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Inasmuch as man is connected with these lower organisms by an unbroken line of descent, why should not these factors explain man's actions also? There is here an arc or loop of unbroken physical causation; and there is no "room" for consciousness, save as an "epiphenomenon," as postulated by Huxley.
The two alternatives force themselves, and there is no third: either this deeper kernel of his life must mean the possibility and, in a measure, the presence of a new land of reality; or, on the other hand, it means no more than a mere epiphenomenon and blossoming of the merely natural life.
Would it not greatly clarify our thought if we could bring the Invisible King into action, not, indeed, as the creator of all things, but as the organizer and director of the surprising and almost incredible epiphenomenon which we call life?
The saving statement that the body is not merely a machine, because consciousness goes with it, does not impress one as being sufficient to redeem the illustration. Who wants to be an automaton with an accompanying consciousness? Who cares to regard his mind as an "epiphenomenon" a thing that exists, but whose existence or nonexistence makes no difference to the course of affairs?
Or a phosphorescence lighting up the traces of the movements of the brain. It has also been said that the consciousness is a useless luxury. Some have even gone further, and the fine and significant name of epiphenomenon, that has been given to thought, well translates that conception, according to which semi-realities may exist in nature.
What is to be sought for in this instance is the proof that along with our vibrio there does not exist an independent virulence belonging to the surrounding fluids or solids, in short that the vibrio is not merely an epiphenomenon of the disease of which it is the obligatory accompaniment. What then do we see, in the results that I have just brought out?
For Aristotle it was the substantial form of the body the entelechy, but not a substance. And more than one modern has called it an epiphenomenon an absurd term. The appellation phenomenon suffices. Rationalism and by rationalism I mean the doctrine that abides solely by reason, by objective truth is necessarily materialist. And let not idealists be scandalized thereby.
It is argued by some that, if this is a true view of things, we must embrace the conclusion that the mind cannot be active at all, that it can accomplish nothing. We must look upon the mind as an "epiphenomenon," a useless decoration; and must regard man as "a physical automaton with parallel psychical states."
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