IS THE MIND IN THE BODY? 457 



It is, indeed, too late in the world's history to try to revive the 

 crude materialism of the past. Whatever else the philosophers have 

 done, they have fixed our attention upon the striking distinction be- 

 tween mental phenomena and physical. He who has once grasped this 

 may be a semi-materialist — an unconscious materialist — as is the plain 

 man to-day, notwithstanding his assertion that the mind is immaterial ; 

 and as is his more learned neighbor the ' interactionist ' psychologist, 

 of whom I spoke in a recent paper in this journal. 2 But he can 

 scarcely be a materialist out-and-out. 



Hence, men have felt impelled to turn to other ways of making 

 clear the relation of mind and body. Some have said that conscious- 

 ness is a function of the brain; some, that it is the inside of that 

 which, regarded from the outside, is brain-change; some, that it is the 

 reality to which physical phenomena may be referred as appearance. 



It is not well to let any one of these statements pass without 

 scrutiny. What do we mean when we say that the mind is a func- 

 tion of the brain? Do we mean only that, given certain changes 

 in the brain, certain mental phenomena come into being? It still 

 remains to ask how the mental phenomena are related to the brain. 

 Are they in there? and if not, where are they? or are they anywhere, 

 in any intelligible sense of the word? The word ' function' is not 

 a word to conjure with. We may call motion a function of brain 

 molecules, if we choose; but evidently a memory or a feeling of pain 

 is not a function of this kind, and the question still confronts us: 

 What kind of a function is it? 



As to the statement that mental phenomena may be regarded as 

 the inside of that which, looked at from the outside, is brain-change — 

 this we may take as merely 'a manner of speech,' as a something to 

 say to troublesome persons who ask us difficult questions and must 

 be answered at all hazards. When we say that seeds are inside of 

 an orange, we know what we mean. They are things that occupy space, 

 and can be found in the spaces that they occupy. A leather purse 

 may be lined with silk, and it may contain silver; but try to line 

 a leather purse with painful emotions, and to fill it with hopes and 

 expectations! We play with the words ' inside' and 'outside' when 

 we talk in this way, and it is not proper to play when one is philoso- 

 phizing, some learned men to the contrary notwithstanding. 



Nor should the words 'appearance' and 'reality' be abused reck- 

 lessly. They have a proper meaning, and we ought to keep to it. We 

 say that a tree seen at a distance looks small, but really is large; and 

 we say that a stick stuck into water looks crooked, but really is straight. 

 Certain experiences we look upon as appearances, and certain others, 

 which for some reason we regard as more satisfactory or more normal, 



'Popuxab Science Monthly, February, 1907. 



