THE RELATJOX OF BODY AND :ML\D. 



By Rt. Rev. Artiil i< L ii \M)Li:r. .M.A.. D.lJ. 



This problem might be descriljed as that with which all 

 philusoph}' from the Ijeginning has been dealing in some sense 

 or other ; but it has lately acquired a fresh and urgent interest 

 from the investigations of physiological psychology. We start 

 with a rough common-sense dualism of mind and bodv as distinct 

 things, which, though very different in character and operation, 

 necessarily influence each other, and which, being bound to live 

 together (like Boer and Briton), have to establish a modus 

 Vivendi as best they can. But if we are actuated by that 

 curiosity which we are told is the starting-point of philosophy,, 

 we are constrained to go on and ask what is the nature of this 

 reciprocal influen.ce, how a spiritual or immaterial principle and 

 a spatial network of nerves can act upon each other, and how 

 far either of those two factors is deflected from its natural mode 

 of operation by such inter-action. 



The difliculty of understanding how an immaterial and ci 

 material something can find a connecting ground on which tluy 

 can get at each other and co-operate or even conflict with each 

 otlicr, leads obviously and naturally to a rc-statemcnt which 

 declares that the two ]jrocesses, the mental and the ])hysical, 

 simpl\- operate side by side without really touching each other 

 or influencing each other at all ; ;ind here we have the theory of 

 " psycho-]jh}-sical parallelism.'" When we think of anything or 

 desire anything, the mental thought or desire is accompanied by 

 a certain change in the nervous tissue ; the two processes are 

 parallel with e;ich other without any causal influence being exer- 

 cised by the one upon the other. Such a theory may be formu- 

 lated, but it simjily shelves, and refuses to face, the ])roblem ; 

 it is difficult to hold it at all without introducing a dciis ex 

 macliiiia in the shape of some ])re-established harmony which 

 ordains arbitraril\- that there shall be such a state of things; 

 and. further, it fails to satisfy the claims either of common-sense 

 or ])hysical science. Common-sense asserts that this mental 

 process does not merely run parallel with the physical process,, 

 but dominates and controls it, exercises a causal influence upon 

 it ; and, on the other hand, physiology repudiates such intrusions 

 on the i)art of a mental factor, holds that the nervous system is 

 an indei)endent, self-working entity, and that such mental pheno- 

 mena as thoughts and desires are casual efifects thrown off by 

 the nervous system in the course of its own strictly mechanical 

 opei'ation. 



This latter contention gives us the theory (^f " epi-])heno- 

 menonalism," according to which the brain is a machine whose 

 operations ;ire causally determined by mechanical laws and by 

 nothing else, each mental disturbance being a nece?sar\- result 



