“Yes. Growth and memory are things that physics has as yet little to say about. But we have at any rate reduced the problem of life to smaller proportions. It is no longer the question what is life? but, how do colloidal processes build themselves up into continuously-active, developing systems which can react to their surroundings so that some distant condition can ultimately be attained? This is a much less difficult question. Moreover, since the problem of radiation underlies all the chemical processes which are associated with the maintenance of life, we may expect considerable assistance when physics has cleared up this crucial problem.” CHAPTER V _Physics and Mind_ If a psychologist who was not a behaviourist had been listening to this conversation he might break in: “Does the physicist seriously propose that we should try to leave mind out of our picture of the human organism? Even if we can eventually explain the unconscious purposes of the lower organisms as ends towards which they are driven by physical laws, yet man has the supreme distinction of a conscious mind, he can select his aim, and if he likes renounce it again for something else. You must therefore allow in your picture for the emergence of mind at some point during the course of evolution.” “Wait a moment,” replies the physicist. “Your whole outlook towards consciousness betrays not only an anthropomorphic standpoint, but one limited to a single stage in man’s development. There is no single condition adequately described by the word ‘conscious’. There are in fact a great many different states of awareness which may grade into one another, or may form a series of distinct conditions. We do not know much about them yet, but their variety is most striking. There is the dim sentience as we awake from chloroform, the awareness of the dreaming state, the passive experiencing that accompanies any intensely rhythmic activity such as running. Again, quite different states are known in day-dreaming, intellectual concentration and the delicately-balanced semi-consciousness of creative thought. “Consider especially the states of awareness associated with love, or with the supreme creative activities of the mind. Free-will, or the deliberate choice of a purpose, is completely lost in a whole-natured falling in love, as it is also in the artist’s need to follow some dimly-conscious intuition of a task he must attempt. At these important occasions free-will disappears before a sense of inner organic necessity.