Is this consciousness, this enormous influence of ideas, principles, beliefs over our lives and actions, really derivable from animal behavior? Alone of species, all alone! we try to understand ourselves and the world. We become rebels or patriots or martyrs on the basis of ideas. We build Chartres and computers, write poems and tensor equations, play chess and quartets, sail ships to other planets and listen in to other galaxies — what have these to do with rats in mazes or the threat displays of baboons? The continuity hypothesis of Darwin for the evolution of mind is a very suspicious totem of evolutionary mythology. The yearning for certainty which grails the scientist, the aching beauty which harasses the artist, the sweet thorn of justice which fierces the rebel from the eases of life, or the thrill of exultation with which we hear of true acts of that now difficult virtue of courage, of cheerful endurance of hopeless suffering — are these really derivable from matter? Or even continuous with the idiot hierarchies of speechless apes?
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 01:20:26 +0000
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