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The Emergence of Mind
Where Technology Ends
and We Begin
Jeffrey Kane
The Emergence of Mind
 Jeffrey Kane

The Emergence of
Mind
Where Technology Ends and We Begin
Jeffrey Kane
Philosophy and Teaching and Learning
Long Island University
Brookville, NY, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-46834-6    ISBN 978-3-031-46835-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46835-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2024
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
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To Shai, Rami and those who will follow them in bringing light and hope
into the world
 Acknowledgments

To the extent that this book shares something of substance, the voices of
many others from generations past and in my life may be heard in my
words. They are too numerous to mention, but I must acknowledge my
debt and express my gratitude to all of them. In particular, I thank the
great teachers of my life, Sheldon Stoff and John Fentress Gardner, whose
lessons continue to unfold within me.
There have been many colleagues who have read through endless drafts
of chapter after chapter to give this book both its form and its substance.
Early on, my colleague Mike Kavic helped me explore the fundamental
concepts of relational science. As I struggled with my ideas, Howard
Gardner encouraged me to write confidently from my own experience and
in my own voice. As the contours of the book emerged, Mike Gazzaniga
showed endless patience in helping me expand and refine my thinking.
Throughout, my colleague and friend Ron Schneebaum spent hours in
conversation with me exploring the nuances of the human experience of
thinking. My son, Jesse, offered critical analyses and insightful advice, and
my daughter Emily provided her unwavering encouragement to pursue
my passion. Other colleagues have also provided helpful criticism and
advice along the way. I am grateful particularly to Mike Soupois, Lori
Knapp, and my doctoral students.
Lastly, I must thank my wife Janet who reviewed every chapter through
multiple iterations, offering astute criticisms, thoughtful suggestions, and
untiring support. This work would not have been possible without her.

vii
 Why This Book?

I write in the belief that there are many individuals who, like me, find the
sheer power and sophistication of Generative Artificial Intelligence both
awe inspiring and disturbing. Daily articles flood the internet attempting
to demystify its processing systems. Others, just as often, raise the alarm
that this new technology will, if left unchecked, destroy personal privacy,
if not humanity itself. For all the insights they provide, all of them reflect
an abiding uncertainty about what our new- found power means for
the world.
That uncertainty is not only about the world around us, but, to be
direct, about what lies within us. While we may wonder how the technol-
ogy can write original poetry or explain the inner conflicts tearing at
Hamlet, or detail the nuances of quantum mechanics, we may wonder if
there is more to human beings thinking than to computers performing
trillions of operations a second. Are our ideas shaped by our experience of
meanings that cannot be understood in computational terms? Is here
more to our existence as conscious, self-aware beings than can be reduced
to the laws governing the physical matter of our bodies?
To forego any suspense, I argue that the answer to both questions is
“yes.” However, the pursuit of the answer is not simple. The discussion
involves complex concepts in multiple disciplines such as physics, biology,
computer science, psychology, and philosophy. Any attempt to address
them in depth would lead us into an ocean of tangents, for both scholars
and the general population. Thus, the book is based on the basic principle

ix
x Why This Book?

that it must be accessible to anyone who would care enough to ask the
question and rigorous enough to stand the test of critical reflection. Its
purpose is to provide clear pathways into and through the fundamental
gap between information processing and human thinking. It is intended
to engage readers in the experience of ideas and to understand their mean-
ing to us as human beings.
 Contents

1 Writing the Human Narrative  1

2 Where We Begin  9
Where Do We Begin?   9
From Consciousness to Computation  12
The Experience of Mind and Body  15
The Science of Reductionism  19
Understanding Ourselves  22
The Union of Mind and Body  24

3 The
 Science of Mindlessness 27
Two Selves  27
Thinking and the “Thinking Thing”  29
Descartes’ Mind Turned Inside Out  31
The Mind of the Human Animal  32
Complexity Overwhelms the Animal Paradigm  36
Computation and the Beginning of the Imitation Game  38
Computation as an Empirical Lens  39
The Cognitive Revolution  42
The Inversion of the Metaphor  45

4 Where Computation Ends 49

Defining Computation and Computational Systems  49
The Invariance of Computational Systems  53

xi
xii Contents

The Limits of a Functional View of Intelligence  54

When DNA Programs  56
On the Subjective as Objective  59
The Easy and the Hard Questions  62
Between Syntax and Semantics  64
Life Matters  67

5 Relational Science 71
Beyond the Boundaries of Empirical Reductionism  71
Quantum Fields  77
From Uncertainty to Organization  80
Dissipative Systems  83
Multiple Levels of Emergence  85

6 Life and Mind 89

Life Defines Itself  89
Enactive Emergence  91
The Importance of Constraint  96
Agency  97
Sentience  99
Mind 102
The Emergence of Social Evolution 102
The Interplay of Biological and Social Evolution 104
The Emergence of Symbolic Language 105
The Continuity of Body and Mind 109
The Emergence of Post-Biological Intelligence 111

7 Thinking
 as a Creative Act113
The Experience of Ideas 113
A New Compass 115
The Reality of Thought 117
Living Ideas 119
The Quest for Coherence 121
Indwelling 124
Intuition 127
Imagination 129
The Role of Formal Systems 130
The Role of Logic 132
The Creation of Meaning 134
 Contents  xiii

8 Emerging Minds137
The Agency of Intelligence 137
The Light from Within 140
Child’s Play 142
Biological Indwelling and Insight 144
Shared Awareness and Learning 147
The Emergence of Ideas 149
Learning Not to Think 151
The Self as Object 153
The Reality of Self 155
The Creation of Self 156

Index163
 CHAPTER 1

Writing the Human Narrative

In December of 2022, we entered a new age, an Age of Generative

Artificial Intelligence. That month, OpenAI, an artificial intelligence
research lab, introduced ChatGPT3, an AI tool, much like an app, that
can generate original poetry and prose, summarize massive sets of diverse
documents, translate languages, write original computer programs, and
engage in extended discussions with human beings with varied responses
based upon the flow of ideas. Even in this early stage of development,
ChatGTP3 was able to pass multiple-choice and essay exams at the gradu-
ate level. In many cases, any differences between the output produced by
the tool and human linguistic expression are virtually indistinguishable.
Behind the words and images generated lies the largest scale neural
network ever constructed. At present, it contains an informational base of
175 billion variables that it uses to analyze and produce natural language
and images. Essentially, it includes the information searchable on the
internet and digitized texts from journals, newspapers, and books. In gen-
eral terms, it is an example of a Large Language Model processor in which
the data yields syntactical patterns for words and phrases that can then be
applied to the construction of responsive linguistic sequences. The net
effect is that the output resembles the semantic character of human-­
generated language.
Microsoft has invested an additional $10,000,000,000 in OpenAI, but
there are also other players on the scene. A number of start-ups have
attracted huge investments, and Google has already built a rival Chatbot,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2024
J. Kane, The Emergence of Mind,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46835-3_1
2 J. KANE

LaMDA, that will likely be released as soon as solutions are found to a

number of issues related to business strategy and content quality. Google
and Meta are designing word and image search engines and generative
products and previously unimaginable applications for products like Siri
and Alexa and virtually any computationally-adaptable device. The impact
on the global economy will very likely run into trillions of dollars and
transform many industries, as well as daily life.
As these advances in Al make their way to the market, they will con-
tinue to improve and open yet unimagined possibilities. OpenAI released
ChatGPT4 in March, 2023, and ChatGPT5 is already in development. In
the near future, we should expect AI tools that will be able to design archi-
tectural structures, create video games and personalized movies, and write
programs with greater complexity than human programmers. It holds the
promise of transformative discoveries in science, such as finding effective
treatments for cancer and other diseases. The same holds true in various
fields of engineering, such as designing clean sources of energy to power
the world. So too can they create viral illusions that tear at the institutions
that make civilization possible.
Whatever choices we make, such technology not only empowers but
obscures its limitations. The researchers’ engineering generative AI tech-
nologies know fully well that their creations lack key dimensions of the
human mind. Their systems lack the processing capacity to effectively rep-
licate basic human skills, such as the ability to work around their own
internal problems or to exercise common sense. They cannot generalize
what they learn in one context to new and different circumstances. The
programs can generate complex probabilities but cannot understand the
concept of causes that a three-year-old takes for granted. Although the
great majority of leading engineers understand that AI tools are not sen-
tient and have no agency or purpose of their own, the general public,
being unaware of processes, does not grasp the void that lies behind its
linguistic products. The words generated are as devoid of meaning as a
mudslide.
However, we are just at the outset of the development of generative AI
systems. These problems may be seen as technical challenges that will fade
with every passing year. The present gap between human thinking and
information processors may appear to be a matter of algorithmic architec-
ture and computational power rather than differences in their fundamen-
tal nature. As Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer, wrote over
70 years ago, when the products of computational machines and human
 1 WRITING THE HUMAN NARRATIVE 3

beings are indistinguishable, any differences between them will become

superfluous. If that day is not now upon us, it will be soon.
In the coming years the power and ubiquity of technology may lead the
general public to revel in its utility rather than question if there are hidden
yet essential dimensions to the human mind that take form in our think-
ing. The idea will be dismissed uncritically as the once-upon-a-time pro-
jection of deities into thunderstorms and the cycles of the moon.
However, if Turing proves to be correct, it will not be because technol-
ogy has effectively replicated the human mind, but the misguided measure
of his test. If we were to assess any differences between human thinking
and the output of information processors, a statistical comparison of their
syntax would be most appropriate. If thinking is a matter of syntactical
patterns, the patterns produced can be compared objectively. Yet, Turing
suggests that subjective human judgment ought to be the measure of the
efficacy of programs producing natural language. Thus, he compares the
two not relative to their respective syntactical patterns but to their confor-
mity with the semantic meanings elicited by language.
As human beings, we tend to understand things in terms of our own
experience. When we hear language, or see it written, we understand the
words as having meaning based upon our own experience. When we hear
the word “blue,” we associate it with our own experience of the color. In
this context, we give the language produced by generative AI tools our
own experience of meaning. However, no matter how much the words
produced seem to be just like our own, they have no meaning whatsoever.
There is no experience of color in the word “blue”; there is no taste in the
word “sweet”; there is no life weighed in the words “to be or not to be.”
Generative AI products, no matter how much they may resemble our pat-
terns of language, have no more depth of meaning that a child’s “magic
eight ball.”
Generative AI cannot apprehend even the most basic elements of com-
mon human experience. Computer scientist Yejin Choi explains that these
elements that are so fundamental to our thinking that we don’t even
notice them, they are what she calls “dark matter” of intelligence. In the
physical universe, only about 5% of all matter and energy is observable
even with the most sophisticated instruments. We know nothing about
the remaining 95% of matter and energy other than that they affect the
gravitational force and speed of expansion of the universe. Our models of
the expansion of the universe would make no sense without them.
Similarly, there is in human thinking a tacit foundation that allows us to
4 J. KANE

make sense of the world. It serves as the foundation of logic and reason; it
serves as the origin of ideas and the organizational principles of our sys-
tems of thought. The sources of the meaning of our ideas and organiza-
tion in our thinking lie deep beneath the surface of the words inked on a
page or the sounds produced by a speaker.
The words we use, the thoughts that unfold as we speak and write, are
like water taken from an underground stream: we can access the source
but it remains ever-flowing beneath the surface. Their meaning is subject
to the laws of language but the meaning that creates them—that gives
purpose to their existence—is not found within the words themselves or
their patterns. All meaning is deeply rooted in our lives and experience as
human beings. It is that experience of meaning that resonates within us as
we hear and read words; it is that experience that differentiates our words
from algorithm. Understanding that we cannot directly perceive the sub-
jective origins of the experience of other human beings, the question arises
as how we can understand the substance and form of our experience as the
foundation of the human mind.
Consider that generative AI systems are designed to be responsive to
prompts. They answer questions; they direct their functions toward objec-
tives set for them. Human beings, on the other hand, ask questions. We
have things that we wish to know; we seek something we value, something
that responds to purposes that extend beyond the answers themselves. We
do not listen to the weather report to analyze meteorological information,
but to refine some of the choices we will make about the coat we will wear
or the region where we might like to move, or whether or not we will buy
an electric car. We ask questions in the context of the things we value,
great and small.
We attend to the information we receive as a source of illumination, as
a means of coherence that we might guide ourselves in our actions. We
don’t simply identify patterns in phenomena as do generative systems, but
seek coherence in that which we value. On a primitive level, we may value
food and shelter and attend to the environment around us in search of
clues to the resources we cannot yet apprehend.
Yet, we are not simply primitive beings. We not only hunger for food
but for human community; we seek others to share experience. Not only
driven by a need to secure our interests in challenging environments we
create bonds with others that help us unfold our capacities beyond our
individual interests. The bonds we form emerge as new elements of our
environment with its own unknown dimensions that we explore with
 1 WRITING THE HUMAN NARRATIVE 5

questions. Among them is our identity and the nature of those around us
much like ourselves.
Neither are we simply social animals, but conscious beings. We are
aware of our own consciousness—that we exist in some independent way
in a surrounding universe of apparent otherness. We seek to understand our
own existence… our origin, our place, our fate. We ask how in this mys-
tery we ought to live our lives. What shall we value? Do we have reason to
temper ourselves or to live with purpose beyond our own gratification?
These are not incidental questions but central to the creation of the
world’s spiritual traditions, to the formation of civilizations, to our great-
est works of literature, to our most expansive conceptions of the universe.
The questions that guide us in living our lives and in shaping who we
are, both individually and collectively, are not about ourselves as physical
beings only, but as physical beings imbued with the mystery of conscious-
ness. Whether we conclude that we are self-replicating strands of DNA or
children of divine origin, the question asked is one and the same. We can-
not deny that we ask it. But we can forget that we do and that the pursuit
of the question itself is essential to transform human beings into
being human.
This is not to suggest that we must continuously occupy ourselves with
the ultimate questions of our existence, but to propose that the very power
of generative AI to answer questions and to find patterns responsive to
them can obscure the type of thinking needed to understand what ques-
tions ought to be asked and what ends sought. These are the questions
that play out in the day-to-day, in listening to the weather report and
deciding how each day of our lives will be spent. It is not in the grand
declarations but in life lived, in the choices we make in the way we treat
others, in the food we eat, the companions we choose, in the way we treat
others we encounter and ultimately, the way we think about who we are
and what we ought to value. The very reason there is so much concern
that generative AI poses such a threat to humankind is that the programs
cannot ask these questions. It is not guided by any intention or its own
chosen objectives. Its power is not inherently nefarious but disintegrative;
it dissolves all order and purpose within a system that itself has no order or
purpose. It reduces all ideas into a vast universe of zeros and ones where
none has any claim to meaning or value beyond the zeros and ones them-
selves or the relations between them.
In this context, its vacuousness as a domain, its syntactical operational
structures and its lack of purpose make it the ideal vessel for the inscription
6 J. KANE

of externally determined content and intent. It is a perfect model of mind

so long as the mind itself is removed from all else in the universe, including
most notably a living body, and void of all experience. All that can exists
as meaning and purpose is defined exclusively as syntax. With the elevation
of syntax as meaning comes the dissociation of thinking from being, and
any sources of order or form their union might promote. When thinking
is defined as information processing, the spectrum of human experience
contracts to black and white, to patterns of zeros and ones.
Turing referred to his test as “the imitation game,” the capacity for
computational programs to imitate the patterns of human language.
Imitation is not creation. While human beings imitate, we are also capable
of creation, of imagining principles of coherence that can express them-
selves in ways unprecedented and unique. Creation is not a variation on a
theme, the application of a rule or the completion of a pattern. The act of
creating is not defined by its product but by the envisioning of new pos-
sibilities that break existing patterns. My capacity to play a piece of music
in the style of Mozart does not mirror his genius. The ability to write a
sonnet in the style of Shakespeare does not, as he did, illuminate the
human condition. The mimicry of the patterns of speech of a five-year-old
does not reveal the source of the endless questions about the blueness of
sky to why dogs have tails. Words have meaning only as they emerge from
lived experience or as they direct us to dwell within the images they evoke.
Ironically, many of the leading researchers into the human mind and
human thinking have turned to information processing and computational
modeling as a framework for understanding. Recognizing that subjective
experience is, by definition, personal rather than public, many psycholo-
gists, philosophers, and neuroscientists have sought to ground their
research in empirical data. Within that framework, human thinking may be
defined as systems of verbal behavior or neurochemical activities. In both
cases, the data is based upon the reduction of the phenomena observed
into the smallest discrete elements possible, which is then fitted into sys-
tematic, largely mathematical, form. Thus, the frameworks used necessar-
ily and absolutely define human thinking in algorithmic code. Thus, we
come full circle; the very assumptions we use to understand the generative
foundations of human thinking effectively preclude their existence. The
model of thinking that underlies generative AI, and the computational
theories of mind that dominate contemporary philosophy and psychology
begin with the exclusion of our experience of being alive, as having sensa-
tions and being conscious. To the extent that such a model guides us in
 1 WRITING THE HUMAN NARRATIVE 7

our thinking and in the cultivation of the cognitive capacities of future

generations, we will, with increasing force, alienate ourselves from our
own humanity and the world around us. The introduction of generative
AI now forces us to confront ourselves with the question of the origins
and formative dimensions of our minds that guide us to create coherent
systems of thought with both meaning and purpose.
Generative AI is the embodiment of the human mind envisioned by
computational theorists. The fact that we are living and conscious
beings capable of self-awareness and self-directed choice is dismissed from
consideration as only so much informational input and output. The pur-
pose of this book is to challenge that concept and offer an alternative in
which life and consciousness are central to the creation of human thought.
It is not intended to present an exhaustive study of generative AI, compu-
tational theories of mind, or the biological origins of consciousness. All
these fields have rich literatures of their addressing complex and nuanced
issues. All of them offer insights in their respective domains. That preci-
sion is achieved through a narrowing of focus. When we use telescopes to
peer at distant stars, the vastness of the universe that stretches out before
us can be lost.
In contrast to consideration of disciplinary questions and disputes
regarding the nature of the human mind and human thinking, our intent
is to revisit the broader aspects of the human condition that can be lost in
such contexts. For example, rather than focusing on the statistical identi-
fication of the syntactical processes used to produce language, our inquiry
focuses on subjective experience as the foundation for the meaning and
form of our thoughts, from the most basic utterings of infants to the high-
est of human intellectual achievements. Our thinking does not simply
occur; it occurs intentionally. The ideas that take form in our minds have
meaning and purpose that lie beyond the reach of a statistical analysis of
language.
We ground our work in the realities we experience, realities that initiate
action and that enable us to create coherent systems of thought. We pro-
pose that human thinking is rooted in our being—in all that we are physi-
cally, biologically, socially, and consciously. Our thinking embodies
purposes that are nowhere to be found in the properties of quantum par-
ticles or even in molecules of DNA. Physics and chemistry make the
human story possible but don’t control the narrative. Our experiences as
sentient and conscious beings are active within us. They are not mere bits
of information stored but active elements of the mind itself. They are the
8 J. KANE

vague feelings and images that underlie the questions we ask and judg-
ments we make, even in the most abstract and seemingly impersonal
circumstances.
We are at a rare moment in history where either we challenge the self-­
imposed limits of our understanding of our minds or allow technology
itself to define us in its image. This initial exploration of the human mind
as in the act of emergence is not intended as a final statement but as an
invitation to dialogue, one that will hopefully lead to heightened levels of
creativity and insight in all domains of human activity.
 CHAPTER 2

Where We Begin

Whatever we think of the stars, they are what they are and will be what
they will be. Whatever we think of ourselves we will become.

Where Do We Begin?
What, if anything, distinguishes human thinking from digital information
processing? The answer we find will depend upon the way we respond to
a more fundamental question about who and what we are as human
beings: recognizing that each of us experiences ourselves as conscious
beings and as physically embodied, what is the connection between these
two dimensions of our existence?
The question has a more immediate edge than one might imagine. In
2010, Ian Burkhart suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident that left
him unable to experience sensation in his right hand. His injury remains
to this day. Yet, a study first reported in April 2020 in the journal Cell,
explains that his sense of touch and his use of his hand have been substan-
tially restored.1 The restoration of the connection of his brain and hand
was made possible by the implantation of a tiny computer chip in his
motor cortex that was wired to a system of electrodes under his skin in his
hand. The technological loop created was able to amplify the susceptible

1
Ganzer, Patrick D., et.al. “Restoring the Sense of Touch Using a Sensorimotor
Demultiplexing Neural Interface.” Cell, vol. 181, issue 4, 2020, pp. 763–773.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Switzerland AG 2024
J. Kane, The Emergence of Mind,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46835-3_2
10 J. KANE

signals in Ian’s hand so that they could be interpreted by his brain and to
reverse the process so that the neural activity in his brain intended to direct
the movement of his hand could be communicated to his hand.
As remarkable as this achievement is, Ian’s case is but one example of a
growing field of research and technological development called Brain-­
Computer Interface (BCI)—one of any number of similar fields all point-
ing to the physical integration of neural and digital computational systems.
Beginning in early 1970s, researchers began to build upon the use of elec-
troencephalograms (EEGs) to analyze neural activity. Given the almost
unimaginable numbers of neurons and neural connections, identifying
meaningful patterns among them required the development of powerful
computers and complex algorithms. As Ian’s case demonstrates, technol-
ogy has now advanced sufficiently to interpret specific patterns of neural
activity to direct communication between his brain and his implanted
non-human computational device.
That technology is not limited to neuro/physio prostheses, but now
includes the communication of language. In July 2019, Facebook pub-
lished an article describing advancements in the use of sensors and
advanced algorithms to discern unspoken words directly from cortical
activity. Since then, the field has grown rapidly, with considerable invest-
ments being made by the corporate sector. One particular effort is Elon
Musk’s well-funded Neuralink Corporation, first founded in 2016. Now a
publicly traded company, it may be on its way to developing a generalized
neural prosthesis that researchers believe could be used to support or
replace neural functions virtually anywhere in the brain. Musk explains
that Neuralink’s plan is focused on the development of an implantable
device that would extend cognitive processing seamlessly into a “digital
layer above the cortex.” This “digital lace” as he calls it, would form a
“symbiotic” relationship with the brain with each exchanging information
and integrating functions with the other.
While some of these ambitions might seem most appropriate for science
fiction novels, the same could have been said of Startrek’s Captain Kirk’s
now outdated old-style flip phone. (Musk’s interest in neural implantation
devices actually began with his reading of the science fiction book series,
The Culture, by Lain Banks.) The advancement of technology is inevita-
ble, but just how far will it go? Will it one day be possible to replace entire
regions of the brain? If so, could we replace multiple regions and eventu-
ally the brain in its entirety? While such questions might seem laughably
impracticable, what makes us think that any limits exist? How far would be
 2 WHERE WE BEGIN 11

too far? What could act as a boundary of the brain function that could
separate the activity of carbon-based neurons from silicon-based circuits?
If we maintain that the function of neurons is to transfer bits of informa-
tion between themselves in complex patterns we otherwise call brain activ-
ity—whether that activity controls the secretion of bile in the liver or the
choices made in answering a question in math class—why could that same
function not be performed by sufficiently developed computer systems? If
the brain is a biological information processor, then all that stands between
us and machines must be reducible to engineering. In this context, reason
demands that once the functional information processes of neural activity
responsible for thinking are disassembled, they can be used to reverse engi-
neer a system functionally equivalent to a human brain. Any differences
between such a technology and our minds would be meaningless: in effect,
there would no aspect of our minds beyond the reach of technology or place
where our thinking might exist uniquely within us as living human beings.
Within this framework, any seemingly irreducible aspects of our minds
such as our experience of sensation or conscious self-awareness merely
feed into the system; they have no causal power. At most, they are the
products of neural processes and do not of themselves have any power to
affect the course of processing. Whether the algorithms that govern our
thinking are the result of the laws of physics expressed in a biological
entity or of codes buried in our DNA, they alone determine what and how
we think.
If our thinking amounts to the processing of information, and process-
ing according to the laws of physics as they govern biological functions,
our feelings, beliefs, and values play absolutely no role. In fact, nothing in
human experience—from a child wanting his parent when waking from a
nightmare to Michelangelo’s inspiration in sculpting David could be any-
thing more than molecular statistics.
In this context, the physical universe is a closed causal system: all that
exists and all that can exist in the physical universe owes its existence and
attributes to the properties of the most elementary of all particles of mat-
ter. There are no exceptions, not even for the human mind. Our con-
sciousness and all that we think, feel or value, are products of the
interactions of quantum particles, with no causal power of their own. In
essence, mind is a function of matter.
However, just as the notion of unembodied creative forces offers us
little when attempting to understand how they exert their influence of the
physical world, the leap from the properties of quantum particles to life,
12 J. KANE

sentience, and mind is no less a daunting matter. In the final analysis, in a

closed physical system, if consciousness exists in the way of subjective
experience, it lies ineffectually outside of the laws that govern the universe.
It has no power to serve as a source of intention or affect any change in
the course of events—even the course of events in our own minds.

From Consciousness to Computation

One of the primary frameworks in present-day philosophy and psychology
is that the human mind, like any other phenomenon, can be understood
in terms of its observable patterns of behavior. The “behavior” that can be
observed is linguistic. In this context, linguistic behavior is not viewed as
a form of symbolic representation any more than a thunderstorm might be
interpreted as a sign of Thor’s anger. As an empirical phenomenon, it sim-
ply is what it is. It exhibits structural patterns that can be represented in
mathematical models just like meteorological systems that determine the
path of a storm. We may have bodily sensations or emotions or an experi-
ence of the significance of an event or idea, but they are not factors that
need to be considered to construct a model of the thinking as a process.
When the conscious mind is defined in terms of the linguistic patterns, our
subjective experiences of emotion or sensation are simply irrelevant.
This separation of consciousness from the realm of subjective experi-
ence is deeply embedded in intellectual traditions dating back to ancient
Greece but became a defining methodological element of modern science
in the work of the seventeenth-century French philosopher, Rene
Descartes. His method was deceptively simple: doubt everything that can
be doubted and accept as true only that which you can affirm with your
own mind. The most effective way to do that, he reasoned, was to reduce
all phenomena to their most basic components and to connect them by
the use of reason alone. At the outset, he recognized that he could doubt
everything that came to him through his senses, even the existence of his
own body.
However, he could not doubt that he was thinking. Even if the content
of thoughts could be mistaken, he reasoned that he could not be mistaken
about the fact that he experienced himself thinking. Following upon that
realization, he concluded that he could be absolutely certain that he
existed as a thinker. However, he did not attribute to this thing he called
his “self” anything other than that it must exist and that it has the capacity
to think. He defined it as a “thinking thing.” In so doing, he shifted his
 2 WHERE WE BEGIN 13

focus from the indisputable experience of his own thinking to his existence
as an object that lay outside of his experience. He moved from a founda-
tion in the subjective experience of thinking to the elimination of that very
experience as a domain of inquiry.
His efforts to apply his procedure were very much influenced by the era
in which he lived, but the method of inquiry he created opened the way to
a new era of modern science. As ironic as it may seem to us now, the first
discovery he made using his scientific method was not about the world but
about his own subjective experience of his consciousness; the first object
before his scientific eye was his “self” as a thinker. He proposed that con-
sciousness and the physical body were fundamentally distinct and separate
in their nature. In his view, the mind existed as a rational entity within the
eternal purity of the domain of God, while the body was a member of the
animal kingdom driven by impulses and instincts. This dualism proved
highly problematic as it provided no principled way for the mind and the
body to interact with one another.
Although contemporary computational models of mind do not argue
that the human mind is either of divine origin or rational, a new dualism
of mind and body has arisen in an empirically-generated context. In this
case, the focus of inquiry is on the patterns of language, independent of
any subjective meaning that might be associated with any given words or
groupings of words. Those subjective experiences include all bodily sensa-
tions, impulses, and emotions.
Computational models are statistical in nature and attempt to identify
mathematical consistencies among words, and sometimes letters, as infor-
mational units rather than symbolic representations of phenomena. The
statistical models are configured as algorithms, which can then be used to
produce language patterns similar to human beings. The more similar the
patterns in more diverse contexts, the more the algorithmic models are
said to replicate the patterns of human mind as it can be defined by its use
of language.
Algorithms consist of sets of rules that sequence varied mathematical
operations. Those rules generate sequences specifically responsive to lan-
guage prompts or other types of informational input such as visual images
or sounds (like the human voice). The algorithmic processing does not
change with the meaning we might associate with words but with the sta-
tistical patterns in the letters and groupings of letters we call words. Nor is
the processing changed by the computational mechanism that performs
14 J. KANE

the operations required. Philosopher David Chalmers refers to the laws of

the algorithm as “organizationally invariant.”
Among the physical mechanisms to implement the algorithms is the
human brain. We may think of the brain as having an independent stand-
ing, as being capable of organizing itself and determining for itself what it
will do. However, to the extent that the processes of the brain are known
by the patterns of language produced, and to the extent that those pat-
terns can be reproduced by algorithms implemented in other computa-
tional devices such as computers, the brain itself has no special powers. In
short, the brain is no different than any other implementation system.
Thus, the mind need not be limited to the brain, or more generally, the
body. This is a far cry from Descartes’ dualism, but it is a dualism
nonetheless.
Both are products of reductionism: the breaking down of the human
mind into what are perceived to be its most basic components and recon-
structing whatever properties the mind may be said to possess. When the
mind is language and language amounts to statistical patterns, the body
simply is functionally irrelevant. Even if the argument is made that the
human mind is conscious, that property itself follows as a consequence of
processing and has no role in either creating or implementing the algo-
rithms used.
The logic of the arguments is sound if its fundamental reductive prem-
ise is accepted. But must we accept it? Can we understand the human
mind by analyzing the statistical patterns of language and synthesizing
algorithms that produce the same, or nearly the same, patterns? Can we
understand human thinking as the patterning of language? If so, can we
conclude that the factors leading to use of language are exactly the same
as those we might use to copy such use? Consider the question in the fol-
lowing terms. A composer writing a piece of music for a violin scribes his
score in musical notation. A deaf statistician reads the sheet music and
writes the patterns he finds as algorithms. Does the statistician understand
the mind of the composer? Does he understand the purpose that led to the
formation of the mathematical patterns he found? Did his algorithms con-
vey any of the meaning they carry in sound? Could sound itself exist for
him? Could meaning travel through it?
One might respond that it is possible to model the composer’s efforts
statistically and to produce musical scores that demonstrate the applica-
tion of rules that do reflect the origins and purposes of the composer’s
efforts. However, the source of the music within the composer with its
 2 WHERE WE BEGIN 15

power to shape sound (sound the deaf statistician cannot hear) is absent
from consideration. Similarly, the meaning of the experience it is intended
to create is lost to functions between numbers.
These same questions apply to generative AI. When asked to produce a
scene of an argument over a parking ticket in the style of Shakespeare, the
technology will produce language patterns similar to those of the Bard
himself. Can Shakespeare’s genius be conveyed in the patterns of his
words? Can it be understood where human experience has no place? The
power of technology lies in its capacity to imitate patterns of language that
human beings take to have meaning beyond the patterns themselves. The
meaning that may be carried is created only within the context of human
experience—within the context of living and being in the world. The
reductive framework that has proven so powerful a framework for under-
standing the inanimate universe since the seventeenth century simply can-
not extend past the boundary it has created between matter and mind.

The Experience of Mind and Body

Philosopher and Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, in his seminal work,
Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, argues that
Descartes made a fundamental error in separating the mind and body.
Among his many contributions in understanding the human brain, he has
articulated the role of afferent neurons that allow us to experience sensa-
tions directly. These neurons create “somatic markers” that then integrate
with many different regions of the brain and central nervous system to
generate perceptions, feelings, and emotions. In this context, we do not
experience the activation of these neurons as information about objects
but as the subjective reality of our own existence. Such experience is not
in the mind as much as it is the foundation of mind itself in a given instant.
Our bodily sensations are not separate from our emotions, nor are our
emotions separate from our cognitive processes and decision making. Our
judgments are not borne solely of rational processes but incorporate
immediate inner experiences that themselves serve as genera-
tive images rather than as symbolic representations of something else.
Damasio explains that these images are grounded in direct somatic experi-
ences of varying types. They not only provide a fluid structure to our
cognitive processes but include non-specific anticipations and expectations
of what may yet be found. Thus, our thoughts emerge in a dynamic con-
text of subjective experience; they may be represented in symbolic form
16 J. KANE

but draw their generative power from the immediacy of subjective experi-
ence. Crystalizing his concept, Damasio writes, “Thought is an acceptable
word to denote the flow of such images.”2 Formal rules apply in the struc-
ture of language, but our thoughts are not the products of those for-
mal rules.
Philosopher Herbert Dreyfus, observes that “all intelligent behavior
must be traced back to our sense of what we are…something we can never
explicitly know.”3 The concept of “what we are” is both immediate as
experience and broad in implication. Our experience, other than as we
may reflect upon it as an object, carries the force of our being alive and
conscious in the world. It is not what we see but the means by which we
transform the impression made upon us by light into objects with mean-
ing. It is not what we think “about” but the source of the effort to trans-
form subjective meaning into shared experience. Physical objects act as
they are acted upon; they initiate nothing. Living organisms can initiate
actions that would otherwise not occur by the laws of physics. As human
beings, we not only initiate physical actions but create meaning. Our
thinking is not reducible to the formal processing of abstract informa-
tional units or electrical impulses, even as they may be mimicked in some
abstract or mechanical form.
Among our most cherished beliefs is that there is something distinct in
our existence as conscious, self-aware human beings. Since Aristotle first
argued that our capacity to think distinguishes us from all the creatures of
the earth, our minds have been central to our concept of what it means to
be human. In his landmark book, written more than a half century ago,
What Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence, Dreyfus
explains,

If we are on the threshold of creating artificial intelligence we are about to

see the triumph of a very special conception of reason. Indeed, if reason can
be programmed into a computer, this will confirm an understanding of man
as an object, which Western thinkers have been groping toward for two
thousand years but which they only now have the tools to express and
implement. The incarnation of this intuition will drastically change our
understanding of ourselves. If, on the other hand, artificial intelligence

2
Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotions in the Making of
Consciousness, Harcourt, Inc. 1999, p. 318.
3
Dreyfus, Herbert. What Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence, Revised
Edition, Harper Colophon Books, 1972, p. 57.
 2 WHERE WE BEGIN 17

should turn out to be impossible, then we will have to distinguish human

from artificial reason, and this too will radically change our view of ourselves.4

Given the stakes, he concludes that a “critique of artificial reason” was

required. Now, the question arises as to how we are to understand our-
selves in the light of artificial intelligence. When Dreyfus wrote, AI existed
in college labs and corporate research facilities, but today, it travels with us
in our pockets. Generative AI now allows us to use natural language to ask
complex questions and receive well-articulated responses with refined
conceptual nuance. The challenge posed to philosophers 50 odd years ago
now greet us with our morning coffee. Even as many of us may have inter-
est in exploring the capacities of this transformational technology, every
discovery we make only intensifies the question of what it means about us
as human beings.
The assumptions we hold about our uniqueness as human beings and
the significance of our immediate experience will last only so long as we
can distinguish the word products of technology from our own thoughts.
That time is near its end. Whereas Dreyfus said his times required a “cri-
tique of artificial reason,” our time requires a critique of our understand-
ing of how we think and what we are as conscious human beings. Our
concern is not how far computational devices will evolve or what they can
do, but how we might best develop our most essential and highest capaci-
ties. Whether we are beings created in the image of God or Aristotelian
“rational animals” or biological computational machines, our future is of
our making. Whether our cognitive gifts began with the bite of the apple
in the Garden of Eden or evolved just as Darwin imagined or exist as an
artifact of random fluctuations in quantum fields, our thinking is both
central to our identity and critical to the judgments we will make in shap-
ing who we will become. Maybe we are no more than information proces-
sors; maybe we are aggregations of molecules like all other physical objects.
But we ought not to simply assume we are. We ought not to be so
impressed by the power of technology that we use it to define ourselves.
Thus, we ought not to be focused on the word patterns that may be
found in our thinking—patterns that may be replicated by algorithms fed
with sufficient data. Rather than assuming that human thinking can be
understood as production of word patterns, we conceive of it as the capac-
ity to explore and express the realities we experience as human beings. The

4
Ibid., pp. 78–79.
18 J. KANE

question we ask is how we can understand the unfolding of our subjective

experience into conceptual frameworks of everything from the unwritten
rules of social interaction to mathematical formulations of quantum
mechanics. How does our thinking enable us to form dynamic conceptual
systems that not only embody broad, informal organizational principles
but also enable us to grasp the organizational principles that govern the
world around us?
At our most fundamental level, we experience ourselves as physical
objects subject to the laws of physics. In a purely biological context, we
experience ourselves as living organisms and share the same fundamental
drives with all other forms of life. Socially, we experience ourselves as
members of multiple layers of social groups unfolding and adapting our-
selves in accordance with all the customs and traditions that define human
societies. Linguistically, we experience words as having meanings in
images, bodily sensations, memories, and emotions. Existentially, we expe-
rience being in the world and having a unique identity among all else that
may exist. All of these realities of our lives are subjective and fraught with
error, but they are undeniable in their generative force. They set thinking
in motion; without them, processing, such as it may be, would never
occur. These experiences, though beneath the surface of language, give
meaning and power to words. They are the source of questions we ask and
the value we find in our discoveries.
These are not mere products of probability played out in the imagined
randomness of the corner of the universe between our ears. They are the
foundations of our minds. Their effluence is our thinking. They are funda-
mental aspects of our humanity and cannot be reduced to bits of data or
strings of computation. Our thoughts are expressions of the dynamic bal-
ances and symmetries active in maintaining the coherence of each and all
the layers of our existence from our physical bodies to our conscious
minds. Each idea that emerges within us arises within the context of all
these layers of our existence and is shaped by the principles that give each
of those layers its unique system of coherence. The strings of verbal behav-
ior that form our thoughts are not borne of algorithms but of our dwell-
ing within the reality of our own skins and our consciousness of our own
existence. All that we may say, no matter how personal or seemingly objec-
tive, takes its form and function within the context of our subjective expe-
rience of being.
Thus, we ask how can we understand the foundations of our thinking
in the multiple layers of our subjective existence. If we begin with this
Another random document with
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At first, when the girl spoke to him in her frank fashion about his
home, and asked him if this and the other in her own were like it,
Mark hesitated, and scarcely knew what to say, whilst his face
flushed painfully. How could this dainty maiden realise the difference
between her parents beautiful house and its surroundings and the
cottage he called home! So he turned the talk from furniture to
flowers, and being great on this subject, he delighted and instructed
Dolly by telling her about those she loved, and such as grew in his
father's garden.

As time went on, Mark, after thinking over the matter, decided to tell
this girl friend the exact story of his past life, and to describe, with the
utmost minuteness, the cottage home and its contents, as well as
the narrow circle in which his parents were satisfied to move.

Dolly listened attentively, picturing the while all that Mark was taking
such pains to make clear to her. She could guess, too, what it cost
him; but when he finished she bravely looked in his face and said—

"When people have lived so long in one way they cannot change,
Mark, can they? They are like old trees—if you try to take them up
and plant them somewhere else, the roots cling, and there is no
moving them without breaking some. If people choose to live in a
little house and wait on themselves, instead of in a big one and be
waited on by other people, it is their own business, and nobody has
a right to find fault. One working bee is worth a lot of drones, is he
not? Any way, if your mother has no servants, she has not them to
grumble about all the time she is out calling, as my mamma's visitors
do. I do get tired of hearing them, when I am dressed up and sitting
in the drawing-room sometimes, and I wish they would talk of
something else. So does mamma. I mean to learn how to do
everything, and then when I am grown-up, and have a house and
servants, I shall be able to tell them what they do not know."

Mark agreed with the wisdom of this resolution; then he said:

"You must not think we are without anything that is really necessary.
We have good food, beautifully cooked, and clothes, only they have
to be taken great care of. I know my parents are very fond of me;
only somehow, I have never been a boy like other boys. I never ran,
and jumped, and raced, and got into scrapes, and tore my clothes, or
got sent off to bed, as the neighbours' lads did. I think I was born
rather old."

Dorothy laughed at this, and Mark joined her, then added that he had
been growing younger every day since he came to Claybury, and it
was all through Mr. and Mrs. Mitcheson and herself.

"But you work fearfully hard, Fred says."

"Because I want to get one scholarship at least—two if possible. I

cannot live at Grimblethorpe always, and unless I can give a very
good reason for doing so, my father will insist on my going home,
and working as he does. He calls it 'keeping in the old rut.' If I had
known no different life, I might have done it, but not now."

Months grew into years. Mark Walthew laboured incessantly at his

studies. Daniel would have been more or less than human if he had
not been proud of the place won by his son, of the reports which
came at each term's end, and the prizes he carried off. Mrs.
Walthew's glad tears ran down her cheeks, and even her husband
had to turn his back upon her, that she might not see why his
spectacles needed so much polishing before he could read what
"schoolmaster had written about Mark."

The boy was no country lout or awkward bookworm to look at, but
was growing into a fine youth, whose manners would disgrace no
society. His mother's training had given him right habits to begin with,
and under Mr. Mitcheson's roof he had learnt those practised by
persons in a higher position. Frank, yet modest, simple but refined,
sincere without forwardness, and with a mind richly stored for one so
young, Mark Walthew was indeed a son on whom a father might
have rejoiced to bestow all the advantages money could give.

But all the while Mr. Walthew was saying, "Barbara, this is Mark's
last term. In July, he will come home to stay."
She, with a sinking of the heart, could only answer, "Yes; he will have
had the three years you promised him," and hope for a solution as to
future difficulties which she could foresee, though her husband could
not. Whilst he, nevertheless, confessed that he was not altogether
easy in his mind as to what all this learning would lead to.

CHAPTER IV.
A NEW FACE.

CLAYBURY SCHOOL was richly endowed, and had many valuable

scholarships open to candidates born within a certain radius of its
walls. It had been Mark Walthew's desire to win one of these,
believing that if he succeeded his father would consent to his
continuing his studies after the allotted three years.

His success exceeded his most sanguine hopes. He won two of the
best, and even without further help from Mr. Walthew, might work on
for three more years, and, he trusted, win further distinctions.

"Scholarships!" said old Daniel, when informed of Mark's success.

"Hasn't he been getting scholarships these last three years? He went
for learning, and he should have put some by for future use by this
time. I don't know what you mean by two scholarships. I always
lumped the whole concern, and called it learning. Well, if he has got
a double dose, so much the better; I reckon it will last longer. And
when he is settled down at home, he will have plenty to serve him
his lifetime."
Then came the struggle. Mark bared his heart, and told his hopes to
his father, and was answered by a torrent of reproaches—told that
he wanted to set up for a fine gentleman, instead of keeping to the
old rut, and doing the work his father had been proud to do well.

This story begins with some of the words used by the wrathful old
man; many others, far more bitter and cruel, sank deep into Mark's
memory, and grieved him to the heart, but they need not be repeated
here.

"If," said Mr. Walthew, "you are resolved to turn your back on home,
and choose a new road for yourself, go, and never darken my doors
again. But if you think of being kept in idleness by the old father's
money, you will find your mistake out; I will never leave you a penny!
You choose now—once and for all!"

"Then I must choose to go, father," said Mark. "God has given me
some talents to account for, and I must use them. I will never ask
you for money; but some day I hope I shall hear you say I have
chosen wisely. If you are not now proud of my success—and, oh, I
had so counted on hearing you and mother say, 'Well done, Mark!'—
you shall not be ashamed of me in after years."

"I am proud of you, Mark," cried Mrs. Walthew, "so proud that I would
not have you stay and be tied down from youth to age, to such a life
as we have led! We are too old to change; but for you it would be a
living death. Go, my son, my one darling, if so be you can choose,
and have no fear of want before your eyes. I have been twenty-eight
years always going the same daily round, without change in
anything, except the growing older. Talk of money! What is it worth if
it never gives a day's brightness, and the only pleasure the owner
has is the being able to say, 'I have so many thousands of pounds,
or hundreds of acres'?"

"Listen, my boy. It is terrible for a wife to take the opposite side to her
husband, but I could not bear to think of your growing into a man like
your father. Not that he is dishonest! To gain a hundred pounds, he
would not take a penny wrongfully, or refuse to pay what is fairly due.
He has only robbed himself and me of everything that money could
have bought in the way of happiness for ourselves, or enabled us to
give it to other people. Those who have wealth, and neither the heart
to spend nor give of their abundance, are the poorest of the poor.
You may be blessedly rich with very little money."

Need it be said that Daniel Walthew was not present when his wife
spoke these words to her son? They cheered Mark, for they told him
that his mother's blessing would be on his head, his mother's prayers
ever offered on his behalf. And both hoped that in time the father's
views might change. How could he stand singly against the world?

The world meant Claybury and the country round, for naturally
Mark's success had made his friends proud of him—none more so
than the Mitchesons, and most of all his friend Dolly. Many a time the
true-hearted girl had cheered the boy on, until her own brothers used
to say that the adopted one took the first place of all in her thoughts,
and had more than an eighth share thereof.

Mr. Mitcheson tried to move Mr. Walthew from his resolve, but in
vain. The headmaster of the school used his influence, and spoke in
such terms of Mark's talents and industry, that any other man would
have been delighted beyond measure to call him son.

Not so Daniel Walthew. "I don't hold with learning that takes a man
out of his proper spear, and makes him ashamed of the honest work
his father does," said he, and refused to hear any argument on the
other side, or to speak again on the subject.

So the cottage door closed behind Mark Walthew, and all the articles
purchased for his use went with him. The old man would not suffer a
scrap belonging to him to remain, and the goodly pile of handsome
books which had brightened the dingy parlour no longer lay on its
table, to tell of the boy's school victories.

Daniel Walthew neither spoke of Mark nor allowed any other person
to mention his name.
In his heart he must have felt for the sorrow of his faithful wife, for he
did not hinder her from receiving letters; and he knew that the tidings
they brought must be good by the glad light on her face, though
tears often accompanied it—tears because her husband did not
share her joy.

Mr. Mitcheson still transacted Daniel's legal business, found new

investments for his hoards, and made out deeds when some fresh
purchase was completed. But he felt equal pity and indignation at the
sight of his self-willed client, and his inability to value the good gift
bestowed on him in the shape of his talented and worthy son.

Years passed on. Mark did wonders, and his friends rejoiced that his
career had more than fulfilled their most sanguine expectations.

He was at Claybury, the honoured guest of the headmaster of the old

school, and his name was mentioned in the columns of the principal
local papers. Copies of these came to Mrs. Walthew, who, entering
the kitchen gently, found her husband eagerly reading the
paragraphs relating to his boy.

At sight of her, he angrily thrust the paper between the bars and saw
it burn to ashes. But his wife had caught the expression on his face
as he read, and thanked God for this, as for a ray of light and hope.

"He is not so hard as he seems," she said to herself. And this she
not only thought, but told her son in a letter, written in a cramped
hand and imperfectly spelled, but which the youth kissed—soft-
hearted fellow that he was—because it came from that dear
unselfish mother whom he had only seen very rarely for seven long
years.

He was turned four-and-twenty, tall, straight, and healthy, despite

hard brain work, for he had lived temperately, taken outdoor
exercises, and not "burned the candle at both ends."

There was a fair face that lighted at his coming—a warm, loving
heart that did not try to hide its gladness, when, at an evening
gathering at the headmaster's house, in honour of his old pupil, Dolly
Mitcheson's hand was clasped in that of Mark Walthew.

Dorothy was twenty-two now, and for years past she and Mark had
known that each held the first place in the other's heart. Friends—
adopted brother and sister!—these might be and were sweet
relationships; but that which subsisted now was nearer and dearer
still.

Dolly had been wooed by wealthy suitors. Mark's father would never
break his word, so that he had only himself to rely upon; but she
knew that a time would come when her lover would be able to claim
his bride, and offer a home of his own winning. And Mark knew that
wealth had sought in vain for Dorothy's regard, and that she would
wait, no matter how long, for her one love.

"There is one chance as to old Daniel," said Mr. Mitcheson to his

wife. "He will hate to go to any other lawyer; it would be stepping out
of his rut. He may not make a will at all. He has said he will leave
nothing to Mark. Let him die intestate, and the lad will get the money,
and the old man keep his word."

The same thought had passed through Mrs. Walthew's mind; and, if
truth may be told, through that of Daniel also.

Before Mark left Claybury, he paid a brief visit to Grimblethorpe, and

saw his mother; not in the cottage—never would he cross its
threshold without his father's leave—but in a field-path, between the
waving corn, they walked and talked together, whilst Daniel Walthew
kept a business appointment with Mr. Mitcheson at Claybury.

The mother fed on that happy meeting for many a day—looking back
on it, and forward to the next.

Winter came, and sturdy old Daniel, who had never known a day's
illness before, was attacked by severe bronchitis, and confined, not
only to house, but to bed for many weeks. It would have been going
out of the regular rut to have outside help; so Barbara toiled and
watched, and nursed him tenderly, getting often hard words and
never thanks—for Daniel was a most impatient patient. It was only
when he was fairly well again, and grumbling over his sadly-
neglected plots, that Barbara's strength gave way. She was simply
worn out with loss of rest and overwork. She had been as hale as
Daniel; as independent of doctors and their physic; but now a great
dread fell upon her husband. What if his wife were to die? He had
always made sure she would outlive him, and counted on her careful
nursing to the last.

Who was to nurse her? They had kept themselves to themselves.

They had no neighbours in the ordinary sense, and were unused to
asking favours of anyone.

Worse still, Daniel must go to Claybury on the very day that Barbara
broke down, as deeds had to be signed, and the other party to them
would come a long way to meet him.

Barbara suggested the name of an elderly woman who would bear

her company during his absence, and she further said, "There are
nurses at Claybury. Ask Mr. Mitcheson to give you the name of one."

The lawyer felt sorry to see the trouble of his stout old client, despite
his stubbornness and unreasonable treatment of Mark, and called
Mrs. Mitcheson into consultation about finding a nurse for Mrs.
Walthew.

"I think I can find one," she said. "I will do my best, for I am grieved
to hear of Mrs. Walthew's illness. No doubt she has broken down
through overwork and anxiety."

When Daniel Walthew was ready to return, the nurse was

forthcoming. She was young, and pleasant to look upon, but such a
picture of neatness! No frizzled hair or finery, but smooth braids
under a cottage bonnet, whilst wholesome-looking prints, ample
aprons, and snug caps, with stout serviceable boots for outside, and
noiseless slippers for indoor wear, composed her visible wardrobe.
How deft she was in her movements! How tender in her manner
towards the poor invalid! How clever in preparing little things to tempt
her appetite, and how patient and considerate to Daniel himself!

The old man saw his wife's face become more hopeful-looking, and
in time overspread with a faint colour. He noted that her spirits
improved, and that this young presence had a cheering effect on
himself, for the nurse told bright tales, and as her patient gained
strength, went singing about the cottage in a voice that sounded
wondrously sweet, when compared with anything he had ever heard.

Barbara and her young nurse had always plenty to talk about, but
sometimes they stopped suddenly when Daniel came in. He noticed,
too, that she had very pretty ways, and what he called "lady hands,"
and yet how clever they were at whatever they attempted!

Barbara went on improving to a certain point, and then stopped. The

doctor was puzzled, and said so. Day after day passed, and no
progress was made. Then she began to go back a little. In mortal
dread, Daniel consulted the nurse, who calmly answered, "Mrs.
Walthew wants a medicine which only you can give her. She wants
her son's arms round her neck, and the sight of his face."

An angry exclamation fell from Daniel's lips, and he left the cottage
for a time. When he returned the nurse was standing with her
outdoor garments on and her box packed ready to depart, as it was
the carrier's day for Claybury.

"You will not leave her!" he cried, aghast at the sight and at the tears
of his wife.

"I would not, if I could do more for her, but I cannot stay to see her
die when it is in your power to save her. If Mrs. Walthew dies, the
blame will be on your head."

The nurse looked fearlessly at Daniel, who turned from her to his
wife as these plain words fell on his ears.
"Have your will," he said. "She must be saved. It is human nature for
a mother to want her only son."

Joyfully the nurse prepared a telegram, and ran with it to the post-
office, Daniel watching the while beside his wife. Not many hours
later Mark stood by his mother, and that too by his father's wish, and
from that moment Mrs. Walthew began to mend.

"I may have been wrong in keeping in one rut all my life, and keeping
other people at a distance," said old Daniel. "Nurse Dora has taught
me a good many lessons in a few weeks, more than I had learned in
seventy years before. I don't know how we shall do without her, and
she will have to leave us soon, she says. Here is Mark, far and away
happier without money than mine has ever made me. That is a good
thing. For I have said I will not leave him any, and I will not break my
word."

"Do not make a will at all," said Nurse Dora.

"But I shall, my dear," said the old man, his eyes twinkling with a
knowing expression, such as Mark had never seen in them before. "I
shall make a will, that I may leave you a legacy. And there is no need
to trouble for a way out of the difficulty. I never said I would not give
Mark anything. I am free to do that, and I am not sure but what there
is more pleasure in giving than leaving, for you can see the fruits of
one, and not the other."

"Ah, Miss Dorothy," he continued, "the old man is not quite so blind
as you thought! You have not come to speak to me of late years, but
you have some of the child's face left yet, and you favour your
mother. And my ears have caught old words now and then, and I
know how good and true a heart my lad has won, and what a clever
housewife and nurse can be joined to a born lady. You have won old
Daniel as well as young Mark, and all I can say is, 'May God bless
you both, and forgive me!'"

Is it worth while to add another word? To tell how Dolly Mitcheson's

wise resolve, "to learn everything," brought good fruit, or to speak of
the way in which Daniel opened his purse as well as his heart, or of
the renewed health of Mrs. Walthew, the changed cottage, the
abandoned rut, the perfect union between the faithful young pair
when they twain became one, or of the manner in which Daniel kept
his word?

He gave a handsome sum to Mark, and that, too, before his

marriage; and when he and Barbara have done with the rest, it will
go to "Nurse Dora," as old Daniel delights to call his daughter-in-law.
No fear that this bequest will disturb the true union between Mark
and his wife, despite the power put into her capable hands by the
Married Women's Property Act!

Dorothy tells her husband in confidence, that however proud she

may be of him, his devoted love and his great attainments, the
conquest on which she plumes herself most of all is her victory over
old Daniel's prejudices, and on having coaxed him out of the narrow
path to which he had restricted himself for threescore years and ten.

THE END.

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay.

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