Boris Sidis

“ The thoughts that present themselves at any one moment are meaningless and purposeless, they are simply the accidental chance material which the given momentary, purposive thought selects as fit in order to succeed best in the achievement of its purpose. ”

“ We are apt to overestimate the utility of organs and functions in the world of living beings. There may be organs which are of no use to the organism, and there may be functions which are indifferent and even positively harmful to life. It is questionable whether the thymus gland, the tonsils, the appendix are of any use to man, and it is quite certain that a number of physiological processes take place in the organism which are indifferent and even detrimental to the life existence of the individual. ”

“ In other words, out of a great number of many variations, harmful, indifferent, and useful, the ones that are useful in their adaptation to the external environment survive or are selected by the process of natural selection. This clearly requires the presence of a great number of variations which show no adaptations and therefore are not useful. The utility and adaptation manifested by the biological processes are due to the presence of an immense number of variations of biological processes which are useless, indifferent, and even harmful. ”

“ Useful purposive biological processes are rare, few, and accidental, while the indifferent, the useless and the purposeless biological processes are by far the most common. The purposive processes are the accidental and the exceptional, while the purposeless processes are the rule. It is out of the purposeless that the purposive processes develop. The fully developed biological process, the fully developed organism is purposeful, because of its selection of the purposeful out of the great mass of purposeless biological processes and unadapted organisms. ”

“ The logical process can draw only definite conclusions from given premises, the moral man or the ethical thinker can only regard definite relations and behavior as right or wrong, and the man who creates and enjoys the beautiful can only regard certain definite combinations as beautiful. ”

“ When the process of attention becomes completely relaxed as in sleep, fever, or in the acute forms of mental maladies, the chance images and accidental variations of ideas come and go without aim and purpose. Purposeless thought is as much the rule of mental life as purposeless accidental variations are the rule of organic life. ”

“ Our dreams, our unintentional errors in speech, writing and action are due to the many chance thoughts which either intrude themselves on consciousness in spite of the selective rigid process of attention, or are due to the momentary relaxation of the selective process. Chance thoughts, meaningless images and ideas, like accidental variations, form one of the most important factors in the evolution of purposive mental activity. ”

“ The great number of ideas that throng in the antechamber of consciousness are in themselves purposeless. As Galton well puts it "Although the brain is able to do very fair work fluently in an automatic way, and though it will of its own accord, strike out sudden and happy ideas, it is questionable if it is capable of working thoroughly and profoundly without past or present effort. ”

“ The production of light may be only a sort of by-product of changes going on in the organism, and has no relation to outside conditions. In certain cases, as in the glowworm, it has been supposed that the display may serve to bring the sexes together; but since the phosphorescent organs are also present in the larval stages of the glowworm, and since even the egg itself is said to be phosphorescent, it is improbable, in these stages at least, that the presence of the light is of service to the organism. ”

“ Not purpose but chance is at the heart of mental life. ”

“ There are still other organs which cannot be looked upon as rudimentary, yet whose presence can scarcely be considered as essential to the life of the individual. For instance, the electric organs in some of the rays and fish can hardly protect the animal from enemies, even when as highly developed as in the torpedo ”

“ While it is difficult to show that the wonderful patterns and magnificent coloration of many of the larger animals are not of service to the animal, however sceptical we may be on the subject, yet in the case of many microscopic forms that are equally brilliantly colored there can be little doubt that the coloration can be of no special service to them. ”

“ Whether the same may also be said of the phosphorescent organs of many animals is perhaps open in some cases to doubt, but there can be little question that the light produced by most of the small marine organisms, such as noctilica, jellyfish, ctenophores, copepods, pyrosoma, etc., cannot be of use to these animals in protecting them from attack. In the case of certain bacteria it seems quite evident that the production of light can be of no use as such to them. ”