THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 209 



nothing else than a non-event or non-phenomenon, namely, a 

 substance, an ego substantially distinct from sensations." 

 ("La sensation et la pensee," p. 23.) 



For the phenomenalists, mind is but a collective term for the 

 phenomenal series of our transitory thoughts and feelings. 

 With Wundt, they discard the substantial or entitive soul for 

 a dynamic or functional one, ''die aktuelle Seele" (Cf. 

 Grundz. der Phys. Psych., ed. 5th, III, p. 758 et seq.) 

 Thought antecedes itself by becoming its own thinker; for 

 Titchener tells us : "The passing thought would seem to be the 

 thinker." ("Pr. of Psych.," I, p. 342.) We do not think, but 

 thought thinks ; John does not walk, but walking walks ; aero- 

 planes do not fly, but flight flies; air does not vibrate, but 

 vibration vibrates. The phenomenalist objectivates his sub- 

 jective abstractions, divorces processes from their agents, and 

 substantializes phenomena. The source of his error is a con- 

 fusion of the ideal, with the real, order of things. Because 

 it is possible for us to consider a thought apart from any 

 determinate thinker, by means of a mental abstraction, he 

 very falsely concludes that it is possible for a thought to 

 exist without a concrete thinker. It would be obviously absurd 

 to suppose that the so-called Grignard reaction could occur 

 without definite reactants, merely because we can think of it 

 without specifying any particular kind of alkyl halide; it 

 would be preposterous to infer, from the fact that vibration 

 can be considered independently of any concrete medium such 

 as air, water, or ether, that therefore a pure vibration can exist 

 without any vibrating medium; and it is equally absurd to 

 project an abstraction like subjectless thought into the realm 

 of existent reality. Abstractions are ideal entities of the mind; 

 they can have no real existence outside the domain of thought. 

 Hence to assign a real or extralogical existence to actions, 

 modalities, and properties, in isolation from the concrete sub- 

 jects, to which they belong, is a procedure that is not legiti- 

 mate in any other world than Alice's Wonderland, where, we 

 are told, the Cheshire Cat left behind his notorious grin long 



