GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

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point ofscience, ifyou know die formula for the ingredients
of a man's bodily and mental constitution, you can tell
how a human being will behave in such and such circumstances;
for, directly you take it to pieces and examine the
parts them, as we have seen, each part appears to be
completely determined by the others* The assumptions
involved in this treatment are those which have already
been pointed out. It is assume*! that a man is the sum
- So
total of the pieces into which he can be analysed and that
he is the product of the antecedents from which he can
be shown to have derived.
treated, a man inevitably appears to be determined.
His constitution is determined by its constituent parts
just because, from Ms point of view, it is the sum of its
constituent parts, and his present is conditioned by his
past antecedents just because, when he is so regarded, it is
the outcome of his antecedents.
How die Scientist Brings Himself Within the Determinist
Scheme. Now these, it must again be insisted,
are the only lines along which science can proceed, and
in so far as science aspires to give an account of a human
being, ft is within the framework of these assumptions that
the account must fell. To deny the applicability of the
method or the adequacy of its results, is to deny the
competence of science in certain spheres. It is to say in
effect *when it comes to a question of mind and soul,
the scientific method is no longer fruitful; at any rate its
fruitfulness is limited'. And when the scientist proceeds,
if ever he does, to consider himself introspectively,
his Own consciousness and asks himself whence,
in spite of all his intellectual arguments, this insistent
sensation of freedom which he undoubtedly experiences
derives, he will, it must be presumed, have little difficulty
in bringing himself by analogy into the determinist
scheme which he has*already framed to fit his fellows.
He has, we must suppose, already taken the minds of his
fellows to pieces and analysed their consciousness into