Herrick, Body-Mind Controversy. 43 1 



Professor James thinks that, when we speak of the power of the 

 functioning of a moving waterfall, etc., ''the material objects have the 

 function of creating or engendering their effects and their function 

 must be called productive function."' But we also have releasing or 

 permissive functions and we have transmissive functions. "When. we 

 think of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we are not re- 

 quired to think of productive function only ; we are entitled also to 

 consider permissive or transmissive function." The universe of ma- 

 terial things may be but a surface-veil of phenomena, hiding and keep- 

 ing back the world of genuine relations. Our brains are half-trans- 

 parent places in the veil. The genuine reality, the life of souls as it 

 is in its fulness, will break through our several brains in all sorts of re- 

 stricted forms, with all the imperfections and queernesses that charac- 

 terize our finite individualities here below. Through the weak spot 

 in us, namely, our brains (appropriate conception) "Gleams, how- 

 ever finite and unsatisfying, of the absolute life of the universe, are 

 from time to time vouchsafed. Glows of feeling, glimpses of insight, 

 and streams of knowledge and perception float into our finite world." 

 Those writers who envy Professor James his superb mastery of En- 

 glish style may piously express their gratitude that they escape the 

 temptation to sin with impunity against logic which that mastery con- 

 fers. It is hard to think at the same time in tropes and syllogisms. 



The forms of consciousness (thoughts, etc.) are either predeter- 

 mined before they leave the great universal sea of all consciousness or 

 else they are individualized and determined by the nature of the hole 

 through which they pass. If the former, there is some determinant 

 either in that sea or between it and the brain. But evidently Professor 

 James believes the brain to be the determinant for he uses the figure 

 of the glottis determining the sounds by limiting air currents passing 

 through it. Only on this presumption could the thoughts be ours. 

 Only on this theory could there be any explanation of the curious fact 

 that we have brain at all. But on this assumption the brain has just 

 as productive a function as any in the world. Surely no one, unless 

 it be some kind of a panpsychist, contends that new energy is created 

 by thinking. The figure of the water power used by James aptly 

 illustrates this. The form of the aperture in the turbine determines 

 (produces) the modification of energy constituting the work of the mill. 

 The waterfall "creates or engenders its effects" only by modifying the 

 form of existing energy. Creation itself is only such a modification 

 (self-limitation). The difference between a productive and permissive 

 function is a play of words only. c. l. herrick. 



