292 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



perceived, let us say tactually, before. But / know that, 

 before I could perceive in any form the cerebral parallelism 

 that is supposed to accompany ray seeing the lamp, there 

 must first have been a perceivable change in the retina and 

 nerves, or the tactile skin and nerves. These must be 

 changed before I can perceive the cerebral change that 

 corresponds to my seeing the lamp. Thus the so-called 

 parallel effects would always be late with regard to that 

 to which they are said to be " parallel " in other words, 

 there would be no parallelism at all. 



Thus on the basis of strict idealism the parallelistic 

 theory is a simple impossibility. 1 Idealism therefore strictly 

 implies that the series of bodily causality with regard to my 

 body when I am acting is broken. In other words : Idealism 

 implies vitalism in a certain field of reality. We repeat : 

 it is for this reason and for no other that we " understand " 

 vitalism. 2 



We have shown by an analysis which was free from 

 any metaphysical prepossessions whatever that the willing 

 "Ego" plays its elemental part in my acting, and we 

 have now proved by another analysis, similar to the 

 first but polemical, that any kind of " parallelism ' : is 

 impossible on the basis of idealism, pure or impure. Our 

 arguments, of course, hold good on an idealistic basis 



1 There are many authors that have not realised this truth. Verworn, 

 for instance, in his Allgemeine Physiologic begins by establishing pure idealism, 

 then concludes wrongly that all science is psychology (comp. page 283, note 

 1) as he does not see that the Given consists of two parts, only one of 

 which is objectified in space and at the end, strange to say, rejects vitalism 

 and advocates the physico-chemical explanation of life most emphatically. 



2 Compare the various writings of H. Bergson (Essai sur Us donntes 

 immediatcs de la Conscience, 5th ed., Paris, 1906 ; Mati&re et Memoir e, 1896). 

 There are many points of contact between his and my way of regarding 

 reality and life in particular. 



