96 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



activity point to an identity at bottom," and he italicizes identity. 

 Such statements from such a source show that even psycholo- 

 gists of the experimental type have been driven to conclude that 

 mentality and physical activity are not different things, but 

 opposite sides of the same thing, which is saying in another 

 way that mind is as much a function of matter as is gravitation, 

 or as magnetism is of iron, — cannot be created nor destroyed 

 nor isolated, but may be obscured in various ways. To say 

 that one cannot conceive how mind can be so related is not to 

 say much. Can any one say he can conceive how mind, as he 

 imagines it, can exist in a body at all } And does one need to 

 wait until any matter is fully explained before he can assent to 

 what is known about it .? Thus the existence of dynamos and 

 motors and electric lights and telegraphs and telephones is in 

 itself sufficient to prove that we know a great deal about elec- 

 tricity, the conditions for its generation and utilization ; and 

 when one adds to these the knowledge that dynamos and 

 motors can be made at will, having an efficiency of 96 or 97/0, 

 he has as high a guarantee as one can have for anything in 

 this world that no man hereafter can improve on our electrical 

 apparatus by as much as 5/0, and all this without pretending 

 to know or even guess how it is that electricity can do any- 

 thing, much less have a knowledge of its ultimate nature. 

 These may come in due time. Meanwhile one need not be 

 skeptical as to how much is known — really known — about it, 

 because he cannot answer the very last question which may be 

 asked about it. 



What, then, is the present status of the question .? In our 

 experience mind is associated with matter always, life as we 

 know it is always associated with a particularly complex chem- 

 ical substance ; and when, for any reason, this substance of 

 life is disintegrated, the evidence of life goes too. The more 

 complicated the material organism, the more complicated the 

 manifestations of life and of mind. 



The delic:ht in the consciousness of existence has led man to 

 wish for its continuance and to cast about for evidence of it. 

 The apparent destruction of mind with the disintegration of 

 the body has led men to think there must be some fallacy 



