I have said enough to show that in the decade, roughly, between 1870
and 1880 the set of opinion among our leading biologists was
strongly against mind, as having in any way influenced the
development of animal and vegetable life, and it is not likely to be
denied that the prominence which the mindless theory of natural
selection had assumed in men's thoughts since 1860 was one of the
chief reasons, if not the chief, for the turn opinion was taking.
Our leading biologists had staked so heavily upon natural selection
from among fortuitous variations that they would have been more than
human if they had not caught at everything that seemed to give it
colour and support. It was while this mechanical fit was upon them,
and in the closest connection with it, that the protoplasm boom
developed. It was doubtless felt that if the public could be got to
dislodge life, consciousness, and mind from any considerable part of
the body, it would be no hard matter to dislodge it, presently, from
the remainder; on this the deceptiveness of mind as a causative
agent, and the sufficiency of a purely automatic conception of the
universe, as of something that will work if a penny be dropped into
the box, would be proved to demonstration. It would be proved from
the side of mind by considerations derivable from automatic and
unconscious action where mind ex hypothesi was not, but where action
went on as well or better without it than with it; it would be
proved from the side of body by what they would doubtless call the
"most careful and exhaustive" examination of the body itself by the
aid of appliances more ample than had ever before been within the
reach of man.

This was all very well, but for its success one thing was a sine qua
non--I mean the dislodgment must be thorough; the key must be got
clean of even the smallest trace of blood, for unless this could be