206 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



conscious acts the subject is known along with the object). 

 The phenomenalists occasionally succeed, in their "most pre- 

 cise" passages, in omitting to mention the person, knower, or 

 thinker behind thought, but they do so only at the cost of sub- 

 stituting personal pronouns, and of thus bringing back through 

 the window what they have just ejected by way of the door. 

 Our consciousness, therefore, makes us invincibly aware of the 

 existence of a superficially variable, but radically unchange- 

 able, subject of our mental life. It does not, however, tell us 

 anything concerning the nature of this primary ground of 

 thought, whether, for example, it is identical with the cerebral 

 cortex, or something distinct therefrom, whether it is phenome- 

 nal or substantial, dynamic or entitive, spiritual or material. 

 To decide these questions the unanalyzed factual data of 

 internal experience do not suffice, but they do suffice to estab- 

 lish the reality of the ego or subject of thought. Later we 

 shall see that the analysis of these data, when taken in con- 

 junction with other facts, forces us to predicate of the soul such 

 attributes as substantiality, simplicity, and spirituality, but 

 here they are cited solely for their factual force and not for 

 their logical implications. 



The phenomenalistic schools of Interactionism and Psycho- 

 physical Parallelism deny the substantiality of the soul, and 

 seek to resolve it into sourceless and subjectless processes. A 

 phenomenal mind or soul, however, could not be the primary 

 ground of mental life, for the simple reason that phenomena 

 presuppose a supporting medium (otherwise they would be 

 self-maintaining, and therefore, substantial). Now that which 

 presupposes cannot be a primary principle, but only a sec- 

 ondary^, or tertiary principle. Consequently, a functional mind 

 could not be the primary and irreducible ground of mental 

 life, but only that of which it is a function, whether that some- 

 thing is a material, or a spiritual substance. For the present, 

 we are not interested in the nature of this ultimate substrate, 

 we are content with the fact that it really exists. Phenomenal- 

 ists (like Wundt, Paulsen, and James) are very inconsistent 



