postpone. Yet the hot-headed contenders on both sides may be reminded
of certain facts.

We live in the most iconoclastic of ages. There are sane people alive
today going quietly about their business who deny the very existence
of consciousness. These heretics of course pooh-pooh absolutely the
lions of metaphysics. On the other hand, it may be pointed out to our
mechanists who believe in mechanism to the bitter end, that even if
man can be described entirely as a mere transformer of energy, there
is no reason why he cannot also be described as a transformer of
energy plus someone who makes use of the transformer and of the
energy transformed. The stone wall before the honest mechanist is the
abolition of purpose, and design, an old insoluble problem upon
his premises. Preach, until you are blue in the face, behaviorist
tropisms, in which man is pushed and pulled about in his environment
as are iron filings in a magnetic field. Think up objective
physiologies in which your life and mine become a series of
concatenated influences and compound reflexes. Play with words like
the concentration reflex when you mean idea, and the symbolic reflex
when you mean language. But your most rigid nomenclature will never
abolish the mystic personal purpose in the equation, no matter how low
the step in the animal series to which you descend. The declaration
that a man is dominated by certain glands within his body should not
be taken to give aid and comfort to those who would banish mind from
the universe.




CHAPTER I