IN a current review appears an article entitled "The Will as a Chemical Product," accompanied by the portrait of a professor, beneath which is written, "Who holds that what we call 'will' in the lower animals is a mere chemical or physical phenomenon, like the sunflower's turning toward the light." This statement might just as well be turned around so as to run, "What we call chemical action is nothing but a manifestation of the mere will." However, this professor appears to be haunted with the desire to represent the whole universe as a mechanism; for, by a daring use of the "scientific imagination," which vaults scornfully over all gaps in the chain of reasoning, he applies his theory to man—including presumably himself, the author of the theory, since he does not make any mention of himself as an exception.
To begin with the sunflower, which is where the professor begins—the idea is that the solar rays cause chemical actions in the plant, the chemical actions in their turn causing movements which switch the flower around into a position where the balance of forces results in stability. Next we go to the small fresh-water crustacean. This animal, when experimented upon, did not show any heliotropism; but the professor was nothing daunted. He just poured some acid into the water, and the result was that the pollywogs all flocked to the light and stayed there. It was the same when carbonic acid gas or alcohol was put into the water. Our explanation is that the pollywogs were upset by the poisoned water and crowded into that part where the light rendered the water less poisonous or gave them greater strength to resist the ill effects. But the professor has a theory to prop; so his conclusion is that the chemical poured into the water "sensitized" the creature, rendering them heliotropic. It is wonderful what a great theory a little fact can be made to prove!
Passing to ethics—rather a large jump—the professor suggests that persons who exhibit the highest manifestation of ethics—that is, persons who are willing to sacrifice their lives for an idea—are victims of a "tropism." In other words, these unfortunate people have become slaves to the chemical reactions produced in them by the stimuli of ideas.
Well, it may suit this professor to define self-sacrifice as an obsession, but we could give other instances of the obsession of ideas which would fit the definition better. Ethics may be a chemical phenomenon, but in that case it does not much matter after all, since every other thing in the universe is also a chemical process. The professor himself is a chemical process—so, a fig for his theory! say we; who cares for a theory made by a chemical process? Frankly, we do not believe this theory. But, if the theory is false, it follows that it was not made by a chemical process after all; hence it is perhaps not false. And so the logic goes round and round.
People who weave theories of this fantastic kind are people whose ideas have no relation to life; they live in a world of imagination. People who can define their own mind as a chemical process—the very mind which they are using all the time—must surely have something the matter with their thinking machinery. And we recognize in the sneer at ethics the shadow of a certain destructive "stimulus" which is certainly not of the sun but which acts on people's brains a good deal in these days.
Under the influence of a stimulus which has acted on our chemical cells, and which we feel powerless to resist, we state without apology that all chemical, physical, and electrical processes are manifestations of will. The action of the sunflower in turning to the sun is a manifestation of will. Without will, no atom could approach or recede from its neighbor. Physical notation cannot get any further than corpuscles separated by empty space; and what short of a will can bridge such a gap? Shall we define the whole universe as chemical processes, or shall we define it as mind and will? Take your choice. In the one case you have a chemical process defining itself as a chemical process; for your mind, which defines, is a chemical process; in the other case you have mind recognizing mind in other beings. Analysis of the universe must begin with consciousness; we must define matter in terms of mind; to attempt to define mind in terms of matter, while at the same time using a mind to do it with, is to make a fundamental mistake in logic that can only lead to a piling up of absurdities.
In speculating as to the cause of motion, try to imagine any other cause for it than volition. You have, let us say, two atoms; they approach one another; here is motion; what causes it? You can only answer "Attraction," which is only defining it by an equivalent word; for attraction is nothing more than a name for the very thing we are seeking to explain. If we study our own organism we find that volition is the cause of motion, and we infer that it is the same in other people. We are not conscious of any volition that moves our own vital organs, or the muscles of other people or animals, or the sunflower, or the chemical mixture. But if we do not put these actions under the same category as the ones of which we are conscious, we have to find a new and special explanation for them. It is better to accept, provisionally at least, volition as being one of the fundamental facts of the universe, and to use it as a basis of inference; for volition is a thing of which we have actual experience, while the atoms and blind forces of materialistic speculation are mere suppositions.
But delusions, however erroneous, do actually exist as such in the minds of those obsessed by them; and are capable of giving rise to mischievous actions. We have at present a regular epidemic of awful sociological theories, threatening to develop into action, and based on these mechanical and chemical ideas of the universe. Such proposals as that criminals shall be vivisected, that private or co-operative self-abuse shall be officially taught as a means of keeping down the population, and many other such notions, are the fruit of a perverted and materialistic philosophy. They give a faint idea of the reign of terror that might supervene if the destructive forces now at work should gain the upper hand. A section of the world of thought seems to be going mad and the sooner the people find it out the better.