ot because they feel
that there is something in man which will not fit into a rigid
world-mechanism, and that conduct would cease {84} to have moral worth if
life were reduced to a causal series of happenings? But it may be
further argued that, if the mechanical conception of life, which reduces
the spiritual to the natural, were consistently carried out it would lead
not merely to the destruction of the moral life, but to the destruction
of science itself. If man is merely a part of nature, subject entirely
to nature's law, then the realities of the higher life--love,
self-sacrifice, devotion to ends beyond ourselves--must be radically
re-interpreted or regarded simply as illusions. But it is also true that
from this standpoint science itself is an illusion. For if reality lies
only in the passing impressions of our sensible nature, the claim of
science to find valid truth must end in the denial of the very
possibility of knowledge. Does not the very existence of physical
science imply the priority of thought? While in one sense it may be
conceded that man is a part of nature, does not the truth, which cannot
be gainsaid, that he is aware of the fact, prove a certain priority and
power which differentiates him from all other phenomena of the universe?
If he is a link in the chain of being, he is at least a link which is
conscious of what he is. He is a being who knows himself, indeed,
through the objective world, but also realises himself only as he makes
himself its master and the agent of a divine purpose to which all things
are contributing, and for which all things exist. In all our reasoning
and endeavour we must start from the unity of the self-conscious soul.
Whatever we can either know or achieve, is _our_ truth, _our_ act
presented in and through our self-consciousness. It is impossible for us
to conceive any standard of truth or object of desire outside of our
experience. As a thinking and acting being man pursues ends, and has the
consciousness that they are his own ends, subject to his own choice and
control. It is always the self that the soul seeks; and the will is
nothing else than the man making and finding for himself another world.

The attempt has recently been made to measure mental states by their
physical stimuli and explain mental {85} processes by cerebral reaction.
It is true that certain physical phenomena seem to be invariably
antecedent to thought, but so far science has been unabl