250 XOTE ON THE RELATION BETWEEN MIND AND BODY. 



The function of philosophy is to explain or interpret the 

 facts of actual experience, of which common sense gives the 

 practical signiticance without clear and definite articulation. If, 

 then, we begin with actual experience, with what is known by way 

 of acquaintance or immediate awareness, what we find is an in- 

 dividual l^eing with purposes, interests, endeavours, acting in re- 

 lation to others through the medium of a body or mechanism. 

 The nature and working of this mechanism condition and limit 

 the activities of the individual being, and mind or consciousness 

 manifests itself in awareness and feeling that appreciate and give 

 meaning or significance to the conditions under which the life of 

 the individual proceeds. But, on the other hand, the bodily 

 mechanism is in turn continuously modified with every efl^'ort that 

 is made, ever}^ course of action that is chosQii, every habit that 

 is acquired, every potentiality that is realized. And the modi- 

 fication or development thus effected in the bodily organism as the 

 outcome of past experience becomes the basis of further activit}' 

 or future experience. The conclusion that is suggested is that 

 the distinction between mind and 'Ijody is nothing hut the distinc- 

 tion between efi:ort and habit, i.e., between spontaneity, initiative, 

 selection on the one hand, and routine or mechanical action on the 

 other hand. These are the two poles or the two phases of the 

 actual life-experience of the individual, and therefore they are 

 the two aspects of the reality which is just the living being itself. 

 In our everyday or common-sense attitude we never think of our- 

 selves or of others save as mind and body together, existing in the 

 most intimate union with each other. Accordingly, when we 

 philosophise, if we are to be in accord with common sense, we 

 must be able to interpret mind and body — the consciousness and 

 the mechanism — as a duality in unity, the twofold manifestation 

 of the real, i.e., the individual being acting and suiTering in rela- 

 tion to other individual beings. The individual being is mani- 

 fested as mind or consciousness and body or mechanism, because 

 the organism consists of the tendencies, habits, aptitudes, mechan- 

 ized modes of action that are the means or organs or instruments 

 through which determinate impressions and influences are per- 

 manentl}^ possible ; while consciousness is the selective interest 

 and attention discriminating the features and apprehending the 

 character of the conditions under which life proceeds, and by 

 accentuating here or there in a measure controls these conditions 

 with a view to the development of life. Psychology shows this 

 clearly when it says that consciousness is manifested only on the 

 basis of organized habits and in the interest of a control of 

 material conditions to which habitual action is inadequate ; or, in 

 other words, that the function of consciousness in the economy of 

 life is the formation of habits of action by selective attention and 

 effort, and the supplementation of habit, when necessary, by fur- 

 ther attention and efli'ort. 



In short, the body is literally the incchanism of habit, tendency, 

 avenues of impression, lines of action, which the individual being 

 has evolved in its struggle towards self-realization, towards fuller 



