252 president's address — section j. 



science as Virchow, Du Bois Reymond, and Wundt, who once favored 

 a materialistic view of the world, afterwards abandoned it. And among 

 those who have chosen philosophy as their special sphere of investiga- 

 tion there are few indeed who adopt the tenets of materialism. We 

 may thus rebut the claim, sometimes ignorantly made, that the material- 

 ist stands for advanced thought, and that the question has already been 

 decided in his favor by all except conservatives and bigots. Those who 

 do not accept a mechanical philosophy are not necessarily behind the 

 times, whether in science or in philosophy. But let us not meet preju- 

 dice by prejudice. A theory which wells up naturally from time to 

 time in the minds of thinking men, and which appeals especially to 

 those who are engaged in physical and physiological studies, is worthy 

 of our respect. And I am here to-day, not to appeal to prejudice or 

 emotion, but to give reasons why I am not a materialist. 



In the first place I must call your attention to the striking difference 

 between the facts which we call material and those which we call mental. 

 The distinction is familiar, both in ordinary thought and in science. 

 We distinguish between psychology as a science of mental facts and 

 the sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology. And when, in neuro- 

 psychology, we inquire into the correlation of mind and the nervous 

 organism, we are still acknowledging the difference between them. 

 In such an inquiry we must investigate on the one side the facts of the 

 nervous system, while, on the other, we must consider facts of mind 

 which are made known to us, in the first instance at least, by self- 

 observation. Our task is to ascertain what mental event and what 

 physiological event are coimected. Still, they stand apart from each 

 other ; their correlation does not mean identity of nature. Thus we 

 may readily admit that, as a fact of observation, mental life is known 

 to us onlv in connection with bodily life. We may concede that the 

 mental life of man on earth is conditioned in its every phase by the life 

 and efficiency of the body. But the distinction between mental and 

 physical facts remains. Every material object occupies space, and 

 must therefore be of such and such a shape and in a certain position 

 in relation to other objects ; it is endowed with motion, and resists 

 pressure. But none of these things can be said of mind. It is invisible 

 and intangible. No one ever saw a mental fact. You cannot touch 

 or handle an emotion ; there is no balance in the laboratory where 

 5'ou can weigh conflicting desires ; and if you choose to speak of the 

 movement of thought you are using figurative language. If anyone 

 ventures to assert that mind must occupy space because the body oi 

 the cells of which it is composed are space-occupying, he is flying in 

 the face of facts, and falling into the obvious error of supposing that 

 things which are connected together by a iniiform law are necessarily 

 the same in kind. 



Let us see how the distinction between the mental and the material 

 af?ects the arguments for materialism. It disposes at once of the old 

 idea that mind is itself material, though composed, perhaps, of finer 

 particles of matter. It summarily sets aside the statements that mind 

 is brain and brain is mind. Even if it be true that brain and mind are 



