PDF - Wallace Online

NATURAL SELECTIONThe Origin ofThe questionof the origin of sensation and of thoughtcan be but briefly discussed in this place,since it is a subjectwide enough to require a separate volume for its propertreatment. No physiologistor philosopher has yet venturedto propound an intelligible theory of how sensation maypossibly be a product of organisation; while many havedeclared the passage from matter to mind to be inconceivable.In his presidentaladdress to the Physical Section ofthe British Association at Norwich, in 1868, Professor Tyndallexpressedhimself as follows :" The passage from the physics of the brain to the correspondingfacts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted thata definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brainoccur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ,nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which wouldenable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the onephenomenon to the other. They appear together, but we donot know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded,strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feelthe very molecules of the brain, were we capable of followingall their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges,if such there be, and were we intimately acquaintedwith the corresponding states of thought and feeling, weshould be as far as ever from the solution of the problem,'How are these physical processes connected with the facts of'The chasm between the two classes ofconsciousness ?phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable."In his latest work (An Introduction to the Classification ofAnimals), published in 1869, Professor Huxley unhesitatinglyexcept in the same sense that the action of man or of any other intelligentbeing is a first cause. In using such terms I wished to show plainly that Icontemplated the possibility that the development of the essentiaUy humanportions of man's structure and intellect may have been determined by thedirecting influence of some higher intelligent beings, acting through naturaland universal laws. A belief of this nature may or may not have a foundation,but it is an intelligible theory, and is not, in its nature, incapable ofproof and it ;rests on facts and arguments of an exactly similar kind tothose which would enable a sufficiently powerful intellect to deduce,from the existence on the earth of cultivated plants and domestic animals,the presence of some intelligent being of a higher nature than themselves.