Are We Automata?

Thither Science may retreat and hump her strong back against the mockeries and phantasms that people the waste of Being around. Now the essence of the Common-Sense-theory, I take it, is to negate these negations. It obstinately refuses to believe Consciousness irrelevant or unimportant to the rest. It is there for a purpose, it has a meaning But as all meaning, relevancy and purpose are symbolised to our present intelligence in terms of action and reaction and causal efficacy, Common Sense expresses its belief in the worth of Feeling by refusing to conceive of it out of these relations. When a philosophy comes which, by new facts or conceptions, shall show how particular feelings may be destitute of causal efficacy without the genus Feeling as a whole becoming the sort of ignis fatuus and outcast which it seems to be to-day to so many "scientists" (loathly word!), we may hail Professors Huxley and Clifford as true prophets. Until then, I hold that we are incurring the slighter error by still regarding our conscious selves as actively combating each for his interests in the arena and not as impotently paralytic spectators of the game.