Now, in this mode of procedure what is the kind of activities which may be regarded as indicative of mind? I certainly do not so regard the flowing of a river or the blowing of the wind. Why?

• First, because the objects are too remote in kind from my own organism to admit of it; and,
  
• secondly, because the activities which they present are of invariably the same kind under the same circumstances; they afford no evidence of feeling or purpose.

In other words, two conditions require to be satisfied before we even begin to imagine that observable activities are indicative of mind:

• first, the activities must be displayed by a living organism; and
  
• secondly, they must be of a kind to suggest the presence of two elements which we recognize as the distinctive characteristics of mind as such—consciousness and choice.

So far, then, the case seems simple enough. Wherever we see a living organism apparently exerting intentional choice, we might infer that it is conscious choice, and therefore that the organism has a mind. But further reflection shows us that this is just what we cannot do; for although it is true that there is no mind without the power of conscious choice, it is not true that all apparent choice is due to mind. In our own organisms, for instance, we find a great many adaptive movements performed without choice or even consciousness coming into play at all—such, for instance, as in the beating of our hearts. And not only so, but physiological experiments and pathological lesions prove that in our own and in other organisms the mechanism of the nervous system is sufficient, without the intervention of consciousness, to produce muscular movements of a highly co-ordinate and apparently intentional character.

Thus, for instance, if a nervous connection between his brain and lower extremities, on pinching or tickling his feet they are drawn suddenly away from the irritation, although the man is quite unconscious of the adaptive movement of his muscles; the lower nerve-centres of the spinal cord are competent to bring about this movement of adaptive response without requiring to be directed by the brain. This non-mental operation of the lower nerve-centres in the production of apparently intentional movement is called Reflex Action, and the cases of its occurrence, even within the limits of our own organism, are literally numberless. Therefore, in view of such non-mental nervous adjustment, leading to movements which are only in appearance intentional, it clearly becomes a matter of great difficulty to say in the case of the lower animals whether any action which appears to indicate intelligent choice is not really action of the reflex kind.

Objectively considered, the only distinction between adaptive movements due to reflex action and adaptive movements due to mental perception, consists in the former depending on inherited mechanisms within the nervous system being so constructed as to effect particular adaptive movements in response to particular stimulations, while the latter are independent of any such inherited adjustment of special mechanisms to the exigencies of special circumstances.

Reflex actions under the influence of their appropriate stimuli may be compared to the actions of a machine under the manipulations of an operator; when certain springs of actions are touched by certain stimuli, the whole machine is thrown into appropriate movement; there is no room for choice, there is no room for uncertainty; but as surely as any of their inherited mechanisms are affected by the stimulus with reference to which it has been constructed to act, so surely will it act in precisely the same way as it always has acted.

But the case with conscious mental adjustment is quite different. For, without at present going into the question concerning the relation of body and mind, or waiting to ask whether cases of mental adjustment are not really quite as mechanical in the sense of being the necessary result or correlative of a chain of physical sequences due to a physical stimulation, it is enough to point to the variable and incalculable character of mental adjustments as distinguished from the constant and foreseeable character of reflex adjustments. All, in fact, that in an objective sense we can mean by a mental adjustment is an adjustment of a kind that has not been definitely fixed by heredity as the only adjustment possible in the given circumstances of stimulation. For were there no alternative of adjustment, the case, in an animal at least, would be indistinguishable from one of reflex action.

It is, then, adaptive action by a living organism in cases where the inherited machinery of the nervous system does not furnish data for our prevision of what the adaptive action must necessarily be—it is only here that we recognize the objective evidence of mind. The criterion of mind therefore, which I propose, and to which I shall adhere throughout the present volume, is as follows:--

Romanes and Metaphysics

Romanes was led to psychology as part of a life-long quest for meaning in the universe. At Cambridge (1873) he won the Burney prize, awarded by Christ's College, for his essay on "Christian Prayer considered in relation to the belief that the Almighty governs the world by general laws". This was published in 1874 with an appendix on "The Physical Efficacy of Prayer". As the anonymous "Physicus", he then wrote "A Candid Examination of Theism" (1878), where the influence of Darwinian ideas is very strong, and the conclusion is most poignant:

View of divine creation. At left God creates the earth and at the right God creates the stars. From the Museum at Salerno, Italy.

"So far as I am individually concerned, the result of this analysis has been to show that, whether I regard the problem of Theism on the lower plane of strictly relative probability, or on the higher plane of purely formal considerations, it equally becomes my obvious duty to stifle all belief of the kind which I conceive to be the noblest, and to discipline my intellect with regard to this matter into an attitude of the purest scepticism.

    And forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who affirm that the twilight doctrine of the "new faith" is a desirable substitute for the waning splendour of "the old", I am not ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and although from henceforth the precept to "work while it is day" will doubtless gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words that "the night cometh when no man can work", yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it, -- at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible.

     For whether it be due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the age, or whether it be due to the memory of those sacred associations which to me at least were the sweetest that life has given, I cannot but feel that for me, and for others who think as I do, there is a dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton, -- Philosophy having become a meditation, not merely of death, but of annihilation, the precept know thyself has become transformed into the terrific oracle to Oedipus --

  "Mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art.""

In 1878 Romanes was strongly tested by Thomas Huxley when asked to become a member of The Association of Liberal Thinkers, an Association designed to attack all forms of humbug in Victorian life, particularly religious "humbug." Romanes was not so sure that the time was right for discarding what Karl Marx had called "the opium of the masses." Romanes declined to join the Association in a letter dated Jan 3rd 1879. Two days later he sent a second letter explaining his views more fully, and concluding:

"Of course I have no doubt that in the long run Truth, however hideous, must prevail!"

In 1879 he married the deeply religious Ethel Duncan. Thus began an even stronger testing!

"The two houses which I enjoyed going to were the Dicey's and the Romanes'. My first dinner party was at the Romanes', and he was quite definately Romanes of Nigg, not an unfamiliar Oxford professor.

     I saw a good deal of him during his last illness. The excuse was that he liked to hear about some experimental work of John's and we talked at large about people and things, and on the last few visits rather tentatively about religion. He spoke very restrainedly of the many visits he had from the clergy his wife believed in. 'They mean well,' he said, but they tired him terribly, and would try to make him answer questions.

     On my last visit, he held on to my hands and said, 'Don't go, don't go,' but what can one do when a man's devoted wife almost pushes one out of the room? I am quite confident that his death-bed confession was merely the result of being too exhausted to argue. It was not meant as acquiescence to Anglican doctrines."

"If the time-depth is shallow, so, too, in the restricted study I have in mind will be the degree of philosophical penetration. The results achieved in the development of genetics were derived from the application of experimental methods, but the question which experiment will not answer is what it all means. 

    The hope for an answer to such a question, whether expressed or lurking in the background, may be an actual handicap to investigation. We may find ourselves unready or unwilling to accept the limited, either-or kind of decision which experiment is competent to provide and thus lose the solid substance of discovery for the shadow of a larger hope. 

    It is not that I, or another who may review the development of the science of heredity, may not be interested in what it means, but rather that before we ask that ultimate question we should know what has caused it to be asked."