THE RELATION OF MIND AND BODY 295 



further and no higher. A mere organism, regarded simply as 

 such, fulfils its biological destiny blindly and without evidence 

 of consciousness ; and just as physical conceptions are inade- 

 quate to express the phenomena of vegetative life, so are 

 biological conceptions inadequate to express the phenomena 

 of conscious existence. 



What characterises any distinctively physiological or bio- 

 logical phenomenon is that whether it relate to the body or 

 to the environment it can only be interpreted as an element 

 in an organic whole constituted by the life of the organism. 

 Nevertheless much that we find in the living body and most that 

 we find outside it cannot be interpreted as organically deter- 

 mined. The advance of biology is constantly increasing the 

 sphere of the organic at the expense of the apparently inorganic ; 

 but the sphere of the inorganic increases just as rapidly. 



In conscious life there comes in a quite new factor : for an 

 organism which perceives and wills, however dimly, is taking 

 into the unity of its own life the inorganic element. What is 

 perceived or willed is outside mere organic life and yet has a 

 determination or meaning in relation to the past, present and 

 future of the organism and cannot be adequately expressed as a 

 mere physical event. Perception and volition are always 

 "practical": their nature can only be expressed as elements in 

 the teleologically determined whole of a conscious personality. 

 It does not matter whether we approach this fact from the 

 psychological or the physiological side. From the psychological 

 side an isolated sensation or element of whatever kind in con- 

 sciousness is a meaningless abstraction : from the physiological 

 side an isolated physical stimulus or concomitant of sensation is 

 equally meaningless. When we speak of localisation of sensa- 

 tion we are only repeating empty words. The theoretical basis 

 of physiological psychology as ordinarily understood is wholly 

 unsatisfactory. We have scarcely even reached the threshold of 

 a true physiological treatment of the central nervous system : 

 for the present we have to content ourselves with a crude 

 physical treatment of the subject, in which physical metaphors 

 are everywhere substituted for experimentally ascertained facts. 



The distinctive behaviour of men and conscious beings in 

 general cannot be interpreted except in terms of conscious 

 personalities living in an environment of their own percepts and 

 acts, which has grown with them and exists for them. In other 



