FATALISM OR FREEDOM 



known as parallelism and interactionism, 

 one of which allows no causal relation be- 

 tween the mind and its body, though these 

 seem in some mysterious fashion to run 

 parallel ways, while the other admits a 

 measure of such causal relationship on oc- 

 casion without defining the status of the 

 separate entities or why and how they 

 happen to enmesh with each other. As 

 if the mysteries of mind and matter were 

 not sufficiently baffling on their own ac- 

 count, these systems pile mystery on mys- 

 tery, only in the end to add frankly in- 

 soluble puzzles to what was before 

 obscure. 



These are metaphysical, not scientific 

 solutions of our problem and their ac- 

 ceptance seems to close the road to further 

 progress by the method of natural science. 

 The admission of these dualistic philos- 

 ophies of nature brings our task to an 

 abrupt conclusion; for the naturalist can- 

 not deal with disembodied spirits. 



It is quite the fashion now-a-days for 

 biologists, physicians, and psychologists to 

 adopt a different sort of short-cut solution 

 of the troublesome problem of the rela- 

 tion between mind and body. Because 

 nature is a unitary system of causal se- 



[34] 



