He that is stronger and better placed than
I shall overcome me, and him that is weaker I will overcome.'
"The potato says these things by doing them, which is the best of
languages. What is consciousness if this is not consciousness? We find
it difficult to sympathise with the emotions of a potato; so we do with
those of an oyster. Neither of these things makes a noise on being
boiled or opened, and noise appeals to us more strongly than anything
else, because we make so much about our own sufferings. Since, then,
they do not annoy us by any expression of pain we call them emotionless;
and so _qua_ mankind they are; but mankind is not everybody.
"If it be urged that the action of the potato is chemical and mechanical
only, and that it is due to the chemical and mechanical effects of light
and heat, the answer would seem to lie in an inquiry whether every
sensation is not chemical and mechanical in its operation? whether those
things which we deem most purely spiritual are anything but disturbances
of equilibrium in an infinite series of levers, beginning with those that
are too small for microscopic detection, and going up to the human arm
and the appliances which it makes use of? whether there be not a
molecular action of thought, whence a dynamical theory of the passions
shall be deducible? Whether strictly speaking we should not ask what
kind of levers a man is made of rather than what is his temperament? How
are they balanced? How much of such and such will it take to weigh them
down so as to make him do so and so?"
The writer went on to say that he anticipated a time when it would be
possible, by examining a single hair with a powerful microscope, to know
whether its owner could be insulted with impunity.
Pages:
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270