The Origin of Consciousness An Attempt to Conceive the Mind as a Product of Evolution

Abstract

THIS is a very important book. Whether or not we are able to accept its thesis, the acute and exhaustive exploration of the problem of knowledge, and the thoughtful and sympathetic criticism it offers of the present-day theories of new realism and of post-Kantian idealism, must be reckoned with. It is some fifteen years since Prof. Strong gave us a book bearing the fascinating title, “Why the Mind has a Body,” and the present work is a development of the theory therein expounded. Perhaps we should rather say that it is a continuation of the author's reflections on that theory, for he acknowledges important changes in his view. The influence of Bergson's theory of creative evolution is very evident in this development, although Prof. Strong is not to be classed as a Bergsonian. The title and subtitle of the present volume indicate that influence. Granting that the fact we name consciousness (meaning awareness) is a product of evolution, what sort of stuff must reality be in order that such evolution should be possible? This is the problem. The answer is that it cannot be any kind of body-stuff of which mind is an epiphenomenon, but it must be a kind of mind-stuff of which the body and the physical universe of which it is part and with which it is continuous are an epiphenomenon.

The Origin of Consciousness. An Attempt to Conceive the Mind as a Product of Evolution.

By Prof. C. A. Strong. Pp. viii + 330. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1918.) Price 12s. net.