THE PROBLEM OF BODY AND MIND 237 



shadows cast by the vanes of the cerebral windmill, or the 

 creakings of the machinery, or at the best the electrical 

 sparks which accompany the friction. There may seem to 

 be two watches, but only one is going (the brain) ; when 

 the going watch ticks there is an echoing tick in the other; 

 nay more, by induction the going watch may cause move- 

 ments of the hands of the watch which only seems to go. 

 Perhaps the most generous image is, that the elements of 

 consciousness are the short-lived foam-bells on the wonderful 

 current of cerebral processes. 



We cannot accept this view because it is wrapped up with 

 the mechanistic hypothesis, because it hands over the reins 

 of life to matter and motion, because it denudes the thought- 

 life of all reality. When biologists become preoccupied 

 with the psychical concomitants of blots in the brain, or 

 with the localisation of particular mental functions in partic- 

 ular areas in the cerebral cortex, they are apt to lean towards 

 epiphenomenalism, but this has to be corrected by trying 

 to see life whole. 



The epiphenomenalist theory (which regards mentality as 

 a negligible phosphorescence of life) is to be rejected on 

 common-sense grounds because we are sure that in human 

 life consciousness and awareness of meaning count for much. 

 It is rejected by most biologists because they cannot evade 

 the conviction, we can hardly say conclusion, that mentality 

 is pervasive throughout . all creatures that exhibit genuine 

 behaviour, associative memory, and profiting by experience; 

 and because they find it difficult to believe in the elabora- 

 tion and persistence of what is, on the epiphenomenalist 

 theory, a useless by-play, counting for nought. And if it be 

 asserted that the persistence and evolutionary elaboration 

 may be accounted for because consciousness is the inevitable 



