PSYCHOGENESIS 365 



interaction of those states which for want of better terms we call mind 

 and matter. Action may be regarded as a kind of middle term between 

 mind and matter; it is the throe of thought and thing, the quivering 

 clash and union of body and soul ; common-place enough in practice ; 

 miraculous, as violating every canon on which thought and reason are 

 founded, if we theorise about it, put it under the microscope, and 

 vivisect it. It is here, if anywhere, that body or substance is guilty 

 of the contradiction in terms of combining with that which is without 

 material substance and cannot, therefore, be conceived by us as passing 

 in and out with matter, till the two become a body ensouled, and a 

 soul embodied. 



All body is more or less ensouled. As it gets further and further 

 from ourselves, indeed, we sympathise less with it; nothing, we say to 

 ourselves, can have intelligence unless we understand all about it^as 

 though intelligence in all except ourselves meant the power of being 

 understood rather than of understanding. 



This is, in my opinion, an admirable way of viewing life 

 whole, and presents a creative evolution view not excelled even 

 by Bergson. If all change is pro tanto consciousness and 

 action, it is also pro tanto work; and if the very "soul" of a 

 body is to consist, so far as we can see, of interaction, the 

 significance of co-operation generally is likewise seen as 

 enhanced. 



Let us compare Butler's view with a quite recent one as 

 stated by Dr. Arabella Kenealy (Nineteenth Century, July, 

 1914). 



In the language of Biology the Brain and other nervous tissues are 

 ' ' highly phosphorised fats in a weak salt solution " ; a description 

 which shows a cold wet blanket materialistic and impenetrable whereof 

 not a corner even has been lifted, dropped between us and the marvel of 

 Mind. 



If for "highly phosphorised fats in a weak salt solution" we con- 

 ceive of the Brain as a living storage-battery of impressions in which, 

 it may be, every molecule in every cell is charged with memories of 

 antecedent forms, from the crystal onwards up through planes of vegeta- 

 tion, planes of the lower animal kingdom, and finally through primitive 

 to civilised man ; and if we assume that in such a storage-battery any 

 thought or impulse is a complex of impressions accreted along its travel 

 down incalculable ages, plus the last factor of the existing ego a last 

 grey cell added to its myriad earlier cells to alter the equation of per- 

 sonality are we not carried nearer to a conception of the truth? As 



