The Art of Creation Essays On the Self And Its Powers

Related Motion seems to be, as suggested by the words Attraction and Repulsion, Gravitation, Chemical Affinity, and so forth, the ground-fact of inorganic Nature. And it seems also to be the ground and foundation of Life. The protoplasmic jelly moves towards or away from substances in its neighborhood, and this appears to be its fundamental property. The most primitive cellular organisms act in the same way. Some seek light, others flee from it. Paramecium is drawn towards slightly acid substances, and flies from alkalies. Actynophrys is attracted by starch; and so on.1 There appears to be a kind of ' choice' or elective affinity; and the learned are divided on the subject into two schools-those who, like Binet, see in these movements of protozoa the germinal characteristics of human intelligence, and those who class them as " merely chemical" and automatic reactions.Table of Contents Preface vii; I Preliminary i; II The Art of Creation io; III Matter and Consciousness , , , -35; Note