparent complexity of body, and 
 recedes into the complexity of the cell under the 
 microscope, shall we, in the light of our un- 
 bounded ignorance of the nature of ether and its 
 capabilities, say that the consciousness which was 
 is not? The very cells in which its last activity 
 presented itself, the cerebral cells, have finally 
 become automatic, and the old man finds his brain 
 a machine which grinds out that, and that only, 
 which consciousness brought there by effort. He 
 is senile ; his brain produces the past ; it is not the 
 field of effort ; what is ? With no longer a use for 
 the now automatic machine, what scientific rea- 
 son is there to say that the individual is not as 
 before making effort? The field of his conscious- 
 ness has been all the time pushing up with the
 
 116 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 
 
 least stable and least fixed portion of his living 
 environment, and as we shade ponderable matter 
 off into ether, let us not yet hesitate to conjecture 
 that the organic efforts of the individual during 
 what we call life have shaded off likewise into a 
 field of acquisition, of complexities of which we 
 know nothing. 
 
 Evolution carries too many potentialities, selec- 
 tivities, memories, tendencies, inherent capacities, 
 and adaptations, and biology too many ids and 
 idants, chromosomes, centrosomes, plasms, and 
 mysterious powerful invisibilities to induce a ra- 
 tional man to haul down his flag of immortality 
 just because some sciences do not go any further 
 than they can.
 
 Chapter VII 
 
 MEMORY 
 
 If there is any one attribute of mind which is 
 the foundation of all the others it is memory, for 
 without it there is and can be no consciousness, 
 and its absence would render the wonderful germ 
 cell from which each individual body came as im- 
 potent to evolve the physical structure which 
 comes from it as is the amoeba. 
 
 For these reasons some consideration of the 
 nature and phenomena of memory is of impor- 
 tance. 
 
 That there can be no consciousness without 
 memory is, I think, clearly apparent when we 
 realize that it is only by the contrast of the suc- 
 ceeding moment's sensations with those preceding 
 it that we have any conceivable basis for compari- 
 son or appreciation of differences, and this is true 
 whether we are engaged in processes of thought or 
 receiving impressions through the senses from 
 without. Consciousness has been frequently 
 called a stream, but it must be a stream in which 
 the departing wave does not recede from sight 
 until the incoming raises its crest to the eyes. It 
 is the change and the knowledge of the change and 
 its character which constitutes consciousness and 
 that necessitates memory. 
 
 117
 
 118 MEMORY 
 
 That there may be memory without conscious- 
 ness will as clearly make itself apparent when we 
 consider the automatic processes of the various 
 organs of the human system. So long have they 
 performed their functions that the work is done, 
 as far as we are concerned, unconsciously. 
 
 Memory may then be said to be the vehicle of 
 consciousness, and we may be certain that wher- 
 ever we find consciousness there will memory be 
 likewise, and that just in the proportion that mem- 
 ory is deficient will consciousness be dim and un- 
 certain, but it does not necessarily follow that 
 where consciousness is not present memory is ab- 
 sent. 
 
 What, then, is memory? If we are to confine 
 ourselves to the physical phenomena, as I have 
 already said in a previous chapter, it is possible 
 to conceive of an actual preservation of distinc- 
 tive forms of motion caused by the sensations pro- 
 duced by objects whether we resort to the indi- 
 vidual cerebral cells or to combinations of such 
 cells. Such a possibility I find to be admitted by 
 Professor Bain. He estimates the number of cells 
 in the gray covering of the hemispheres of the 
 brain to amount to 1,200,000,000, and "hence there 
 is no improbability in supposing an independent 
 nervous track for each separate acquisition." Of 
 course, this would only amount to the establish- 
 ment of an inner environment constructed of 
 forms of motion, probably correspondences of the 
 objects causing the sensations or stimulations. 
 
 Incoming impulses or those aroused by intro- 
 spection may cause discharges of energy along
 
 MEMORY 119 
 
 tracks and among cells holding an associative re- 
 lationship to them and bring before the mind 
 recollections. But, as I have suggested before, 
 there is no physical explanation for the sense of 
 pastness, nor, indeed, I may add, for the sense of 
 forgetfulness so often felt by us. 
 
 Not infrequently we hunt for an idea, one which 
 we feel to be an old friend; we can almost catch 
 it, but it eludes us, and it is only after persistent 
 effort that we succeed in making it stand and 
 deliver. 
 
 Now, in such an instance it is apparent that 
 somehow we travel in avenues close by the elusive 
 idea; we can almost see it "around the corner," 
 but I candidly confess myself as yet unable to 
 find a physical cause for our knowledge of its 
 absence. Physical and psychical phenomena are 
 cooperative, and yet there are occasions when one 
 or the other appears to precede the coordinate 
 phenomena as the immediate cause of the opera- 
 tion of both. Possibly there may be an unknown 
 and unmeasured physical attendant upon psychi- 
 cal phenomena. 
 
 Beturning to the sense of forgetfulness, we shall 
 find, I believe, that the operation of the law of 
 association of ideas fails to be an adequate ex- 
 planation. The existence of the elusive idea is 
 suggested, of course, by other thoughts with which 
 our attention is engaged and ought to respond at 
 once, if the associated ideas are aroused to the 
 field of active memory by relationship physically. 
 
 Conceding that for some reason there is a phys- 
 ical blocking of the nerve track, and the cell or
 
 120 MEMORY 
 
 cell center in which the lost idea is closeted can- 
 not be aroused, yet the mind knows that it is 
 blocked, knows that it has the idea, has an in- 
 distinct conception of what it is, realizes the ne- 
 cessity of recalling it, and willfully goes about the 
 work of finding it. This would appear to be a 
 "sum total," which as a product realizes that it 
 is not the product which it ought to be, and that 
 if it could only add another force as a unit it 
 would be a different "sum total." 
 
 Possibly a satisfactory explanation of this can 
 be given, but it remains, so far as I am concerned, 
 one of the mysteries of memory, one of the things 
 which Science does not know, but at which it may 
 make more or less rational guesses. 
 
 There is another rather curious habit which 
 memory seems to have, and one which again leaves 
 a mystery unsolved if, as Professor Haeckel says, 
 the soul is the "sum total" of the chemical activi- 
 ties of the cells of the cerebrum, and that an 
 individual cannot be divided and retain its indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 I have found frequently, as I presume every- 
 body else has, that when a name or a number, or 
 even a quotation, has escaped my memory, I can 
 recall it by directing the attention mechanically 
 or automatically to something else temporarily, 
 as, for instance, by adding a column of figures or 
 engaging in light conversation. When I do this, 
 usually the lost name comes up from the depths 
 like a submerged cork which has been suddenly 
 loosened from anchorage below. Now, in the 
 common experience the "sum total" is either en-
 
 MEMORY 121 
 
 gaged in the exercise or the conversation referred 
 to, or the "sum total" is not one, but is divided, 
 and one of them is engaged as suggested, while 
 the other is searching the nerve tracks and cere- 
 bral cells for the lost name. Either the individ- 
 ual is not a "sum total," but the master of vari- 
 ous units and combinations which simultaneously 
 do the bidding of the will, or there is no indi- 
 vidual, he being divided into two separate "cere- 
 bral activities," even though one of them is un- 
 conscious or subconscious. Lest it be supposed 
 that I do not fairly quote the definition of a soul 
 and individual as given by Professor Haeckel, I 
 will here say that I understand fully that his defi- 
 nition of a soul is that it is "a collective title for 
 the sum total of the cerebral functions." But as 
 a sum total is a definite factor and the adjective 
 "collective" appears to be superfluous, I feel jus- 
 tified in considering his definition to mean that 
 there is no true unity of mind function, but merely 
 a changing, vacillating multiplicity of function- 
 ing cells which seem in some unaccountable, tran- 
 scendental way to make up a "sum total" akin 
 to the N function in mathematics. 
 
 As one purpose of this chapter is to endeavor 
 to present some features of the action of memory 
 which remain unsolved mysteries, and which seem 
 to demand something more as a cause than the 
 cerebral cells which appear to be the organs of 
 its functioning, I will again refer to the memory 
 of the germ cell. To account for the organized 
 human body which arises from its activities with- 
 out admitting the truth of the ancient doctrine
 
 122 MEMOKY 
 
 of preformation, biologists, including Professor 
 Haeckel, ascribe to the fertilized ovum cell certain 
 wonderful unconscious memories ; memories which 
 result in presentations of evolving forms from 
 the cell through the line of species from which 
 man has finally emerged to the full stature of 
 humanity. 
 
 This, of course, necessitates a memory some- 
 where and somehow in the one cell, of the vari- 
 ous changes through which it must thereafter 
 evolve. Consider what this demands of us in the 
 way of mental gymnastics. First, the physical 
 memory must have its physical counterpart, and 
 every existent potential memory must be stored 
 as a form of motion of matter in that one cell if 
 we adhere to the theory that memory is always 
 attended with cerebral or cell or material activ- 
 ity. We have seen that we can conceive of a de- 
 pository for all the elements of memory up to a 
 certain point if we provide cells or cell centers 
 enough to contain them in some forms of motion 
 or chemical activities, and that we have even some 
 comprehension of how these become consciously 
 active and form a basis for intelligence. 
 
 In the case of the germ cell, however, it divides, 
 first into two cells, presumably each like the other ; 
 certainly we know of no chemical process by which 
 the memory of these two has become in any way 
 changed, unless something has been added to 
 them, hence they are so far the same ; they then 
 divide into four, again alike, and so on until we 
 reach a certain point in the process of division 
 where a series of lower animal embryonic forms
 
 MEMORY 123 
 
 appear one after another, evolving out of each 
 other in a determinate order. If we are to con- 
 cede that a memory must always be associated 
 with, as its necessary correlative, a physical or- 
 ganism, then that physical organism must be equal 
 in complexity and coordination to the complexity 
 and coordination of the memory. It is useless in 
 such a position to talk of potential memory, for 
 even the atoms which are hypothetically gifted 
 with "will and feeling" can evolve no memory 
 which will be capacious and complex without, by 
 association with other atoms, building a complex 
 brain substance capable of functioning such a 
 memory, in which case the memory is not con- 
 ceded by Haeckel's theory to be the result of the 
 potential memory of a single atom, but the "sum 
 total of the cerebral activities." 
 
 Long before the embryo of the coming animal 
 appears, the cells which have by division been 
 born of the original one cell begin to divide the 
 work among themselves; in other words, to dif- 
 ferentiate as to function. Is this the memory of 
 these cells? No, for they have never performed 
 the process nor witnessed the process of the per- 
 formance before; they are new cells. Is it the 
 memory of the original cell? No, for it has dis- 
 appeared in the many. It is the memory at best, 
 under that theory, of the morphological unity. We 
 can conceive of separate cells receiving impres- 
 sions and setting up forms of specific motion and 
 in a unity producing a synthetic result, but here 
 we are confronted with the opposite proposition 
 of one cell producing many with separate func-
 
 124 MEMOKY 
 
 tions which, by a mutual activity, construct a syn- 
 thetic product. If memory is, physically consid- 
 ered, a form of motion, is it within the bounds of 
 human knowledge, or even within the limits of 
 human understanding, to comprehend how there 
 can be in the one original cell a unification of a 
 multiplicity of memories which may be transmit- 
 ted to many cells as differentiated, varying mem- 
 ories ? 
 
 Memory is here a word to which Science flees 
 for refuge; it is one of the explanations of the 
 activities of the cell given in order that effects 
 may be matched with sufficient causes. I believe, 
 notwithstanding its wide acceptance as a theory, 
 that it is utterly beyond anybody's capacity to 
 demonstrate its correctness. It serves its purpose 
 and yet remains only a hypothesis. 
 
 That such a form of motion in the germ cell is 
 not quantitative but is qualitative, if it exists at 
 all as the correlative of the "unconscious mem- 
 ory," is made fairly clear, as I have shown in the 
 previous part of this book, by the experiments of 
 Pfluger with clamped ovum cells of the frog, 
 which experiments together with those which I 
 have mentioned as made by Professor Loeb with 
 the eggs of the sea urchin, seem to indicate that 
 the substance of the egg is undifferentiated as to 
 its power of producing the embryo. Every part 
 has, then, the same "unconscious memory" and 
 its form of motion, not a synthetic one of the mass 
 but evidently molecular. Such a conclusion ren- 
 ders the mystery of the memory of the cell more 
 dense, because it requires that these wonderful
 
 MEMORY 125 
 
 memories shall be looked for in infinitely smaller 
 bodies than the cell itself. Scientists have recog- 
 nized the profound mystery attending the activ- 
 ities of the cell and the difficulty of providing the 
 machinery essential to do such marvelous work. 
 That is the reason why Weismann proposed the 
 theory of his ids, idants, and biopheres, and why 
 there is such earnestness in the field of cytology 
 just at this time. Science has given its various 
 theories based upon the data which it has in its 
 possession, and that is right; but it is far from 
 being conclusive, and it always has an unknown 
 region beyond its last footstep. 
 
 Kecalling the theory of the possibility of even 
 an etheric body suggested in the chapter on "Some 
 Things Which Science Does Not Know," a theory, 
 of course, presented as merely a tentative one, we 
 shall see that while memory is essential to con- 
 sciousness of objects, yet consciousness after all 
 constitutes but a very small part of our lives. Be- 
 tween the outer environment and the inner one 
 which we have conserved, and which constitutes 
 the deep from which the forms of memory are 
 brought up, is the very small circumscribed posi- 
 tion which we occupy in our waking consciousness. 
 I say waking to distinguish it from the conscious- 
 ness with which we are familiar in dreams. 
 
 Of the vast number of impressions which we 
 have received and which are conserved within us, 
 we are from moment to moment conscious of only 
 a remarkably small number. We can remember, 
 but habitually we do not, and when we do it is 
 only a comparatively insignificant number at a
 
 126 MEMORY 
 
 time. Of all these experiences which we have 
 had, of all the faces seen, of the great and over- 
 whelming number of events which have crowded 
 upon us during life, of all the conversations, 
 books which we have read, of that great unnum- 
 bered multitude, how many are at the present 
 moment present to consciousness? 
 
 This moment's consciousness is comparatively 
 an insignificant thing to contemplate, and yet it 
 is in the now that we live, and consciousness is 
 seemingly its value, but is it? As I read the 
 pages of a book, my eye sweeps rapidly along the 
 lines taking note of every word, of necessity of 
 every letter, and if I make the seeing of every 
 letter an act of consciousness, it is a painful op- 
 eration. It is the thought embodied on that page 
 that I am after, not the road to it, hence those 
 former halting efforts at spelling, which in boy- 
 hood I made, have resulted in an approximately 
 automatic servitude on the part of my eyes, cen- 
 ters of letter memory, word memory, sentence 
 memory, and indeed of nearly the whole cerebrum. 
 I am conscious only of the thought in its succes- 
 sive changes in presentation. The real self the 
 center of consciousness the soul is that very 
 unifying force which once in consciousness laid 
 the foundations of all those new unconscious au- 
 tomatic processes of memory and which is the 
 One using the many in acquisition of the new. 
 
 Again, an analysis of the experience of the 
 mind in extemporaneous speaking reveals a pro- 
 cess of the creation of new compilations of thought 
 in a definite direction, in which memory without
 
 MEMORY 127 
 
 consciousness opens its many doors and pours 
 forth its treasures, figures, words and ideas which 
 are simultaneously organized into new structures, 
 and symmetrically builded into a continuous chain 
 of reasoning and possibly a pyrotechnic display 
 of the imagination. Here apparently conscious- 
 ness dwindles to an imperceptible point, but in 
 fact it is itself a never-changing unit perceiver 
 of an incessantly varying organization of burning 
 feeling. 
 
 In both cases, we have the comparative auto- 
 matic action of memory serving the dominant will, 
 the something which unifies and which while the 
 unifications vary immensely in their intricate 
 combinations from second to second, yet feels and 
 knows itself to be the same unity unchanged in 
 self-consciousness and perfectly well aware that 
 it was by its determination that those wonderful 
 kaleidoscopic changes occurred. 
 
 The so-called subconsciousness therefore of our 
 environment and the memory of all our experi- 
 ences seem to me to be but in themselves environ- 
 ments, activities which but serve to conserve their 
 product in turn for a larger and more compre- 
 hensive consciousness and memory. 
 
 It would be a mere matter of opinion on my part 
 to say that I believed the individual to be some- 
 thing somewhat larger and more inclusive than 
 the memory and consciousness which are evi- 
 dently not the ultimate conserved memory or the 
 true and full consciousness. 
 
 It is not necessary that we imagine a separate 
 body for the soul, or indeed a separate body at
 
 128 MEMORY 
 
 all, if we find ourselves able to conceive of the 
 continuity of etheric substance into ponderable 
 matter. Body then is perceived to be cells, many 
 and small, cells are viewed as structures of mol- 
 ecules, molecules as atomic combinations, atoms 
 as forms of motion, vortices in ether, and at no 
 place is left a break in the continuity in any form 
 of ponderable matter back to the substance it- 
 self. If such be the fact , and there are many 
 reasons to think so, and many scientists who be- 
 lieve so, then we shall not look for the individual 
 in the mere functioning of his contact with pon- 
 derable matter, but trace his life back completely 
 to an organic force in ether. 
 
 If the individual then extends, as he would if 
 ether is continuous, into the ether, there is no 
 reason made apparent by Science why the chemi- 
 cal activities of the evolving body do not start 
 there, nor why the chemical activities of the 
 organs of memory and consciousness may not 
 report there, nor why there may not be the true 
 conservation of memory and the real conscious- 
 ness. Complexity and organization may well be 
 a condition antecedent as well as a result, as each 
 would be but an activity conditioned by its en- 
 vironment. 
 
 The natural and pertinent questions here are 
 whether memory can be conceived as continuing 
 upon the loss of the ponderable body, also why 
 we do not have memory of any past beyond the 
 body. 
 
 Attempting to give a conceivably truthful re- 
 ply to the last question, first in order ; I suggest
 
 MEMORY 129 
 
 that even the science of biology concedes that in 
 a very large sense we do have memory of past 
 existence for as we have seen it has been com- 
 pelled to conserve those memories in the germ 
 cell in order to account for heredity and provide a 
 substitute for preformation. A little considera- 
 tion of the law of specialization and generaliza- 
 tion will lead us to conclude that it is possible 
 that in the fertilized ovum cell the individual finds 
 that very point of commencing evolution essential 
 to its presentation as ponderable matter or "con- 
 densing ether." It is possible that heredity is of 
 the cell alone, and the memories additional which 
 present their products in the forming embryo, 
 those of the individual. There are mysterious 
 changes enough to be perceived in the cell as it 
 begins its work of division and synthesis to de- 
 mand just such an organic activity to be present. 
 Does this suggest too forcibly a deus ex 
 machina, an entering spirit? Not one bit more 
 so than does the theory of biology. When the 
 germ cell begins to become many and divide and 
 redivide, from whence comes the material of which 
 the products are composed? From outside of 
 course, nobody denies that external environment 
 is absolutely essential to enable a germ cell to 
 become an animal; its substance is added to by 
 growth, and growth demands molecules and atoms, 
 and molecules and atoms are the presentations of 
 "condensed ether," and we have conceived the 
 individual to be existence in the ether as a unity 
 of force. Now it is immaterial whether we call 
 this chemical affinity or the activity of an able
 
 130 MEMOEY 
 
 unity, we know that the results are life, changing 
 life, form, changing form, and such a conception 
 comes nearer to accounting for the epitomized 
 evolutionary proceeding from cell to embryo than 
 does the theory of unconscious memories which 
 come into activity by platoons only when one has 
 ceased to be the one and has become the many. 
 
 This is a vastly different proposition than that 
 of the creation of a special soul which enters the 
 body. It is not dualistic, it is rather polyistic 
 and certainly as Monistic as Haeckel's "Collec- 
 tive title for the sum total of cerebral activities." 
 It is the column of units and the process of addi- 
 tion, rather than the "sum total." 
 
 Now as to the second question which is, as to 
 whether memory can be conceived as continuing 
 upon the loss of the ponderable body. It has been 
 said that the etheric body is impossible because 
 it is not consonant with the "laws of substance." 
 That may be so, but when were the "laws of sub- 
 stance" discovered, and by whom? Substance it- 
 self, our reason demands, but it is only hypothet- 
 ical, its laws only guessed at. I say guessed at 
 because the practice of Science, and a very proper 
 and necessary one, is to formulate a theory based 
 upon data and then push into the unknown and 
 relate everything in the way of phenomena to 
 that theory. The theory may be wrong, it fre- 
 quently is so ; there may be many different theo- 
 ries, there often are; and hence the "laws of sub- 
 stance" are laws only to those who accept that 
 particular theory to which they apply them. So- 
 called "laws" have more than once been repealed
 
 MEMORY 131 
 
 by enactment of the college of physicists. I fancy 
 Haeckel's conception of gravitation is somewhat 
 different from that of Newton, and possibly in a 
 short time the "laws of substance" may be differ- 
 ently fonnultaed and convey a vastly different 
 idea than does Haeckel's as presented in "The 
 Eiddle of the Universe." 
 
 But, considering that the ponderable matter of 
 the composite body only represents a specialized 
 phase of the life of the individual, and that we do 
 not rightfully mark his boundaries when we walk 
 around him in the flesh, we may well conceive that 
 the very continuity of etheric substance affords 
 us a sufficient basis for a belief that the actual 
 memory is no more finally located in its organs, 
 the cerebral cells, than the final activity of the 
 whirlwind is to be looked for in the atoms of dust 
 which spin in it, and take form from it, or is to 
 be located even in the air in which they float. 
 
 Naturally, as we contemplate the body of a man 
 five or six feet in height and with a rotundity 
 proportionate, we incline to imagine that any 
 structure in ether or any substance which shall 
 be commensurate with the substantial memories 
 of the individual must be comparatively large 
 and proportionately capacious. 
 
 But when we recall the fact that even the won- 
 derful memories of the germ cell must be looked 
 for in bodies much smaller than the cell itself, 
 indeed in such as are beyond our microscopic view, 
 we should not make size a stumbling block to the 
 conception of a unit of force, an individual center 
 capable of the conservation of memory. We can-
 
 132 MEMORY 
 
 not place a limit to the series of vanishing ele- 
 ments in the cell (Wilson, in the International 
 Monthly, July 1910) ; and the capacity of any por- 
 tion to reproduce in presentation these memories, 
 if the cell be artificially divided, is evidence that 
 the forms of motion as I have said before, are not 
 of the mass but of much smaller bodies not yet 
 identified by Science. 
 
 Possibly we shall yet reach the atom as the in- 
 dividual laden with memories. The atom, what- 
 ever it is, is a profound mystery, it has been sup- 
 posed to consist of a hard, round body; to be a 
 differentiation of hydrogen; a vortex ring or a 
 vortex of some other character; possibly an elec- 
 tron, etc. It has assumed so many protean shapes 
 in the scientific imagination that probably it is 
 individual and variable as to size, capacity and 
 potential characteristics. 
 
 Therefore, if memories many are to be found 
 at the commencement of the physical man in bod- 
 ies so small as to be beyond our possible vision, 
 I see no reason for conceiving of memories as 
 confined and limited in fact to the cells of the 
 cerebrum, but on the contrary as reaching back 
 and back to similar elements of which these cells 
 like the germ cell, are composed. Neither do I 
 see any known reason why they may not, as I 
 have suggested, finally even be landed in one. 
 
 Again it may be, and it is conceivable that, 
 the activity in the etheric substance may in turn 
 rhythmically subside to unconscious memory in 
 the lapse of time, and there may be a form of 
 energy in the ether comparable to that wonderful
 
 MEMORY 133 
 
 burdened germ cell, in which shall be preserved 
 the potentiality of that larger memory, the es- 
 sence of individuality, that which after all needs 
 not to carry the petty details of time's experience 
 any more than we now find it essential to do so in 
 order to preserve our individuality. 
 
 Knowledge may be a word which covers them 
 more than consciousness and memory. And this 
 rhythmic movement may proceed from eternity 
 to eternity and waking and sleeping, conscious- 
 ness and unconsciousness, memory and forgetful- 
 ness follow in order just as they do now with us in 
 the flesh. Who knows? Do I? No, neither do 
 those who measure the individual by his organs.
 
 Chapter VIII 
 
 MONISM 
 
 In reading "The Eiddle of the Universe," we find 
 reference made frequently to "pure monism," and 
 naturally the inference drawn from the use of 
 those words is that Monism as a thesis is suscep- 
 tible to adulteration, and that in some manner 
 not easily discovered in Prof. Haeckel's work he 
 has presented it in its unadulterated, pristine 
 purity. Whether this is so or not depends entirely 
 upon what we understand as Monism. It is not 
 at all an unusual occurence for an advocate of a 
 particular theory to insist that his presentation 
 of it is the only one which should be recognized, 
 indeed such an arrogation constitutes the strength 
 of the individuality of the especial thesis for which 
 it is claimed. Each sect of Christendom broadly 
 asserts its creed to be the formulated expression 
 of pure Christianity, if it did not it would have 
 no reason for existence as a separate body. 
 
 Undoubtedly the Monism presented by Prof. 
 Haeckel is to him "pure monism," but others 
 who lay claim rightly to the title of "monists" 
 may with equal propriety assert their system to 
 be "pure." They may consider that Haeckel, be- 
 cause of the "organization of the individual," the 
 "momentary condition of his environment" and 
 
 134
 
 MONISM 135 
 
 the determinations of "heredity," has burdened 
 unalloyed Monism with a host of suppositions, 
 assumptions, and unnecessary conclusions. It is 
 simply a question of opinion again and by no 
 means one capable of absolute solution as to what 
 is "pure monism." 
 
 Personally, I have for a long time considered 
 myself to be a Monist, not a "pure monist," if by 
 that we are to understand one who because he is 
 a Monist must of necessity accept as truth, as 
 scientific, as demonstrated, and as Monism what- 
 ever other Monists, however distinguished, choose 
 to gather under their wing. 
 
 I think we have a fair idea of what Monism is 
 by contrasting it with the two Isms which it com- 
 bats, viz : materialism and spiritualism. By mate- 
 rialism we understand a hypothesis which claims 
 that material changes cause mental changes, and 
 by spiritualism just the contrary, that mental 
 changes are the causes of material changes. 
 Monism does not recognize either as the cause 
 of the other, but claims that physical and psy- 
 chical phenomena, although seemingly occupying 
 the relationship of cause and effect, are in reality 
 different aspects of one and the same activity. 
 So far we have a clear definition of what Monism 
 is, and if there is any such thing as "pure 
 monism," that is it. Here on this statement all 
 Monists stand, or the burden of proof is upon 
 them to show that they are entitled to call them- 
 selves Monists. The moment, however, that they 
 step one foot off this single corner-stone and be- 
 gin to theorize and speculate they become, if any-
 
 136 MONISM 
 
 thing, less "pure" as Monists. Monism is not a 
 quart pot in which to measure the universe, it is 
 a theory, and a strong one indeed, under the aegis 
 of which one may build many speculative uni- 
 verses. There is nothing so all-commanding, all- 
 demanding, so overwhelmingly rejective about it, 
 that a man, having come to the conclusion that 
 what he has mistaken for dual is in fact single, 
 should perforce of his adherence to that thesis 
 never be able to find any truth which does not 
 wear the label of Monism. It is not nearly so im- 
 portant that we be loyal to the Monistic theory 
 as that we find truth. 
 
 In this connection I cannot refrain from again 
 calling attention to the emphatic statement of 
 Prof. Haeckel that he is at one with George John 
 Komanes except in unimportant particulars, be- 
 cause it will enable me to make clear the fact that 
 Monists, and among them Haeckel and Eomanes, 
 differ widely upon very important particulars. 
 At the risk of being criticised for repetition, I 
 will recall to your minds the assertion of Schop- 
 enhauer quoted approvingly by Haeckel that the 
 Monistic philosophy to which he adheres as "pure 
 monism" has given the "Lord God his conge." 
 He undoubtedly has the right to form such an 
 opinion, and my purpose is not to enter into a 
 dispute religious as to the existence of an Infinite 
 Being, but merely to show that as with Spinoza, 
 he materially differed on this question, so with his 
 co-Monist, Eomanes, he has nothing in common on 
 this point. 
 
 It is certainly a vitally important difference
 
 MONISM 137 
 
 as I shall try to demonstrate. Nobody will deny 
 that there is a broad distinction between a 
 "thinking substance" which, as such as a whole 
 is mindless, but endowed with innate properties 
 of movement, etc., which evolve in the atoms 
 will and sensitiveness, and ultimately mind 
 and soul in the complexities of the cerebral cells, 
 and, a "thinking substance" which thinks as 
 much. 
 
 One is Haeckel's, the other Spinoza's and 
 George John Romanes'. I have quoted at large 
 from Spinoza on the point in a preceding chapter, 
 but I wish here to remark upon the wide gulf be- 
 tween Haeckel and Eomanes. 
 
 In "Mind, Motion and Monism," Romanes in re- 
 ferring to the views of Prof. Clifford, which I may 
 suggest are similar on this subject to those of 
 Haeckel, says : "Assuming the theory of Monism, 
 I desire to ascertain the result to which it will 
 lead when applied to the question whether we 
 ought to regard the external world as of a char- 
 acter mental or non-mental. As observed in my 
 Rede lecture, this question has already been con- 
 sidered by the late Prof. Clifford, who decided 
 on the Monistic theory the probability pointed to- 
 wards the external world being of a character non- 
 mental ; that, although the whole universe is com- 
 posed of 'mind stuff' the universe as a whole is 
 mindless. This decision I then briefly criticised, 
 it is now my object to contemplate the matter 
 somewhat more in detail." His concluding words 
 upon the matter are these: "As a matter of 
 methodical reasoning, it appears to me that
 
 138 MONISM 
 
 Monism alone can only lead to Agnosticism." (In 
 a note, he says: "It may be explained that by 
 Agnosticism I understand a theory of things 
 which abstains from either affirming or denying 
 the existence of God.") "That is to say, it leaves 
 a clear field of choice as between Theism and 
 Atheism; and therefore to a carefully reasoning 
 Monist, there are three alternatives open. He 
 may remain a Monist and nothing more ; in which 
 case he is an Agnostic. He may entertain what 
 appears to him independent evidence in favor of 
 Theism, and thus he may become a Theist ; or he 
 may entertain what appears to him independent 
 evidence in favor of Atheism, and thus he be- 
 comes an Atheist." 
 
 A similar view seems to be taken by Spencer in 
 his last edition of "First Principles," and pos- 
 sibly it may be suggested of that gigantic philo- 
 sophic intellect, as it has concerning Virchow and 
 others, that his views have been modified by ap- 
 proaching age. Of course, any close student of 
 Spencer will at once resent any such suggestion, 
 being well aware that the great generalizer never 
 took any other position, but has merely, out of an 
 abundance of caution, declared his views in rather 
 plainer terms, and this is what he says : "But an 
 account of the transformation of things ... is 
 simply an orderly presentation of facts; and the 
 interpretation of the facts is nothing more than 
 a statement of the ultimate uniformities as they 
 present the laws to which they conform. Is the 
 reader an Atheist ? The exposition of these facts 
 will neither yield support to his belief nor destroy
 
 MONISM 139 
 
 it. Is he a Pantheist? The phenomena and the 
 inferences as now to be set forth will not force 
 on him any incongruous implication. Does he 
 think that God is immanent throughout all things, 
 from concentrating nebulae to the thoughts of 
 poets f Then the theory to be put before him con- 
 tains no disproof of that view. Does he believe 
 in a Deity who has given unchanging laws to the 
 universe? Then he will find nothing at variance 
 with his belief in an exposition of those laws and 
 an account of the results." 
 
 Mr. Spencer dissents from Haeckel and the 
 school of Monists to which he belongs in that he 
 claims that evolution does not require any aban- 
 donment of Theism. 
 
 In precisely the same arbitrary manner as 
 Haeckel disposes of the soul of man by the decla- 
 ration that it is "a collective title for the sum 
 total" of the activities of the cerebral cells, he, 
 Haeckel, gets rid of the idea of God, with the 
 exception that he fails to be true to his own logic. 
 In other words, he admits that the "sum total" 
 in man yields something akin to soul, but fails to 
 find the same to be true as to the sum total of 
 universal activities. 
 
 Whatever we define the soul to be, it neverthe- 
 less remains true that it feels, thinks, acts, and 
 is conscious, and this is evident even though we 
 should admit that it is a "collective title," etc. 
 Yet Haeckel scornfully denies the possibility that 
 there may be a Being whose name is "a collective 
 title for the sum total" of the activities of the 
 universe, whose "modes of thought may be differ-
 
 140 MONISM 
 
 entiations attending the eternal modifications of 
 substance." It is just here that Spinoza in his 
 Pantheism differs widely from Haeckel. Haeckel 
 finds a substantial agreement between Atheism 
 and Pantheism, although it is fair to state that 
 he limits his definition of God to a personal extra- 
 mundane entity. His use, however, of these 
 words which follow leaves no doubt as to his 
 attitude on the question: "This 'Godless world 
 system' substantially agrees with the Monism or 
 Pantheism of the Modern scientist; it is only an- 
 other expression for it, emphasizing its negative 
 aspect, the non-existence of any supernatural 
 Deity" No doubt, if his destructive attack had 
 been confined to an "extra-mundane, supernatural 
 deity," it would have found ample support in the 
 light of true Monism, but it is clear that from 
 his whole discussion of " God and the World," the 
 "Moral Order," etc., that his Monistic idea is, be- 
 yond question, Atheistic and a denial of any mind 
 or being "In whom we live and move and have 
 our being." I repeat, Haeckel's thinking infinite 
 substance does not think, as such. 
 
 The Pantheism of Spinoza, which Haeckel im- 
 agines finds a scientific reflection in the "Kiddle 
 of the Universe," was quite a different conception, 
 or else Spinoza was guilty of disguised and covert 
 arguments, and this he expressly denies in Letter 
 XLIX to Isaac Orobio, as follows: 
 
 "Thus, you see, my friend, how far this man 
 has strayed from the truth; nevertheless, I grant 
 that he has inflicted the greatest injury not on me, 
 but on himself, inasmuch as he has not been
 
 MONISM 141 
 
 ashamed to declare that, 'under disguised and 
 covert arguments, I teach Atheism.' " 
 
 Even Spinoza did not see absurdity in consid- 
 ering the Universe as one individual physically, 
 for in Part II of the "Ethics," he says : "We thus 
 see how a composite individual may be affected 
 in many different ways, and preserve its nature 
 notwithstanding. Thus, we have conceived an 
 individual as composed of bodies only distin- 
 guished one from the other in respect to motion 
 and rest, speed and slowness, that is, of bodies of 
 the most simple character. If, however, we now 
 conceive another individual composed of several 
 individuals of diverse natures, we shall find that 
 the number of ways in which it can be affected, 
 without losing its nature, will be greatly multi- 
 plied. Each of its parts would consist of several 
 bodies, and, therefore (by Lemma VI), each part 
 would admit, without change of its nature, of 
 quicker or slower motion, and would consequently 
 be able to transmit its motions more quickly or 
 more slowly to the remaining parts. If we fur- 
 ther conceive a third kind of individuals com- 
 posed of individuals of this second kind, we shall 
 find that they may be affected in a still greater 
 number of ways without changing their actuality. 
 We may proceed thus to infinity, and conceive 
 the whole of nature as one individual, whose 
 parts, that is, all bodies, vary^ in infinite ways, 
 without any change in the individual as a whole." 
 We shall find room for the rational application of 
 the law of relationship, and the theory of the liv- 
 ing environment, inasmuch as his definition of an
 
 142 MONISM 
 
 individual is found in these words : "That which 
 constitutes the actuality of an individual consists 
 in a union of bodies; but this union, although 
 there is a continual change of bodies, will be 
 maintained; the individual, therefore, will retain 
 its nature as before, both in respect of substance 
 and in respect of mode" 
 
 Neither did Komanes, in "Mind, Motion and 
 Monism," consider it beneath his Monistic dig- 
 nity to contemplate the possibility of such a con- 
 ception being true, for we find him indulging in 
 such language as this: "For aught that we can 
 know to the contrary, not merely the highly spe- 
 cialized structure of the human brain, but even 
 that of nervous matter in general may only be 
 one of the thousand possible ways in which the 
 material and dynamical conditions required for 
 the apparition of self-consciousness can be se- 
 cured. To imagine that the human brain of neces- 
 sity exhausts these possibilities is in the last de- 
 gree absurd. ... It may well be that elsewhere 
 (or apart from the conditions imposed by nervous 
 tissue) subjectivity is possible, irrespective both 
 of circumscription and of complexity. . . . Now, 
 if we fix our attention merely on this matter of 
 complexity, and refuse to be led astray by obvi- 
 ously false analogies of a more special kind, I 
 think there can be no question that the macro- 
 cosm does furnish amply sufficient opportunity, as 
 it were, for the presence of subjectivity, even if it 
 be assumed that subjectivity can only be yielded 
 by an order of complexity analogous to that of a 
 nervous system. For, considering the material
 
 MONISM 143 
 
 and dynamical system of the universe as a whole, 
 it is obvious that the complexity presented is 
 greater than that of any of its parts. . . . 
 
 "If we imagine the visible sidereal system com- 
 pressed within the limits of the human skull, so 
 that all its movements which we now recognize 
 as molar should become molecular, the complexity 
 of such movement would probably be as great as 
 that which takes place in a human brain. Yet to 
 this must be added all the molecular movements 
 which are now going on in the sidereal system, 
 visible and invisible." He might well have added 
 the statement that such a compressed sidereal 
 system would of necessity also include all of these 
 very human brains, with all their complexities. 
 
 Nobody admitted more frankly than Professor 
 Romanes the impossibility of forming a compre- 
 hensive conception of a universal mind, not, how- 
 ever, because it did not and could not exist, but 
 because of its very transcendency. He refused to 
 admit the force of Professor Clifford's argument, 
 negativing the existence of mind in any other 
 form than that which we find in brain, and found 
 no sufficient reason for ruling a Universal Being 
 out of the Monistic system. He was an Agnostic ; 
 Spinoza, a Pantheist; Haeckel is an Atheist. 
 
 Thus, we find that Monism has really but one 
 common theory upon which all Monists agree, 
 and that is that mental and physical phenomena 
 are but aspects of one and the same thing, neither 
 being the cause of the other. It by no means fol- 
 lows that, because we, being possessed of brains, 
 have associated with them the phenomena of
 
 144 MONISM 
 
 thought, there is no other association of thought 
 and organized substance. All that Monism can 
 demand as essential to consistency with its thesis 
 is that we shall not designate either thought or 
 matter as cause wherever the phenomena appear 
 simultaneously and associated. If we are loyal 
 to this fundamental rule of Monism, then the 
 whole question of mental existence after the death 
 of the composite body will depend upon the pos- 
 sibility, or otherwise, of any structural properties 
 in matter or substance more attenuated than that 
 of the cells of the cerebrum, and considering our 
 profound ignorance at present on that subject, 
 we are at liberty to exercise either our religious 
 or scientific faith without being justly charged 
 with an abandonment of the Monistic theory. It 
 may well be that, instead of consciousness and 
 thought fading into mere dessicated sentience 
 with the shading of ponderable matter into in- 
 visible substance, we shall rather find that, with 
 this process on the part of matter, mind becomes 
 more and more emphasized and gifted with a 
 much wider range of knowledge. 
 
 Eational scientists may take either view of that 
 matter and await further evidences, if any be 
 forthcoming, and it is precisely at this point that 
 Haeckel, standing upon the fundamental rule of 
 Monism with Spinoza and Eomanes, finds reason 
 to face West while they face East. Which way 
 you and I shall look, will depend largely upon our 
 experience, our data, our independence, and our 
 desires.
 
 Chapter IX 
 
 THE WILL 
 
 From whatever standpoint we begin the analy- 
 sis of ourselves, we find one thing which appears 
 to stand out as the present cause of all our activi- 
 ties, namely, the will. 
 
 We seem to be fully aware that it is by our voli- 
 tion we live, for conversely, somehow, we are un- 
 able to escape the conclusion that it would but 
 require an effort on the part of will to cease from 
 activity and stop living. We feel moving behind 
 the shifting scenes of our daily lives all the time 
 this shadow, desire or will. 
 
 Nothing appears able to restrain or control it 
 save such interferences as come from the limita- 
 tions of our physical environment, and even those, 
 while they frequently build impossible barriers 
 between will and physical activity, seem to seduce 
 the desire into a wilderness of longings which 
 transcend the possibilities of our bodily achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 It is the one thing which within ourselves ac- 
 knowledges no king, no ruler and no limitations 
 in its exercise as itself. It has an absolutely un- 
 qualified freedom as its inherent quality. What- 
 ever the limitations and conditions may be which 
 on the part of the external world serve to prevent 
 
 145
 
 146 THE WILL 
 
 it from untrammelled activity objectively, they do 
 not and cannot in the least prevent it from creat- 
 ing its own environment of subjectivity, from de- 
 siring that which it will, and from even out of 
 these desires building its own subjective universe. 
 The will and the imagination are the shoulders of 
 the Atlas who holds the true life poised as the 
 individual. 
 
 I have called attention in another place to the 
 emphatic statement of Eomanes in "Mind, Motion 
 and Monism" that in his opinion, one for which he 
 gives logical reasons, "The will itself is here the 
 ultimate agent, and therefore an agent, which 
 must be identified with the principle of causality." 
 
 Turning now to Haeckel, we find that in the 
 first place he imbues the atoms with will and sen- 
 sitiveness ; will and sensitiveness, however, which 
 is very slight, merely a suggestion of them, if I 
 understand his position. From these atoms by 
 the process of evolution comes the individual as a 
 product, his will of necessity then a composite 
 will, its action synthetic; if such a thing be pos- 
 sible, a sum of wills, which as a total produces the 
 individual will. Such a will is, of course, not free, 
 freedom is impossible, it must of necessity be ab- 
 solutely the servant of its masters, the atomic 
 wills. 
 
 Viewing the human body from a psychological 
 standpoint, I confess myself unable to find any 
 possibility of the establishment of any individual 
 will in such a manner. 
 
 The physical system is one composed of innum- 
 erable cells, the brain itself, the seat of physical
 
 THE WILL 147 
 
 activities, is a vast multitude of them. They in 
 turn are made up of an uncountable number of 
 molecules and atoms. The atoms as such are as 
 definite and individual in structure in the central 
 system as they ever were when out of it. They 
 have been drawn into the dance of atoms and un- 
 doubtedly must have retained their wills, so that 
 we have a composite of an enormous number of 
 independent wills in the human body. 
 
 We are certainly conscious that a dominant in- 
 dividual will is the coordinating power behind the 
 wills of particular ganglionic cells, and the com- 
 mander of the multitude of wills in the living en- 
 vironment. We know it because we are able to 
 move the output of these wills in a given direction, 
 say of the attainment of some ideal. Ideals as such 
 are always beyond our experience and we could 
 have none if it were not for desire, one desire, one 
 which will even sacrifice the contending wills for 
 it. Indeed any conception of a condition of har- 
 mony sufficient to hold together the vast concourse 
 of units of will in the human body, is impossi- 
 ble, without the assumption of an individual will, 
 again the unity, the unifier, the unit of force. 
 The very assertions of Haeckel that will is a 
 "universal property of living psychoplasm" and 
 that the atoms are gifted with will and feeling, 
 demand that before we can reconcile the knowl- 
 edge which we have of the physical and mental 
 man, with them, that there should be one force, 
 one will which holds them in union as one appar- 
 ent body with one activity of units. It is this 
 which is the will of which we are conscious.
 
 148 THE WILL 
 
 I cannot refrain from referring to the fact that 
 Professor Romanes is again at this point dia- 
 metrically opposed to Professor Haeckel in that 
 he emphatically declares the will to be free. Free 
 as such, and only limited in its ability to act. In- 
 dividual wills, he tells us, are not conditioned by 
 the Universal or God will, but that the Universal 
 Will acquiesces in their volitions, also that indi- 
 vidual wills may influence other individual wills 
 by reason of the fact that they are separate and 
 apart from each other. He asserts unequivocally 
 the absolute freedom of will. Now, this subject 
 of the freedom of will is not an "unimportant 
 matter," for Haeckel himself states that "the im- 
 portance of the question is also seen in the fact 
 that Kant put it in the same category with the 
 questions of the immortality of the soul and be- 
 lief in God." 
 
 Indeed it seems apparent that the philosophi- 
 cal and ethical conclusions reached by these two 
 great Zoologists scarcely touch at that point. 
 
 It seems to me that Haeckel confuses the desires 
 with the activities of the will. While I may de- 
 sire to fly, my physical limitations prevent me. I 
 may will to spread my wings and nothing can pre- 
 vent me from so willing, but I am not able to fly. 
 I can certainly will to hail the man in the moon, 
 but I shall never make my voice reach him. The 
 will qua will, says Eomanes, is free. It is just 
 here that Haeckel, it appears to me, makes the 
 mistake of considering the hindrances to action, 
 to be hindrances to the will. 
 
 There is a strange and to me striking incon-
 
 THE WILL 149 
 
 sistency in "The Eiddle of the Universe" in that 
 Professor Haeckel assures us that "Each act of 
 the will is fatally determined by the organization 
 of the individual and is dependent upon the 
 momentary condition of his environment as 
 every other psychic activity. The character of the 
 inclination was determined long ago by heredity 
 from parents and ancestors. The determination 
 to each particular act is an instance of adaptation 
 to the circumstances of the moment wherein the 
 strongest motive prevails, according to the laws 
 which govern the statics of motion." 
 
 Now I cannot understand why Professor 
 Haeckel should take the pains to write a great 
 many pages in which he strives to promote the 
 Ethics and Religion of Monism. What is the use 
 of telling us that the Golden Rule, as given by 
 Aristotle: "We must act towards others as we 
 wish others to act towards us," is in complete 
 harmony with Monistic Ethics? Having, in the 
 language which I quoted, negatived the freedom 
 of will, we cannot help ourselves as to how we 
 shall act toward others, nor can we control our 
 desire as to how others should act toward us. 
 
 The Golden Eule must take care of itself, for 
 we shall act just as our "inclinations" are deter- 
 mined by heredity, and we shall wish just as the 
 "strongest motive" directs. 
 
 There can be no religion in such a view, for 
 whether we feel "astonishment" when we gaze 
 at the heavens or not, whether we shall feel "awe" 
 when we trace the "marvellous workings of ener- 
 gy in the motion of matter," or not, will depend
 
 150 THE WILL 
 
 absolutely upon whether we are, in our particu- 
 lar individual machines, producing these commod- 
 ities of astonishment and awe. Furthermore, the 
 very religion which he assails, the superstitions, 
 the cruelties and wars which he decries, the rev- 
 elations which he ridicules, are all as much en- 
 titled to their place among the determined actions 
 and inclinations of human beings as anything 
 which he can mention. 
 
 It may even follow that although the inherent 
 inclinations of Professor Haeckel may have made 
 it his fate to write and urge this so-called Monis- 
 tic Eeligion and Ethics, it will be the fate of 
 others to reject them. It may well be that all the 
 various religions and ethical views of the world 
 and the antagonizing philosophies and sciences 
 are necessary and inevitable, and life and effort 
 therefore reduced to absurdity because fate plays 
 such pranks with its very self that persuasiveness 
 and effort are its most ridiculous expressions. 
 
 To what line of heredity, to what moment of 
 circumstances shall we look for the truth? In 
 the light of such a philosphy, what is truth?
 
 Chapter X 
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 In a former chapter I have adopted the word 
 "relationship" as being the most felicitous ex- 
 pression of the meaning of individuality, and I 
 have again spoken of the individual as a unit 
 of force, a unity and a form of motion. This is 
 the result of a habit of always considering every- 
 thing as having polarity and more than one 
 aspect. The Monistic idea is that what ordinarily 
 appears to be two separate things, the opera- 
 tion of mind and the functioning of brain sub- 
 stance, is really but one thing with parallel activ- 
 ities in both aspects. 
 
 If we disabuse our minds of the idea that all 
 things had a beginning at the same time, and 
 rather conceive of Eternity as an everlasting 
 Now, we shall perhaps perceive that it is possible 
 that subjectivity and objectivity are ever in ex- 
 istence and that to limit their parallel phenomena 
 is unnecessary and responsive to no imperative 
 demand of Science. 
 
 I have stated that all I know of mind or con- 
 sciousness is gathered from within myself. I 
 cannot possibly have or analyze the consciousness 
 of another ; objectivities we may have in common, 
 
 151
 
 152 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 but as I retire toward myself, I of course of 
 necessity draw the curtains between myself and 
 others. Hence, when I may happen to apply the 
 words "relationship," "unit of force," "a unity," 
 "form of motion," to something other than my- 
 self, I must ask to be excused from asserting 
 whether they are conscious or not. It would be 
 presumptuous to say that they are not, and yet I 
 should be unable to prove that they are. From the 
 position of the living environment which I have 
 postulated my own belief is that we should hesi- 
 tate at fixing boundaries to sentience and 
 consciousness. 
 
 That physically it is comparatively easy to con- 
 struct a working synthesis we have already seen, 
 and even concerning that unsolved problem of 
 memory I think that the physical operation of it 
 may be tentatively accounted for. Not that I am 
 able to say that it is so, but that for aught I know 
 it is scientifically possible for it to be something 
 like what I shall try to describe. The scheme, 
 however, as we shall see, will fail to account for 
 the sense of pastness felt in the present, which is 
 an unsurmountable barrier to any satisfactory 
 materialistic solution of the mystery of memory. 
 
 It has been estimated that in the cortex of the 
 cerebrum alone there are over 1,600,000,000 cells. 
 These are presumably less and less specialized as 
 we approach the periphery and more and more 
 limited and specialized as we sink deeper into the 
 mass. As there is an environment about and out- 
 side of us which incessantly bombards us through 
 our senses with unnumbered impulses, so there
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 153 
 
 may be said to be a constructed environment 
 within us to be filled out with the product of these 
 sensations. Not all these which assail us are the 
 subjects of conscious attention, though a vast 
 number make their impression notwithstanding. 
 There are sixty seconds in a minute, thirty-six 
 hundred in an hour, and approximately fourteen 
 hours in the day during which we may be said to 
 receive an average of such sensations as are re- 
 ceived and retained within the field of memory. 
 There are three hundred and sixty-five days in a 
 year, and a man may be fairly considered to carry 
 the capacity for receiving the average of sensa- 
 tions for about sixty years. If every second of 
 such time a new and distinct sensation were to be 
 experienced it is easy to perceive that there is an 
 ample number of cells to allow to each a record 
 of the experience, for we should then receive but 
 about 1,103,760,000 such distinct sensations. If 
 the distinction between the results is a distinctive 
 form of motion among the molecules of the cell 
 thereby causing a change which is fixed and there- 
 after characteristic, then we shall have an envi- 
 ronment within from which to draw at will in a 
 manner similar to that in which we first received 
 them at will, or as is ordinarily the case, against 
 our will. 
 
 Such a cell so changed and modified as to its 
 form of motion would when stimulated to a dis- 
 charge of energy send forth along the nerve track 
 just that form of energy which it was modified by, 
 and no other. It needs only the comparatively 
 undifferentiated, unequilibrated cells which lie
 
 154 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 near the periphery of the cortex, to be what they 
 apparently are, the receivers, analyzers, sifters, 
 synthesizers and impermanent reflexes of such 
 sensation from within or without, to partially ac- 
 count for the phenomena of memory from the 
 physical view of it; and I do not see why it is 
 not fully as rational as the theory of phospho- 
 rescent gleams by Luys and far more within the 
 bounds of scientific probability. 
 
 All this however goes, even if it be reasonable, 
 but a little way toward explaining memory. It 
 utterly fails as do all such schematic explanations, 
 to account for the sense of pastness. It provides 
 and can provide no place for consciousness or per- 
 ception, and leaves the questions of value and 
 quality of ideas unanswered. And it is this sense 
 of pastness that lends the element of conscious 
 continuity to the individual. Whatever the phys- 
 ical character of the memory, these thoughts and 
 collections of the past come forth from their clois- 
 ters hoary with age, and with a mustiness and 
 pathos which belong only to that which is past. 
 What physical explanation can be given for the 
 presence of this quality of pastness, indeed what 
 physical explanation may be given for any quality 
 of thought or recollection, from the materialistic 
 position! 
 
 This storehouse of experienced sensations is 
 the universe reflected within as we have seen it, 
 felt, heard, understood and lived it, and from it 
 and within it we construct other lives for ourselves 
 and fill them out with combinations of reflected 
 sensations.
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 155 
 
 I have prefaced what I wish to say upon the 
 subject which heads this chapter with this specu- 
 lation, merely to prepare the way for the asser- 
 tion that there is ample reason to consider the 
 physical counterpart of all thoughts and memories 
 to be the set figures produced in specific forms of 
 motion, or rather the capacity of such forms of 
 motion to produce set figures. I think there can 
 be no quarrel over the statement upon the part of 
 the biologists, for without some such assumption 
 biology will be at a loss to account in any manner 
 for heredity. While it must be apparent that from 
 the theory of the living environment which I have 
 tried to present, heredity is only to be considered 
 as finding its place in the composite of that en- 
 vironment and not in the individual; yet, unless 
 we are to stand squarely upon the preformation 
 theory, we must look for the bearers of heredity 
 among the elements of the germ cell and find its 
 potentiality in the modification of forms of mole- 
 cular motion. Such a form of motion is however 
 a synthesis, is itself a living environment, a unity, 
 and all attempts to find within its expression a 
 unit of life have failed in demonstrating anything 
 except as I have said before, that any portion of 
 it has life of more or less duration according as it 
 has or has not the union of protoplasm and nu- 
 cleus. To the vast possibilities within its com- 
 plexity, nobody, but one who is determined to ar- 
 bitrarily treat it as the unit of life, will close his 
 eyes. 
 
 To make my meaning clearer I should write up- 
 on the living universe: "Individuals within in-
 
 156 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 dividuals, ever the one in relation to the many, 
 from the Infinite one to the cell which we study, 
 and beyond." 
 
 That the multiplex individualities within any 
 one may be separated and become in turn the 
 dominant force of a unity is evidenced in a great 
 variety of forms among the invertebrates, and 
 this is almost universally true where the units 
 of the congeries are but slightly specialized. That 
 composite forms appear simultaneously with the 
 evidences of individuality is not proof that the 
 individual is the result of the organization and 
 unification. The unification will not be there ex- 
 cept the individual is likewise. 
 
 The mere fact that the higher powers of the 
 microscope can get no separated individuality be- 
 yond the minute cell does not any longer cause my 
 mind anxiety, for the reason that I have been able 
 to perceive enough under such lenses as I can 
 command to teach me the lesson that size is 
 nothing, it is a word of comparison, it is but the 
 measure again of our capacity of seeing. The 
 natural incapacity of the eye to perceive largeness 
 in smallness is a condition akin to that existing, 
 when looking at an object at a distance. Distance 
 is a barrier to sight, and our inability to overcome 
 it except artificially, is an incapacity. It is be- 
 cause of this attitude of my mind that with the 
 stakes which actual Science has driven I allow 
 myself to establish a base of rational operations 
 in surveying the really unknown territory be- 
 yond. 
 
 As I have said before, this is my mental atti-
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 157 
 
 tude, it satisfies me for the present because I must 
 live in that mind and not in another's. 
 
 I have indulged in this little excursion merely 
 to enforce the position I assumed that there is no 
 satisfactory reason for treating the unicell as a 
 unit of life, whatever it may be in relation to the 
 combinations which it forms with others in the 
 composite body. Therefore, any form of mo- 
 tion set up within it would be again the evi- 
 dence of the one and the many, the units and the 
 unity. 
 
 As I sift over the returns from the field of 
 modern physical science, it appears to me most 
 likely that the old theory of hard atoms will be 
 utterly abandoned and matter will be, in its last 
 analysis, the operation of forms of energy in ether 
 or substance ; and, as the originating force cannot 
 be known to physics, we must conceive of these as 
 eternal. In the vastness of the thought one bows 
 his head and says : "It is as it is from eternity to 
 eternity"; and, in the field of psychology, I am 
 unable to discover units of consciousness or the 
 alleged reason to assume them; without at least 
 two and a third there is no consciousness, and, as 
 the complexity of the universal substance has been 
 conceived to always exist, this condition must at- 
 tend all units of force with the resulting relation- 
 ship ; so we must say again : "It is as it is from 
 eternity to eternity, there has ever been the one 
 and the many, dependent upon each other for con- 
 scious being." 
 
 To a Science which holds fast to the teaching, 
 "All life out of life," it ought not to be a difficult
 
 158 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 thing to accept the consistant idea that the forms 
 of force and the substance in which such energy 
 forms appear to be, are eternal. The use of the 
 word "potential," is as I have before suggested, 
 no escape from the mystery, for there is nothing 
 in potentiality which does not as a form of energy 
 in a medium subsist. 
 
 Any conception which we may have of an ulti- 
 mate eternally existing substance, such as ether, 
 in view of the axioms of Science concerning force 
 and life, cannot be of a motionless, absolutely calm 
 and equated homogeneity, but must be of such a 
 substance pulsating with forms of motion, units 
 of force, eternally. This must be, or there is noth- 
 ing potential in what fills, as variety, the universe. 
 The scientist, however renowned, who is icon- 
 oclastic enough to cut from under humanity its 
 hope and faith in immortality, must sharpen his 
 axe on the grindstone of Science and on that alone. 
 His conclusion that "it is not," is not the equiva- 
 lent of "cannot be," therefore as I have reiterated, 
 it remains only necessary to stand beneath the 
 shadow of scientific possibilities and suggest any 
 one of the possible avenues open to a rational be- 
 lief in the eternity of existence. 
 
 Let us suppose the individual to be one of those 
 units of force in ether, and therefore eternally an 
 energy form in ether. It is not inconceivable, it 
 certainly is not disproven, that the consciousness 
 of the Infinite One, as we have before suggested, 
 is dependent upon these units of force and form 
 in the substance, and they in their turn upon it 
 for theirs. We need not travel outside of our
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 159 
 
 own brains and minds for a completely analogous 
 condition. 
 
 Without expressing any opinion as to the merit 
 of his work, I may with propriety at this moment 
 quote with approval the conclusions of a gentle- 
 man of recognized position in the world scientific, 
 Prof. Flourney. In his recent book, "From India 
 to the Planet Mars," he says : "How is it possible 
 to believe that the foci of chemical phenomena, as 
 complex as the nervous centers, can be in activity 
 without giving forth diverse undulations, X, Y, or 
 Z rays, traversing the cranium as the sun trav- 
 erses a pane of glass, and acting at a distance on 
 their homologues in other craniums? It is a 
 simple matter of intensity and I confess I do not 
 understand those who reproach telepathy with 
 being strange, mystical, occult, supernormal, etc." 
 
 Now I can have no reasons for combatting such 
 a conclusion as this, for I have had some exceed- 
 ingly interesting experiences in telepathy myself, 
 as a result of a determination to take nothing for 
 granted in a field of phenomena which offered such 
 large chances for delusion, fraud, and supersti- 
 tion. But what is the medium which these pre- 
 sumably diverse undulations are supposed to 
 traverse? Is it the atmosphere? Hardly that, 
 for they seem not to be affected by the storms 
 and tempests, nor halted in their courses by heat 
 or cold. We can conceive of but one medium which 
 will serve for the transmission of such forms of 
 motion, and that is probably the same which con- 
 veys the electric undulations in wireless teleg- 
 raphy, the ether or substance. As a remark in
 
 160 THE ETEENITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 passing, I may say that this suggests a conceivable 
 cerebral activity to a World Mind; for, after all, 
 the cells of the human cerebrum are not altogether 
 actually connected by their nerve processes, there 
 is, on the contrary, an exceedingly minute space 
 between the plexus terminals to be accounted for 
 over which the varying impulses must travel ; and 
 as space is as nothing to the undulations of the 
 ether, one who is gifted with a fairly well 
 equipped imagination could construct without 
 committing scientific suicide, a world brain, of 
 the consciousness of which we could know no more 
 than do the cells and cell centers of our central 
 system of our individual consciousness. Locate 
 as we will the special centers of the brain and 
 specialize as we may the habitat of the specific 
 sensations and ideas, it yet remains a fact, that 
 what is the property of these specialized centers 
 is likewise the property of the individual. As 
 localized they have no value except to specially 
 center, as generalized they become profoundly 
 of value to the individual. They are the property 
 of both, and the relationship between them is one 
 of degree and mutual of course. If, then, these 
 "chemical phenomena" cannot be considered as 
 occurring without giving forth such undulations, 
 which undulations have the capacity, in a medium 
 like that in which they originated, of reproducing 
 as an effect, their cause ; in as much as the human 
 brain is incessantly producing such "chemical 
 phenomena," it must logically be presumed to be 
 always surrounded by a sphere of outgoing undu- 
 lations of ether, prominent among which should
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 161 
 
 be that produced by the idea of self ; for there is 
 nothing which lends so much force to the personal 
 activities as that ; it fills all thought with its color 
 and self-consciousness. 
 
 Aside from the value which all this must have 
 to the one sea of mind in which the individual is 
 forever a unit of energy, why should it be at all 
 inconceivable that at death, this unit of force, this 
 form of energy, this individual should find itself 
 still at home as the vortex center of the encircling 
 undulations? They, the created; it, the creator. 
 Why should it not adapt itself immediately to its 
 environment and yet live ? Indeed it is already in 
 its environment, undulations of ether ; the environ- 
 ment which it has itself drawn from the surround- 
 ing world. These surrounding undulations are its 
 own, the units which sent them forth, obedient to 
 the law of unity, have not been robbed, they 
 parted with nothing; and as the composite com- 
 munity falls gradually to pieces as such, each unit 
 of force, each form of energy, changes its outward 
 environment carrying with it its internal world. 
 
 These undulations of the substance presumably 
 are the equivalents of the energy forms which 
 sent them forth. They occupy a similar relation 
 to them as do the undulations on the telephone 
 wire en route from transmitter to receiver to the 
 energy form producing them. 
 
 It is a common saying that we have no experi- 
 mental knowledge of consciousness unassociated 
 with matter, the purpose being to emphasize the 
 assertion that there is no consciousness unassoci- 
 ated with matter; but it is equally true that we
 
 162 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 have no experimental knowledge of energy except 
 as associated with matter, or as we perceive its 
 phenomena in matter ; but one would hardly assert 
 therefore that energy did not exist except in con- 
 nection with matter, unless indeed we make no 
 distinction between matter and ether. There are 
 a number of undulations in the ether which are 
 caused by, or evidence of, an energy unassociated 
 with ponderable matter ; light for instance. 
 
 What experimental knowledge have we of en- 
 ergy except as we have witnessed its action in the 
 phenomena of matter? Its existence is discover- 
 able in matter, and because we also experiment- 
 ally ascertain that it produces certain effects in 
 different media, and that as its movements are 
 transferred from one form of matter to another 
 they assume different forms, we formulate the 
 statement of the principle of transformation of 
 energy; and because, as is the case with light, 
 which we can only perceive when reflected from 
 some material substance, it may be brought into 
 appearance by the interposition and use of mat- 
 ter, we assume of necessity its existence as energy 
 unassociated with ponderable matter. 
 
 Again, because it is impossible for the human 
 mind to conceive of energy disassociated with 
 some medium of transmission, we assume the ex- 
 istence of the ether, or some substance akin to it, 
 call it what we will. 
 
 One reason why the scientific, physiological 
 psychologists have had no experimental knowl- 
 edge of the same character, of consciousness un- 
 associated with ponderable matter but associated
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 163 
 
 with ether or substance, is because the field of 
 inquiry necessary to be investigated has been un- 
 til quite recently given over to minds untrained 
 in the weighing of evidence, and therefore what- 
 ever of phenomena there have been were labelled 
 "occult," "transcendental," "supernatural," etc., 
 and the evidence of experiences from such direc- 
 tions has been unacceptable and ruled out of 
 court. 
 
 As a matter of fact there can be no such thing 
 as experimental knowledge of either energy or 
 consciousness unassociated with matter. The 
 very rules we apply are rules of physics, and the 
 experiments themselves are always made in 
 matter. 
 
 The knowledge we have of energy unassociated 
 with matter is inferential, and a fair application 
 of the same methods to the study of consciousness 
 will result in the same inferential knowledge of 
 it as unassociated with matter, meaning here, 
 ponderable matter as distinguished from its sub- 
 stance. 
 
 I need not repeat perhaps what has been so 
 often reiterated in this work concerning the en- 
 tire scheme, that I do not mean to be understood 
 as taking the position that this discussion is in- 
 tended to prove that consciousness ever exists un- 
 associated with ponderable matter, but that we 
 should not accept as absolute the statement of 
 scientists that it cannot. All we know of con- 
 sciousness is of our own and that which is re- 
 ported to us by others. Any report of conscious- 
 ness is of consciousness associated with matter,
 
 164 THE ETEENITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 for when a man tells me he is conscious, I know 
 that it is only as associated with him, and that is 
 likewise true of any consciousness which I may 
 infer is associated with animal or physical life of 
 any kind 
 
 What I do insist upon is that we know experi- 
 mentally nothing pro or con about the existence 
 of consciousness in the substance ether. The 
 suggestion that it is a legitimate hypothesis to 
 infer its existence there associated with ether 
 may cause a smile to spread over the face of the 
 truly orthodox scientist, but really that is be- 
 cause of his fixed habit of thought. Heterodoxy 
 is as unpopular and as unprofitable among the 
 members of that cult as among some divines. 
 
 There are a few men of scientific attainments 
 who have dared to advance the suggestion that 
 we have no right to limit the possibility of mind 
 to that in connection with which only we perceive 
 it; notably Professor Eomanes and Professors 
 Cope and Dolbear, unless I have misinterpreted 
 their writings. Eomanes, as I have elsewhere 
 stated, does so in clear, distinct, unmistakable 
 terms; Cope by his statements that, "effort is a 
 conscious state," that "the preliminary of any 
 animal movement is effort," that "life preceded 
 organization," that "consciousness was confident 
 with the dawn of life," and that "energy may be 
 conscious" ; and Dolbear when he suggests (and it 
 is fair to state that it is but a suggestion) certain 
 properties of his hypothetical rings in the ether, 
 of which he says : "Now, it is either that theory 
 or nothing" that may "differ from each other not
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 165 
 
 only in size but in their rate of motion; the ring 
 may be a thin one, may rotate relatively fast or 
 slow, may contain a greater or less amount of 
 ether." 
 
 Surely if structure, variety, heterogenity, po- 
 tentiality of association and synthesis be essen- 
 tial to consciousness, we have in such forms of 
 motion and their evident capabilities all that is 
 necessary as elements of functioning mind and 
 consciousness. True these forms of motion, to 
 the inferential existence of which physical science 
 is decidedly leaning, are assumed to be the ulti- 
 mate units of force upon which all matter rests 
 as a foundation ; but they are not matter, as mat- 
 ter is considered by physical science. 
 
 One fact is certain, and that is, that wherever 
 we find the most consciousness in the human 
 body, it is associated with the least equilibrated 
 and most unstable combination of atoms, and that 
 it is submerged and unappreciable as these atoms 
 are found in combination in centers of matter 
 more stable, more equilibrated and material. Is 
 it supernaturalism to suggest that one may fol- 
 low logically the consciousness into the region of 
 their least stability of compact and ponderable 
 association? It is perhaps pertinent here to say 
 that the atoms of which I write are the energy 
 forms in ether to which I have referred as the 
 probable future substitutes for the hard atoms. 
 The concourse of such atoms bringing into ex- 
 istence by selective synthesis worlds and systems 
 and maintaining them in their specific synthetic 
 motions and forms for untold ages, may be
 
 166 THE ETEKNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 paralleled perhaps by the concourse of such 
 energy forms as I have conceived sensations, ex- 
 periences, thoughts, etc., to have set up around 
 and about and as the appearance of the unit of 
 force, the individual, in the ether. If so, the ex- 
 pression of the individual is as real in the ether 
 as in the matter, for matter would then be the 
 mediator between the world and the individual. 
 To admit even that the consciousness of the in- 
 dividual is produced by the chemical activities of 
 the cells of the central system would not force us 
 of necessity to the conclusion that consciousness 
 ends with the cessation of labor upon the part of 
 the cells, for it is not the molar motion of the cell 
 (that is, its motion as a body) which assists in 
 the accretion of material for consciousness, but 
 its molecular motion, the changes of form of mo- 
 tion, not form of cell. We know practically noth- 
 ing about the changes in energy forms which take 
 place within the cell, and with the fact staring 
 us in the face, that there must be most marvel- 
 lous variety in the forms of motion in the germ 
 cell in order to build up that wonderful com- 
 pound, the distinguishable, personal body of man 
 with such physical characteristics as mark him 
 as something different from every other man, we 
 should hesitate at attempting to measure the 
 mental activities, the facts of consciousness, with 
 our calorimeters. 
 
 This germ cell is the fusion of two, one the 
 sperm, and the other the ovum, both microscopic- 
 ally small. And yet in these the only sensible ex- 
 planation of their vast potentialities is, that re-
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 167 
 
 markably complex forms of motion have been set 
 up, in some manner unknown to Science, in their 
 molecules, somewhat akin to those which must be 
 looked for in the cells of the cerebrum as the 
 physical seat of memory, and indeed these forms 
 of motion in the germ cells must be considered as 
 memory forms, else the whole scheme of biology 
 is based on an unsubstantial foundation. A very 
 important question, however, which remains a 
 profound mystery, is : What causes these forms of 
 motion in the molecules of the cells? 
 
 Passing for awhile from the suggestion of an 
 etheric composite, if I may call it such, I wish 
 to consider the law of unity and units as applied 
 to this germ cell. I am perfectly conscious that 
 I am about to enter a field of discussion which 
 has been the despair as well as the inspiration of 
 many very able men, but I again repeat that I 
 must think for myself if I am to derive any bene- 
 fit from their investigations and my own humbler 
 efforts in the same direction, and while I may not 
 hope to accomplish that which others far better 
 equipped for the purpose have failed to do, yet 
 I may be able to show cause for hesitation in 
 framing final conclusions inimical to our peace 
 of mind. 
 
 If we substitute for the confusing terms rather 
 simpler English and try to state the facts, we may 
 have some idea of the great puzzle of biology, and 
 how far we are bound by any actual knowledge to 
 retreat from the sunshine of our hopes into the 
 marshes of pessimistic and despairing material- 
 ism, or a soulless Monism.
 
 168 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 It will be conceded that men are not all alike, 
 that they differ one from another both in physical 
 appearance and mental qualities and tendencies. 
 It will probably also be admitted that from the 
 same parents, children with widely different 
 physical and mental qualities are brought into the 
 world. 
 
 Why is it so? If you could give answer you 
 would solve the problem which has caused many 
 shelves of my library to be filled with books, 
 books which present explanations as widely di- 
 vergent one from another as the persons whose 
 varying qualities they endeavor to explain. 
 
 Why is it that in one family there will be found 
 the presence of a marvelous genius for music in 
 one child, its total absence in another, and in lieu 
 of it a faculty for mathematics? Why is it that 
 in ourselves there come dripping from the depths 
 of the unknown sea within the flotsam and jetsam 
 of experiences which we never had; suggestions, 
 ideas, developed capacities, for which we never 
 practiced; accomplished results for which we 
 apparently never furnished the causes ? What is 
 the reason that some come to the task of life 
 already armed with the weapons of genius? 
 
 "Heredity," answers the ready scientist. But 
 what is heredity, and how does it come, in what 
 sort of a parcel is it done up in that invisible 
 speck of substance from which we came as to our 
 bodies? And more puzzling yet, how does it 
 happen that from the same microscopic speck so 
 many various divergent inheritances come? This 
 body of mine, that of my brothers and sisters, all
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 169 
 
 come from the same germ cell. We do not escape 
 that very plain fact by asserting that inasmuch 
 as we were born at different times, we therefore 
 had a different cell origin, for it is evident that 
 each parent was the result of the fusion of two 
 cells into one and its multiplication into the many 
 and that even by the fusion of two in one, we 
 never escape the one. Are the potentialities of 
 many individuals resident in some form within 
 the one cell? If so, then even without adopting 
 the somewhat ancient idea of preformation in the 
 cell, that is, that the form of man lies hid in actu- 
 ality in it, we are confronted with the proposition 
 that within that invisible speck of matter are the 
 various forms of motion which may determine 
 the product as one of many differing possibilities. 
 Not that there is any differentiation in the various 
 portions of the germ cell which might determine 
 the product as one of a different species, for in 
 the light of the experiments, referred to in an- 
 other chapter, made with the eggs of a frog, this 
 is not so ; but as to what the qualities, character- 
 istics and personal attributes shall be, within the 
 limits of the preformed animal, there certainly is 
 differentiation sufficient to produce marvelous 
 variety as the product of the progeny of the same 
 original cell. 
 
 My citizenship in the world entitled me to ap- 
 proach without undue awe a brief discussion of 
 the statements and conclusions of even so eminent 
 a scientist as Professor Haeckel, especially as he 
 has found it convenient to treat with scant cour- 
 tesy the opinions and beliefs of those who think
 
 170 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 differently from himself. Taking him at his own 
 estimate of the value of man's intellect as ex- 
 pressed in "The Eiddle of the Universe," we must 
 consider his mental process as but the operation 
 of a machine, and his conclusions but the result 
 of the metabolism of proteids, and that in a ma- 
 chine which is, as he expresses it, approaching 
 the "gradual decay of the physical powers." Now, 
 I do not really believe this, because I cannot place 
 the estimate which he does upon the mental prod- 
 ucts of mankind, yet I fear that the law governing 
 auto-suggestion does, in the case of one who per- 
 sistently for years looks upon himself as the phe- 
 nomenon of chemical processes, ultimately result 
 in just such conclusions. 
 
 In his discussion on the subject of Psychic 
 Gradations he informs us that "unconscious mem- 
 ory is a universal and very important function 
 of all plastidules," and that these, "as individual 
 molecules of the active protoplasm, are repro- 
 ductive, and so gifted with memory, that is the 
 chief difference between the organic and the in- 
 organic worlds." With all but the last clause of 
 this declaration of course I can have no dispute, 
 because it is in accord with the theory of the liv- 
 ing environment which I have suggested, but 
 taken in connection with other propositions in 
 Haeckel's work it leads into a blind alley rather 
 than up to his ultimate conclusion. For instance, 
 in replying to Weismann's theory that the pro- 
 tists are immortal, he asserts (p. 190, "The Eid- 
 dle of the Universe") that in the process of mul- 
 tiplication of the protists by division, the unicel-
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 171 
 
 lular organism (cell) breaks up into a number of 
 equal parts, each of which leads its own life, and 
 that the very process has destroyed the individu- 
 ality of the cell, and its physiological and mor- 
 phological unity is gone. 
 
 It is appropriate to call attention to Professor 
 Haeckel's accepted definition of an individual. On 
 page 190, "The Riddle of the Universe," he says 
 an individual is "A unity which cannot be divided 
 without destroying its nature." 
 
 Again, on page 63 of the same work, the asser- 
 tion is made that "with the formation of this 
 cytula" (the united ovum and spermatozoon, which 
 is therefore one cell), "hence, in the process of 
 conception itself, the existence of the personality, 
 the independent individual, commences." 
 
 But this independent "individual," which then 
 "commences" its existence, is a single cell, and be- 
 gins to reproduce at once by fission, and soon 
 becomes not only two, but many more cells. Has 
 its individuality been "destroyed," as to its nat- 
 ure, and what has become of the individuality of 
 the molecules of the active protoplasm? It must 
 be remembered that the study of this process of 
 segmentation is not carried on with the human 
 cell, but with that of the thread worm found in 
 the excretions of the equine race, or in the equally 
 available and transparent ova of the sea urchin, 
 and that in those up to above the eight-cell con- 
 dition, the cells may by rocking gently be sep- 
 arated, and each department produce a normal 
 animal except possibly as to size. "Were there 
 two individuals or more in the stem cell from
 
 172 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 which these came? Has the individual been "di- 
 vided" without destroying its nature? Which of 
 the two in such a case is the "independent indi- 
 vidual," or are both? 
 
 Before giving expression to the attitude of 
 mind which I am constrained to assume toward 
 Professor Haeckel's presentation of the "sound 
 scientific arguments" against immortality, I de- 
 sire to show to those who may have been some- 
 what depressed by the plausibility of his general 
 arguments, the force of which depends largely 
 upon his illy concealed contempt of the intelli- 
 gence of such as disagree with him, that he is 
 himself compelled to rely upon the mysterious, 
 the unproven, and the unknown in the last anal- 
 ysis of his reasoning. On page 220, "The Riddle 
 of the Universe," he lays down the following 
 theses as his "own opinion": "I. The two funda- 
 mental forms of substance, ponderable matter and 
 ether, are not dead and only moved by extrinsic 
 force, but they are endowed with sensation and 
 will (though, naturally, of a lower grade) ; they 
 experience an inclination for condensation" (ital- 
 ics mine), "dislike of strain; they strive after the 
 one and struggle after the other. II. There is no 
 such thing as empty space ; that part of space that 
 is not filled with ponderable atoms is filled with 
 ether. III. There is no such thing as an action 
 at a distance through perfectly empty space; all 
 action of bodies upon each other is either deter- 
 mined by immediate contact" (immediate contact 
 is puzzling if ether is not continuous in the 
 bodies), "or is effected by the mediation of
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 173 
 
 ether." On page 228 we find the following: "The 
 etheric consistency may probably . . . pass into 
 a gaseous state," and "Ether is boundless and 
 immeasurable." 
 
 These theses I have no disposition to dispute 
 as a whole, but I am compelled to imagine what 
 takes place when ether condenses into a gaseous 
 condition, for the results of condensation neces- 
 sitates the thesis that "Ether is boundless and 
 immeasurable." Is it any less of a strain upon 
 our common sense and reason to conceive of 
 "boundless and immeasurable ether" than bound- 
 less and immeasurable mind and consciousness? 
 The scientist who demands that we have the 
 known, evidenced by experimental knowledge, as 
 a basis of our belief in the eternity of individu- 
 ality, must, if he deliver his argument from the 
 mere physical pole, adhere to the same rule. We 
 have and can have no experimental knowledge of 
 the boundlessness of ether. It is purely hypothet- 
 ical, a necessary hypothesis I admit, but the hu- 
 man mind staggers with awe in contemplation of 
 the thought, just as it does in attempting to en- 
 tertain the conception of an Infinite Mind which 
 thinks. Yet to this great and learned Professor, 
 the one is rational science, the other puerile su- 
 perstition. 
 
 I insist that if one shall on the contrary com- 
 mence his solution of the "Riddle of the Uni- 
 verse" from the psychic pole, and inverting the 
 thesis of Professor Haeckel, insist that matter is 
 but the phenomenon of mind, the same character 
 of argument advanced by Haeckel may be made
 
 174 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 from that starting point and with equal force and 
 effectiveness. It all depends upon which pole of 
 the Monistic theory we plant our feet as a point 
 of departure. Why are we compelled to com- 
 mence with the material side? Because we have 
 material brains, ganglion cells and nerves ? Why, 
 we have also thoughts, ideas, affections, aspira- 
 tions, memory, and love; why not start with 
 them? But it is said that these only put in an 
 appearance with and disappear with the brain 
 and cells. Yes, but it is equally true that the 
 brain and cells only put in an appearance with 
 these and disappear with them. 
 
 The apparent fact is that while the scientist is 
 to be allowed to load down a speck of matter with 
 the most marvelous, intricate memories, includ- 
 ing not only those of preexisting vertebrates, ver- 
 miformed, fish-gilled and canine ancestors, but 
 the mental and physical qualities of our immediate 
 parents and grandparents, and that remarkable 
 epitome, the memory of the race ; the psychologist 
 is not to be permitted to see in all this the pos- 
 sible living environment of^an individuality work- 
 ing its way up to an adaption to the world en- 
 vironment, using these as the only organs 
 possible, evolved through countless ages. He, the 
 biologist, is to be allowed to unchallenged demand 
 an acceptance of his limitless ether for which he 
 can offer no experimental proof, while the other 
 is to be ruled out of the arena of common sense, 
 if he find on the other side of Monism a limitless 
 and unbounded consciousness, in which "he lives 
 and moves and has his being."
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 175 
 
 While the word "Monism" ought not to alarm 
 us in the slightest degree, because there is no real 
 necessity why we should be Monists or that Mon- 
 ism should rule the universe, yet it seems to me 
 that there is an unnecessary abhorrence expressed 
 by Monistic philosophers for anything which ap- 
 pears to them to be dualistic. For instance, I 
 have no doubt but that the suggestion that the 
 individual is a unit of force and the unity of activ- 
 ity in the developing germ cell will be scorned as 
 dualistic. But is it any more so than Haeckel's 
 Monism? I do not insist that it is the truth, al- 
 though I believe it to be, but that it is true even 
 to the Monism presented in "The Eiddle of the 
 Universe." The memories of the cytula come 
 from both parents, says Haeckel : "the ovum con- 
 tributes a portion of the maternal features, while 
 the nucleus of the spermatozoon brings a part of 
 the father's characteristics." 
 
 "We know that in it" (the process of impreg- 
 nation) "the nucleus of the spermatozoon con- 
 tributes the qualities of the male parent, and the 
 nucleus of the ovum gives the qualities of the 
 mother to the newly born stem cell." "Heredity 
 is the memory of the plastidule." 
 
 Now these inherited qualities are transmitted, 
 presumably, by the setting up of forms of motion 
 of some kind in the protoplasm, and, upon the 
 union of the nuclei of both parents, two outside 
 individuals have directly operated upon this 
 protoplasm by imparting forms of motion caused 
 by their own activities so far we will be admit- 
 tedly safely within the Monistic demands of
 
 176 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 Professor Haeckel, but how comes it, because we 
 suppose a third party to have a hand in setting 
 up the unifying forms of motion in that same 
 stem cell, we have become dualistic? To admit 
 the individual as the organizer of the unity which 
 evolves out of the cell and its division is no more 
 dualistic than Haeckel's heredity. 
 
 There is a wide margin in "infinite eternal" 
 force for a force unknown or unrecognized by 
 Science ; indeed, the very infinity of force, and its 
 reciprocal action, would be, perhaps I should say 
 could be, the force of forces, the law of laws, the 
 unity of forces, the Individual, the One, in which 
 all forces are held, and whose infinity, constancy, 
 and eternity depend upon these units and their 
 relationship! Such an Individual would be God, 
 and it would not be matter but force. 
 
 What is force f Who knows ? We see its pres- 
 ence in matter, but we believe it to be, and 
 Haeckel asserts that it is, eternal and infinite, so 
 we are agreed that it is not matter nor the phe- 
 nomenon of matter. 
 
 Force we know, consciousness we know, and 
 thought we know, but consciousness and thought 
 are no more mysterious and inexplicable in final 
 analysis than force. We believe in the constancy 
 of force, partly because we can trace it in its 
 transformations, yet sometimes it eludes us and 
 we cannot keep the column of figures on the 
 ledger balanced. For instance, I think, and my 
 thought is of "immortality." We may measure 
 the expenditure of energy made by my cells in 
 thinking the thought, but that thought may be
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 177 
 
 loaded with magnificence, grandeur, devotion, all 
 of which qualities elude the calorimeter with 
 which the measurement was made. Indeed, the 
 thought "immortality" in the denying mind of 
 Professor Haeckel would probably mark the same 
 degree on the calorimeter. The quality of thought 
 has one characteristic in common with the indi- 
 vidual ; it eludes measurement in terms of matter. 
 
 Any discussion of Professor Haeckel's chapter 
 on "The Immortality of the Soul" must, of course, 
 recognize the character of Immortality which he 
 is talking about. If he had had in mind only the 
 immortality of the individual when he wrote the 
 chapter, it would be a much more simple matter 
 to defend one's contrary convictions than it is. 
 The chapter discusses theological "immortality" 
 rather than the broad question of the eternity of 
 the individual. 
 
 It is not the attitude of a scientific mind to ad- 
 vance "insoluble difficulty" in answering such 
 questions as "in what stage of their individual 
 development the disembodied souls will spend 
 their eternal life," as an argument against the 
 immortality of the individual. That and much 
 more in the many pages of the chapter referred 
 to is but the presentation of reasons for not ac- 
 cepting the theological immortality, reasons which 
 have been offered so many times that they are 
 ancient history. So serious a task as he set him- 
 self demanded the discussion of the greater ques- 
 tion of whether there is an individual, an ego, a 
 self, a subjectivity, to which this life in the en- 
 vironment of matter on this earth is but a phase,
 
 178 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 an event which has its beginning and ending, its 
 rhythmic rise and decline like everything else in 
 the world. 
 
 Such a question is large enough for so great a 
 scientist, and he owed it to the mass of strug- 
 gling, writhing, suffering, starving, dying, but 
 hoping, humanity, for whom he assumed to be the 
 judge of their superstition or otherwise, to have 
 discussed it fully before offering them his charnel 
 house of despair. 
 
 To present, even in a masterly manner, the dis- 
 coveries of how the physical side of man was 
 evolved, a discourse upon the embryology of the 
 "soul" and the Phylogeny of the "soul" after hav- 
 ing first denned "soul" as follows (page 89, "The 
 Riddle of the Universe") : "What we call soul is, 
 in my opinion, a natural phenomenon," is, I con- 
 sider, a begging of the question, for it is a declara- 
 tion that what he is writing about are the "psychic 
 activities" as they are evidenced in the cells of 
 the brain. As I have suggested elsewhere in this 
 book, there is no added argument in all the mod- 
 ern additions to the subdivisions of the body of 
 a man against immortality. We stand in that re- 
 spect just where our fathers did, when instead of 
 cells they recognized brain. The dissection of the 
 organs into their minutiae only adds to the mys- 
 tery ; it does not lessen it. That we do our think- 
 ing with millions of cells, instead of a mass of un- 
 differentiated gray substance, brain, lends no 
 added force to the ancient attacks upon immor- 
 tality. 
 
 The meat of the chapter in question, and it
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 179 
 
 strikes me the only scientific meat to be found in 
 it is on page 204, and I shall make the same sug- 
 gestion to the interested student of that page 
 that the author (Haeckel) makes in the same work 
 on page 107: "I recommend those of my readers 
 who are interested in these momentous questions 
 of psychology to study the profound work of 
 Romanes." It is true that the work of Romanes 
 to which he was referring was "Mental Evolu- 
 tion in the Animal World," but Romanes wrote 
 several great books, among them "Essays," 
 "Jelly Fish, Star Fish, and Sea Urchins," and 
 "Mind, Motion, and Monism," and it is to this 
 last-named work that I refer. Inasmuch as Pro- 
 fessor Haeckel says he is completely at one with 
 Romanes and Darwin in almost all their views 
 and convictions, and that whenever they and he 
 seem to differ it is either because of "imperfect 
 expression" on his part, or the differences are 
 "unimportant," I feel at liberty to quote quite 
 freely from Romanes for the purpose of giving 
 expression to what Professor Haeckel means, sup- 
 posing the differences to be unimportant. Pro- 
 fessor Romanes on page 151 of "Mind, Motion, 
 and Monism" says : "The statement of any causal 
 relation is merely a statement of the fact that 
 both the matter and the energy concerned in the 
 event were of a permanent nature and unalter- 
 able amount. Therefore if the ultimate Reality 
 is mental causation it must be ontologically iden- 
 tical with volition. And that the ultimate Reality 
 is either mental, or something greater, seemed to 
 be proved by the consideration that if it be sup-
 
 180 THE ETEKNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 posed anything less, there must be an end of the 
 equivalency as between cause and effect, and so 
 of the conception of causality itself; for clearly 
 if my mind has been caused by anything less than 
 itself, there is an end of any possible equivalency 
 between the activity of that thing as a cause and 
 the occurrence of my mind as an effect." 
 
 I have quoted this freely because the great Zo- 
 ologist, whose book, unwarranted I believe as to 
 its claim that its philosophy is demanded by Sci- 
 ence, appears to convey the impression that the 
 lamented Romanes held the same views. That I 
 have not made a wrong application is evidenced 
 by the author's (Eomanes's) foot note on the same 
 page, ' as follows : "Whatsoever is first of all 
 things must necessarily contain it and actually 
 have, at least, all the perfections that can ever 
 after exist, nor can it ever give to another any 
 perfection that it hath not actually in itself or at 
 least in a higher degree" (Locke). To this argu- 
 ment Mill answers : "How vastly nobler and more 
 precious, for instance, are the vegetables and ani- 
 mals than the soil and manure out of which, and 
 by the properties of which, they are raised up!" 
 To which Romanes replies : "But this stricture is 
 not worthy of Mill. The soil and manure do not 
 constitute the whole cause of the plants and ani- 
 mals. We must trace these and many other 
 causes (conditions) back and back until we come 
 to whatsoever is first of all things; it is merely 
 childish to choose some few conditions, and ar- 
 bitrarily to regard them as alone efficient causes." 
 
 I must also state that Romanes says that a
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 181 
 
 "human mind is a part of the self-existing sub- 
 stance, although not on this account self-existing 
 as to its individual personality," but to grasp to 
 the full extent the unbiased elasticity of Ro- 
 manes's argument his whole work upon "Mind, 
 Motion, and Monism" should be read. He claims 
 that personality appears to be the result of cir- 
 cumscription, a limitation, but an integral part 
 of the whole, and there is a generous margin left 
 for God and even the necessary relational exist- 
 ence of the individual in these words: "There is 
 next the fact that throughout the universe of in- 
 finite objectivity, so far at least as human obser- 
 vation can extend, there is unquestionable evi- 
 dence of some one integrating principle whereby 
 all its many and complex parts are correlated 
 with one another in such wise that the result is 
 universal order. And if we take any part of 
 the whole system such as that of organic na- 
 ture on this planet to examine in more detail, 
 we find that it appears to be instinct with con- 
 trivance. So to speak, whenever we tap organic 
 nature, it seems to flow with purpose . . . the 
 world eject thus becomes invested with a psychi- 
 cal value as greatly transcending in magnitude 
 that of the human mind, as the material frame of 
 the universe transcends the material frame of 
 the human body." (" Mind, Motion and Monism," 
 p. 109.) 
 
 Contrast these words with those of Schopen- 
 hauer quoted approvingly by Professor Haeckel 
 on page 231, "The Riddle of the Universe " : "The 
 truth of pantheism lies in its destruction of the
 
 182 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 dualistic antithesis of God and the world, in its 
 recognition that the world exists in virtue of its 
 own inherent forces. The maxim of the Pan- 
 theist, 'God and the world are one' is merely a 
 polite way of giving this Lord God his conge." 
 
 Far be it from me to express an opinion as to 
 which of these great men is nearest to the truth, 
 but I am of the decided opinion that Haeckel 
 and Romanes are not "at one" on this subject. 
 
 As the human mind is an integral part of the 
 whole, then, in view of the "unquestionable evi- 
 dence" of the one integrating principle, a unity 
 psychism, a psychism so transcending that of the 
 human mind, while I may not be able to subject 
 my relationship in it to such an analysis as will 
 afford scientific proof of its inextinguishable 
 value, I yet have sufficient room in the china shop 
 of Science to exercise a reasonable degree of sci- 
 entific faith without breaking the valuable china. 
 Before calling attention to some thoughts 
 which to my mind have been sufficient to allevi- 
 ate the otherwise depressing influence of the 
 physiological, histological, experimental, and 
 pathological arguments of Haeckel, I desire to 
 refer briefly to the ontogenetic, that is the devel- 
 opment of the soul in the individual. Of course, 
 if we are to limit the soul to the mere chemical 
 activities of the cells of the brain, there is noth- 
 ing to be said, because our agreement to such a 
 meaning of the word would end in similar views 
 as to its development, rhythm, and end. I take 
 it, however, that most of us understand by the 
 soul, that substantial entity, the individual. "We
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 183 
 
 see," says Professor Haeckel, "the child soul 
 gradually unfold its various powers, the youth 
 present them in full bloom, the mature man 
 shows their ripe fruit, in old age we see the grad- 
 ual decay of the physical powers, corresponding 
 to the senile degeneration of the brain." It is 
 undoubtedly true that the neuroblasts or unde- 
 veloped cells of the infant develop and reach 
 maturity and hi old age the same cells become 
 frequently pigmented, shrunken and give other 
 signs of degeneration, and the connections be- 
 tween them are withdrawn, and we have the sad 
 picture of the "lean and slippered pantaloon" 
 condition of man. But because the composite 
 structure is falling, that which was the individual 
 amid the objectivities of the environing material 
 world no longer holds together, does it follow that 
 that for which the mediation existed has likewise 
 fallen into decay? The very fact that it no longer 
 communicates with us or we with it, is the reason 
 why we cannot say it does not yet live; it has 
 no bridge on which to cross to us. Not that I 
 mean to imply that it is something which was 
 apart from and came into the body, deus ex ma- 
 china, but the individual is not that; bounded by 
 bodies, existing as and in a living environment; 
 it is not that. I decline to accept this senseless, 
 shuffling, incompetent mass of cells, precious as it 
 is to memory and association, as the measure- 
 ment of the individual whose love shone out of 
 his eyes a few days ago; the unification in that 
 environment is destroyed, and what is left will 
 automatically continue its various specialized
 
 184 THE ETEENITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 functions until the units are themselves sep- 
 arated. As Verworn says in "General Physiol- 
 ogy," the composite body is quite a long time in 
 dying, even after that moment when life is ordi- 
 narily pronounced to be at an end. If the Pan- 
 theistic scientist can find God in the universe of 
 many, and ascribe "purpose" and "contrivance," 
 and not discover His death in the wreck of 
 changes going on in the phenomena of substance, 
 I see no reason why I may not continue to find 
 the individual surviving in the same manner. I 
 stand on the emphatic language, and the thought 
 conveyed by it, of Alfred H. Lloyd in "Dynamic 
 Idealism": "Individuals neither die nor come 
 into being." 
 
 The soul, says Professor Haeckel, is a collec- 
 tive title for the sum total of the psychic activ- 
 ities of the cells of the cerebrum, and these are 
 chemical from his standpoint. Somewhere I have 
 read, I think in "Mind, Motion and Monism," by 
 Eomanes, that motion can only produce motion, 
 and I am perhaps stupidly puzzled in attempting 
 to understand how thought, affection, love, rea- 
 son, consciousness, etc., can be produced by the 
 chemical motions of the molecules in the cells in 
 any part of the central nervous system. 
 
 The sum total of motions is either equation, no 
 motion, or a synthetic motion, but it certainly is 
 never anything but a resulting motion. If these 
 various qualities of mind are motions, then I in- 
 sist again that such a Monistic conception fur- 
 nishes us with no possible individual or soul, if 
 an individual be what Professor Haeckel con-
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 185 
 
 cedes it to be, a something which cannot be di- 
 vided without destroying its individuality. That 
 we are marginally conscious of more than one 
 sensation at a time, it appears to me we readily 
 perceive in our own experiences. I hear, see, 
 think, feel, love, etc., all at the same time. These 
 do not follow each other necessarily as successive 
 sensations or emotions, but are present in the 
 moment. Now if the "sum total" is one motion, 
 what motion is it? Notwithstanding the sugges- 
 tion that it is so plain that it is final and destruc- 
 tive to the idea of any individual soul other 
 What is it? The "sum total" of our cerebral 
 chemical activities; but is it one, or many; is it 
 a motion, or motions? If a motion and one, it is 
 a motion produced as a "sum total" and therefore 
 something additional to the unit motions, and 
 that is not the Monism of Professor Haeckel. If 
 motions, then we have yet a complexity, and in- 
 tricacy which in turn needs to be analyzed by the 
 same process. 
 
 And again, Haeckel says in reply to Weis- 
 mann's claim that the protozoa are immortal ; the 
 fission of the unicell is by that very process de- 
 structive of individuality, because an individual 
 is that which cannot be divided without destroy- 
 ing its individuality. The human body, the brain, 
 the cerebrum thereof, are all composed of separate 
 individual cells, which as Haeckel himself sug- 
 gests in the argument against immortality are 
 associated in strongly specialized centers. We 
 must therefore reach the curious conclusion that 
 there is no individual to be immortal; in other
 
 186 THE ETEKNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 words, his logic is destructive not only of immor- 
 tality but individuality itself. 
 
 It appears evident that if one cell divided is no 
 longer an individual because so divided, then an 
 ovum cell which has been so divided many million 
 tunes and specialized in sections, is no longer the 
 individual, which, as Haeckel says in "The Eiddle 
 of the Universe," then and there, with the stem 
 cell, commenced. It must have commenced and 
 ended there speedily so that individuality is a 
 commencement of that which never proceeds. 
 
 It is no longer a unit but a unity, there are free 
 cells innumerable within it, white corpuscles, etc., 
 which, while they make a community, do not con- 
 stitute a unit. The human body dies by piece- 
 meal and it is long after consciousness, that ab- 
 solute destruction of the mass follows. (Ver- 
 worn.) 
 
 I insist that there is no scientific evidence that 
 the force, which so holds together these divers 
 units, these specialized chemical activities, as that 
 there is an individual within our consciousness, 
 is a product of those motions ; but rather that it 
 is the principle of force, or unit of force, by and 
 through the means of which the union and main- 
 tenance of it is rendered possible ; and that, what- 
 ever it is, is the individual or there is none. 
 
 Where it came from, why it came at all, I do 
 not know, but I do know that while we are indulg- 
 ing in such mighty flights of the scientific imag- 
 ination into the region of the infinite as that we 
 can assert an ether, which is coeternal with an 
 equally infinite Spirit which can have a sum total,
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 187 
 
 an ether boundless, undifferentiated, and infinite, 
 but which nevertheless can condense into gases; 
 while we are ascribing to atoms sensation and 
 will, and loading down the invisible spermatozoa 
 and ova with the burden of the race memory and 
 all the other memories necessary to evolve a 
 man; while witnessing such astounding products 
 of the metabolism of proteids as modern educa- 
 tion has given us; we need not yet, even at the 
 bidding of the world's greatest Zoologist, find it 
 impossible or even difficult to include a probable 
 unit of force, eternal, having its life, motion, and 
 being in that One, which transcends even our sci- 
 entific power of thought. 
 
 Let me return to the last discussion, and see 
 if I can make my difficulty in accepting the con- 
 clusion of Professor Haeckel a little more ex- 
 plicit. 
 
 As I have said, motion produces only motion; 
 and the chemical activities of the cerebral, or for 
 that matter of all the cells of the central system 
 are motions. I can conceive of these interacting 
 motions producing one synthetic motion and I 
 may add that that one motion may be a varying 
 synthesis, that is, it may be now one form of 
 motion and again another form of motion, de- 
 pending upon the change constantly going on in 
 the unit motions; but if that conception is to be 
 applied to the psychical phenomena, we find our- 
 selves, or at least I find myself in a dilemma. 
 The moment's consciousness, the moment's condi- 
 tion of mind, is not a simple, a single form of 
 motion, conceding it to be a motion. It is quite
 
 188 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 the contrary, it is complex, it is composite, it is 
 at once a structure with many details, and unless 
 we find that there is something which is the apex, 
 the perceiver, we have in this quasi Monistic ma- 
 chine no room for the individual at all. Of 
 course, if it be asserted that I am not an indi- 
 vidual and that there is no such thing, then the 
 consolation that I am but the Infinite experienc- 
 ing, is sufficient, because as I have endeavored to 
 show in another chapter, nothing can be lost in 
 the great One and I presume that the delusion of 
 myself will find its permanent place. 
 
 We know absolutely nothing about the energy 
 coeternal with ether, we know nothing about 
 whether it has units of force or not; we have no 
 scientific knowledge on the subject. We may 
 trace the laws of physics scientifically so far only 
 as our experiences go ; from there on we reason, 
 we infer, and seek to harmonize the possible with 
 the certain. Nobody is justified in saying that 
 we have in the closing years of the nineteenth 
 century demonstrated scientifically that individ- 
 uality either begins or ends with its phenomenal 
 appearance in the realm of "condensed ether." 
 
 The limitations placed upon human knowledge 
 are tremendous in their inhibitory results, and 
 as an instance of how little we know, and what 
 possibilities lie outside of our scientific knowl- 
 edge, I may be permitted to present an imaginary 
 scheme for eternity of individuality which I 
 frankly admit I cannot prove, but which I insist 
 cannot be shown to be fatally inconsistent with 
 what we know. Bear in mind that I do not say
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY . 189 
 
 it may not be inconsistent with the opinions and 
 conclusions of individual scientists, but only that 
 it is as firmly founded upon our absolute knowl- 
 edge as any opinions on their part. 
 
 Let us suppose the world to be an individual 
 endowed with consciousness, will, and thought. 
 Is this a violent presumption? Not at all. Many 
 of the great philosophers of the past and some of 
 the present time have expressed the opinion that 
 "the world lives, the world thinks." Nor need we 
 be swerved, necessarily, from the assumption, be- 
 cause we walk about and find space, activities 
 and objects, and are able to modify the appear- 
 ance of the world by our operations, for within 
 myself I can conceive of a phagocyte (white cor- 
 puscle) roaming in quest of food and performing 
 his duties as possibly a hunter in the veins and 
 tissues of my body, and refusing to admit that 
 what he lives in is a being endowed like himself 
 with will, thought, and consciousness. He finds 
 space, space as wide and extended in comparison 
 as do you and I in the world. Or to bring the 
 suggestion more closely home, let us consider one 
 of the cells of the cerebrum, one of those the 
 "sum total" of whose activities make up the 
 "soul." Such a cell is exceedingly, incompre- 
 hensibly intricate in its internal, molecular mo- 
 tions, so much so that the movements of a Hoe 
 printing press are as a sum in addition to a quad- 
 ratic equation in comparison or one of the cells 
 and its associate cells constituting a congeries of 
 cells, a center, say the center of speech in one of 
 the lobes of the brain; there is space between
 
 190 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 these cells, they communicate by some vibration, 
 undulation or other form of motion along the sub- 
 stance of the nerves and across space between 
 the plexuses. They have their admitted limita- 
 tions and specializations just as we have in the 
 world. If I could analyze the consciousness of 
 one of them (and of course I cannot), I might 
 find as much ignorance of the methods by which 
 it communicates with others, as I find among men 
 as to the ways and means of telepathy; or I 
 might go farther and say that it will deny that 
 it communicates at all except so far as it may 
 trace its own force impulses physically. 
 
 As we find stated in "Mind, Motion and Mo- 
 nism," by Eomanes (and the statement is borne 
 out by other writers equally as scientific), when 
 by injury or destruction the cells constituting 
 the center of speech on one side of the brain dis- 
 appear, the power of speech is lost. Ideas re- 
 main, there is no change or loss in them, but the 
 power to express them in words and sentences 
 is not there. But, in many instances (and one is 
 sufficient for proof), after a while the cells con- 
 stituting a similar center on the other side of 
 the brain begin to develop the function of speech 
 and eventually the individual regains the use of 
 the faculty. Professor Eomanes considered this 
 remarkable, so do I, so I think will you. Ideas 
 usually, I believe, take their place in the stream 
 of consciousness in the form of language and 
 here we have an individual with undisturbed 
 ideas which labor and struggle for utterance and 
 finally force their way into expression. The
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 191 
 
 physical expression has departed, but shall we 
 hesitate to say that the consciousness and knowl- 
 edge of speech was builded into the individual 
 and refinds expression? 
 
 What has become of the cells, of their indi- 
 vidualities? I do not know and it does not con- 
 cern me, it is sufficient that that other, the un- 
 born, the relationship, for which the center and 
 cells played their part is not gone; it is there. 
 With the units and unities which make the ex- 
 pression of the Unity possible, I have nothing 
 to do. 
 
 To return to my relationship to the world, I 
 have long ago, perhaps without reason, disabused * 
 my mind of the idea that I stand alone ; the space 
 in which I move and which surrounds me no 
 longer appalls me because I find that it is all 
 relative. 
 
 Conceive my body, if you will, as a cell in the 
 multicellular world; the intricacy and complexity 
 of it need not deter you, for we have seen that 
 it is not a whit more so than a cortical cell. I 
 may serve physically just that purpose, I per- 
 form my function. If the body disintegrates, 
 who shall say that the function, the relationship, 
 that for which I stand, is not built into the world 
 and that my real life is my life in it? 
 
 That which I as an individual, not as a mass of 
 cells, stand for, is not in the ponderous expres- 
 sion, not in the cumbersome, composite, living 
 environment, but in the relationship. I cannot be 
 lost; its value is just what it is in that larger in- 
 dividuality, in which it lives and dwells.
 
 192 THE ETERNITY OP INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 To fully comprehend what I mean, we should 
 not specialize but generalize the subject. The 
 law of relationship must be conceived of as ex- 
 tending completely down the line of physical as- 
 sociation until we shall have reached what has 
 been supposed to have been discovered, the unit 
 of living substance. With such a conception the 
 question of how the individual first appears, in 
 the germ cell with its wonderfully prepared en- 
 vironment, is no more mysterious to me than how 
 anything else in the world appears where and 
 when it does, for on this theory we are so inti- 
 mately woven together in the life, that to solve 
 that problem would indeed be to give a solution 
 of "The Eiddle of the Universe." 
 
 Given the assumed ether and spirit of Profes- 
 sor Haeckel, and the conception of the units of 
 force to which I have referred is certainly not a 
 violent presumption, for I have the right to con- 
 tinue to ascribe eternal differentiation to the 
 "Spirit." It certainly is not homogenous and in- 
 finite with the inherent capacity to break up or 
 condense like the ether, if so we must look back 
 of even it to find that mysterious capacity or 
 force by virtue of which it condenses in sections 
 or breaks up or starts its various manifestations. 
 A homogenous ether, a homogenous Spirit per- 
 vading it even as its other pole would, it appears 
 to me,, sleep a dreamless undisturbed sleep and 
 be eternally as immovable as adamant. Either 
 the One and the many were and are in being eter- 
 nally, or there is, as in fact there seems to be, a 
 point beyond which reason cannot reach. If
 
 THE ETERNITY OF INDIVIDUALITY 193 
 
 ether and units of force eternally, then there is 
 no scientific reason why we should not ascribe to 
 these units of force inolividuality and differentia- 
 tion multiplex enough to account for all the mani- 
 festation of the Universe. To ascribe to Spirit 
 diversity, differentiation, and individuality, is no 
 more dualism than to postulate eternal and in- 
 finite ether and eternal infinite spirit. 
 
 Why the fact that any conception of immortal- 
 ity must scientifically include the lower animals 
 should in any manner be considered an argument 
 against it, I do not understand. The Universe 
 does include animals, for we see them every day 
 and what the Universe includes I suppose be- 
 longs to it. While we are talking about "infinite" 
 force or spirit we may as well logically include 
 infinite variety of individualities, for that is what 
 makes up the universe. What value the units 
 of force, which appear as animals here and now, 
 may have in the economy of the universe, I do 
 not know, but they seem to have had great value 
 so far in preparing by evolution the opportunity 
 for the physical appearance of man. 
 
 Why any question of their value should even 
 be considered by Professor Haeckel, I do not un- 
 derstand, for he has given the "Lord God his 
 conge" and there is no need for values. The idea 
 that all individuals should be alike is an unnec- 
 essary one in my view, for infinity and eternity 
 are very large and include everything.
 
 Chapter XI 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 As I endeavored to make clear at the com- 
 mencement of this book, my purpose has not been 
 to present a scientific demonstration of immor- 
 tality which would be capable without personal 
 evidence, for I fully realize the folly of any such 
 an attempt with our present knowledge, but 
 rather to set forth, as forcibly as my command 
 of language and limited familiarity with the gen- 
 eral field of Science would permit, the reasons 
 why I believe the attempt to demonstrate the 
 contrary position to be true to be chargeable 
 with greater folly. The great mystery of life 
 and individuality is as dense to-day under the 
 rays of the rising sun of Science as it has ever 
 been; the Sphinx sits as silent, as immovable, as 
 uncommunicative on the sands of the desert as 
 it has done for countless generations, and man 
 knows experimentally as little about the whence, 
 the why and the whither, as he did in the ages 
 when under Indian skies he reached the summit 
 of philosophic wisdom. It is unfortunate that we 
 are so constituted as that whenever an array of 
 facts presents itself to us in an unbroken line of 
 continuity, we are apt to take it as a rule of 
 measurement for everything else, forgetting the 
 
 194
 
 CONCLUSION 195 
 
 amazing complexity of nature and the startling 
 surprises which frequently assail us in the form 
 of apparent breaks in continuity. The hidden 
 links which bind together the phenomena are 
 many, are unknown, are only to be theoretically 
 considered and will forever recede from our 
 analysis. 
 
 The rational process of Science is to proceed 
 from the known to the unknown by inference ; the 
 theoretical process is to come back from the in- 
 ferred and construct upon it theses concerning 
 other phenomena. Thus, for reasons which I 
 need not give in detail, Science infers the exist- 
 ence of atoms and an infinite ether or substance. 
 Now this is rational. Atoms, we say, must be; 
 they may be hard, round bodies, or they may be 
 vortices. Ether must be, it may have any of the 
 consistent qualities assigned to it, but when we 
 have assumed necessarily the ether and the 
 atoms, our assumption has not become the basis 
 for a demonstration of any sort. If we return 
 with our atoms and our ether and, using them as 
 a foundation, rear thereon structures other than 
 those from whence (phenomenal existence) we 
 traveled into the region of the unknown by induc- 
 tion, we are theorizing, and theorizing only. 
 
 Hence I insist that the laws of substance, of 
 which so much has been said, and upon which so 
 much has been builded, are themselves yet to be 
 proven and demonstrated. 
 
 There is a sort of so-called logical destruction 
 of that which is of tremendous ethical value to 
 the world, which proceeds somewhat after this
 
 196 CONCLUSION 
 
 fashion: "I find mind associated with brain; 
 brain is composed of elements to be found un- 
 associated with each other everywhere in the 
 universe; there ought to be a substance called 
 ether; these elements are reducible to simple 
 forms of condensed ether; as there seems to me 
 to be no other place from which consciousness 
 and will can come, these forms of condensed ether 
 must have them ; they cannot have much of them 
 because I conceive of these forms of condensed 
 ether as infinitesimally small points and not com- 
 plex; true, I have never seen these small points 
 or simple forms, but as I cannot account for mat- 
 ter in any other way, they must exist. 
 
 "I do not believe that there is anything in the 
 universe but this ether and these infinitesimal 
 points of condensation as a last analysis, there- 
 fore everything came from their association, all 
 bodies, all differentiation, all mind, even the soul 
 of man; therefore, it is absurd to think that 
 there is any immortality, and any man who thinks 
 so is either in his dotage, or is superstitious, or 
 lacks in the power of exercising sound judgment, 
 or owes it to his early religious training, or has 
 not the gift of pure reason." 
 
 Now all this may be true, but it is by no means 
 shown to be so. As we have seen, there is an 
 absurdly small degree of actual knowledge of the 
 properties of ether within the possession of any 
 one, the atoms are as elusive as ghosts and as 
 foreign to positive classification as the canals of 
 Mars. The attitude of Prof. Haeckel toward the 
 ignorance of the qualities and properties of ether
 
 CONCLUSION 197 
 
 and atoms, on the part of the rest of mankind 
 who yet have a lingering faith in the possibilities 
 which may fill the vastness of what they do not 
 know, is akin to that of St. Paul toward the men 
 of Athens when he covered their ignorance with 
 his wisdom by saying : " Him whom you ig- 
 norantly worship, Him declare I unto you." 
 
 It is not, that, in these days when Science is 
 the king of the realm of thought, such a learned 
 man as Haeckel should not, if he chose, instruct 
 the world with his opinion upon the subject which 
 he deemed of import enough to write about, but 
 that, because of his prominence, he should not 
 have presented it in such a manner as to amount 
 to a declaration that such an attitude as that 
 which he takes is the ultimatum of Science. As 
 we have seen, it is not so ; it is far from it ; it is 
 only the opinion of Professor Haeckel, based upon 
 his great attainments in the field of zoology and 
 manifestly highly colored and seasoned by his un- 
 deniable bias for the Monistic philosophy and 
 religion. 
 
 Such attitude, if taken prematurely by Science, 
 is, I believe, dangerous to good government, 
 dangerous to character, dangerous to society, 
 dangerous to morals and dangerous to health and 
 peace of mind. Not dangerous because it pre- 
 sents the truth, for mankind can always adapt 
 itself to truth, but because it presents a guess as 
 though it were a truth, and a guess too which is 
 not calculated to result in uplifting, encourag- 
 ing or improving mankind, but quite on the con- 
 trary calculated to result in shrouding the weak
 
 198 CONCLUSION 
 
 in hopelessness, and in crowning pessimism king 
 in place of optimism. All this because one great 
 man, who had created a wide avenue of hearing 
 for himself by his remarkable intelligence in cer- 
 tain fields of learning, uses that avenue to pre- 
 sent his opinion upon the subject most precious 
 to man, in a form which appears to bear the 
 stamp of approved and demonstrated fact. 
 
 Why do I take this attitude toward the book 1 ? 
 Why should I not ? I have read it ; for a moment 
 it staggered me, it grieved me, it inexpressibly 
 saddened me, but not for long ; its monument of 
 the known, of the seen, the felt, the measured, the 
 weighted and guaged, stood so insecurely upon 
 the uncertain quagmire of the absolutely unknown 
 that it toppled over of its -own weight. I found 
 it soon enough to be a projection of lines into 
 the infinite horizon, lines which had but one end, 
 lines which reached to nowhere. 
 
 It is a profound presentation of the physical 
 appearance of life, life in ponderable matter ; but 
 in every direction, without exception, the known 
 shades off by degrees to the unknown, the im- 
 measurable and possibly the unknowable, leaving 
 the sensible man to rely yet upon his inner con- 
 sciousness and frame his faith upon the data as 
 he shall find them appealing to him as rational. 
 
 Of all the attempts of encouragement of man 
 as an ethical being, made by the materialistic and 
 some of the so-called Monistic moralists, that is 
 the saddest which suggests that the individual is 
 nothing, the race everything. That it is the duty 
 of each to so live that the race will advance in
 
 CONCLUSION 199 
 
 happiness, prosperity, culture, morality, etc., etc. 
 This sort of pabulum may feed the minds of 
 those who present it to others, but aside from the 
 actual compensating pleasure with which one re- 
 wards himself for virtue, there is no reason why 
 life under such a theory should not take its full 
 swing regardless of the future and those who are 
 to fill it. Why is the race everything? Why is 
 there a race at all? What particular advantage 
 is it to me that a race of any beings should sur- 
 vive my absolute disappearance? These ques- 
 tions cannot be answered to the satisfaction of 
 any except such as have been so environed as 
 that love, plenty, culture, education, music, art, 
 science and prosperity have come and come to 
 stay. 
 
 To such the maintenance of morality is a neces- 
 sity and the preservation of the race, inasmuch 
 as it necessitates the careful preservation of that 
 which fills their lives, is worthy of their effort 
 and fully rewards them. This is the reasoning 
 usually of the cloister, the library, the university, 
 but rarely, if ever, of the city, the field, the 
 crowded, sweating, foul, noisy, contentious, com- 
 petitive and suffering swarms of human life. 
 
 The struggle of life is for the individual! The 
 individual is everything; it is as much a race as 
 that vast concourse of men and women usually so 
 named. It is no less and no more an absolutely 
 essential factor in the life of the Universal One. 
 Is there any community more emphatic than I 
 find in myself any, where the struggles are more 
 frequent or more violent any, where the call for
 
 200 CONCLUSION 
 
 equity, ethics, and culture are louder and more 
 imperative ? 
 
 To do my demanded duty to the race, and the 
 race of men, is to perform loyally and cheerfully 
 the function which as a comparative unit I must 
 perform from the necessities of my relationship 
 to it, just as I demand of those which stand be- 
 neath me as the units of my unity to perform 
 theirs to me. 
 
 Therefore I insist that the preservation, the 
 persistence of the individual has as much of value 
 in the economy of the universe as that of the so- 
 called race. 
 
 Socialism has no saving grace, except it be 
 always directed in purpose to the development 
 of the individual. 
 
 Either all this is true, or the whole race life 
 is purposeless and empty and should aim at 
 ultimate suicide of society rather than the 
 preservation of the meaningless holiday parade 
 of advancing civilization. 
 
 The acceptance of such an ultimate conclusion 
 as Professor Haeckel announces, as the product 
 and the only product of pure reason, as a fact, as 
 an undeniable, proven result of the century's prog- 
 ress in Science, would start a new era with the 
 undoing of all that has been accomplished in 
 centuries of ethical progress. 
 
 Human life has achieved a value which the 
 ancients rarely admitted, the shedding of blood 
 has become more abhorrent, the preservation of 
 the lives of the suffering, the amelioration of pov- 
 erty, the kindly care for the insane, the education
 
 CONCLUSION 201 
 
 of the deaf, dumb and blind, have all become 
 matters of great interest and more or less suc- 
 cessful achievement, and why? Because mankind 
 has come to recognize that there is something 
 more to a human individual than the "chemical 
 activities" of the cells of the cerebrum. There has 
 been developed an active sympathy for the suffer- 
 ing of dumb brutes, and laws for the prevention 
 of cruelty to them promulgated and enforced. 
 
 To abandon this conception of the value of the 
 individual, as something more than his mere 
 economic availability to society, would result in 
 an abandonment of the useless additions to the 
 burdens of government. The protection of human 
 beings from the dangers of contagion from dis- 
 eases would, under such a system of belief, justify 
 the wholesale extinction of populated centers, the 
 painless destruction of life, and the merciless ap- 
 plication of stringent laws for isolation. Why 
 should the lame, blind, paralyzed, tuberculous 
 and witless be allowed to persist in living? Why 
 burden ourselves with the insane and criminal? 
 Why not weed the earth of the incompetent? The 
 natural operation of the law of the survival of 
 the fittest is far too slow, it can be materially 
 assisted. The aged and senile may be gently 
 passed out of life and the world move along much 
 more easily and untrammeled. 
 
 This is the logical outcome of such a view of 
 life, and any attempts to relieve the situation by 
 soft language about the adoration of the beauti- 
 ful and sublime in nature is folly. If love is but 
 the chemical affinity which Haeckel asserts it to
 
 202 CONCLUSION 
 
 be, it is an empty delusion and the beautiful and 
 sublime resolve themselves into nothing but a 
 dance of atoms. We have for centuries been 
 building up as the essential vitality of our civ- 
 ilization elusive, lying, evanescent, fictitious 
 shadows and labeling them "heart" and "soul." 
 
 If we are to commence the work of uprooting 
 the spiritual, the "superstitious," the soulful, the 
 individual, and selfhood, we must make a clean 
 sweep and carry with them all which has grown 
 in the soil of those gardens. They are illusions, 
 they are courtiers attendant upon the king of 
 delusions, the soul. Evolution was side-tracked 
 centuries ago, and the sooner we find the main 
 track the sooner we may take that desirable 
 plunge into the abyss of anarchy and confusion. 
 
 I have heard the charms of such a (Monistic?) 
 philosophy delightfully expressed by others than 
 Professor Haeckel, but to any but the contented 
 and prosperous, the healthful and happy, they 
 have the odor of the charnel house and the hope- 
 lessness of hell. 
 
 I am quite aware that these are strong words, 
 but I am searching for strong words, words 
 powerful enough to express my personal con- 
 demnation, not of an expression of the truth, but 
 of an expression of a theory upon such a vital 
 matter, in a manner which leaves the impression 
 upon the human mind, that the theory is scientific 
 fact. Such a negative theory, if it be a fact, can 
 never be shown to Science as such, for Science 
 never yet has found an ocean whose last wave it 
 has measured, never a form of substance which
 
 CONCLUSION 203 
 
 did not inclose another, it never yet has laid 
 its hand upon the lever of the universe, and it 
 never will. 
 
 It is evident that with all his remarkable attain- 
 ments in scientific learning Professor Haeckel has 
 not mastered the first principles of mental science, 
 or he never would have permitted himself to sug- 
 gest that the abandonment of the belief in im- 
 mortality would be for the best interests of 
 human society, or that the world has anything to 
 gain by it. Under and by virtue of the very laws 
 of substance to which he appeals, the ideas of im- 
 mortality and duty, however false they may be, 
 are builded into the very being of human in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 Heredity has made them parts of the brains 
 which they have inherited from their ancestors 
 according to Professor Haeckel, and any sudden 
 change from such a belief must assuredly be of 
 such a character as to cause confusion and dis- 
 astrous results to the process of mental evolution. 
 
 Philosophers may have no trouble in adapting 
 themselves to such a change of views, if the neces- 
 sity arises, but the mass of mankind certainly will 
 find it opening before them like an impassable 
 
 gulf. 
 
 Whatever may be the mysterious secret behind 
 the fact, it is certainly true that happiness, health, 
 longevity, and good government depend largely 
 upon the belief and hope of mankind. What 
 punishment would be sufficient for that physician 
 who, in attendance upon his patients, bluntly con- 
 fided to them the exact condition of their physical
 
 204 CONCLUSION 
 
 organs, the hopelessness of attempting to co- 
 ordinate the nervous system and the certainty of 
 an ultimate and speedy death ? Ignorance of even 
 the real condition, hope based upon lack of under- 
 standing of the threatening complications, and 
 the confidence resulting from it, have always been 
 considered curative agents of profound value. 
 
 It is not often that, when the apparent hope- 
 lessness of life is so emphatic as that one may 
 almost number the hours remaining, the attend- 
 ing physician is justified in destroying the last 
 chance by a destruction of hope. It may be 
 safely said that no justification exists for such a 
 removal of the supporting faith when dissolution 
 is a mere possibility. To whatever degree it may 
 be based upon superstition, desire, love, the un- 
 known or the unknowable, it is apparent to any 
 thoughtful and observant man, that the belief in 
 individual life surviving the wreck of the physical 
 body, in accountability in some manner, in an 
 existence where the disappointments and griefs 
 of this life are compensated, and where justice 
 dangles the other side of the balances, is builded 
 into the very body, indeed it is the central system, 
 of ethics, and as certainly it is the one last staff 
 upon which all may lean.
 
 
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