244 THE PROBLEM OF BODY AND MIND 



that the vital activities of the organism, considered apart 

 from its psychical activities, are not susceptible of satisfac- 

 tory mechanical description. When we have abandoned a 

 mechanistic view of the organism, we have made a step of 

 importance towards understanding what Professor Ward calls 

 the internal or inter-subjective relation that the subject bears 

 to its organism. 



It is often said that animism involves a breach with the 

 principle of the conservation of energy. If mind really 

 counts, it is argued, work is done which the antecedent 

 energy-conditions do not fully account for. If the mind acts 

 on the brain in a way that tells, then some energy disappears 

 from the books, for the mind is outside the sphere of energy- 

 transformations. But to suppose that the mind acts on the 

 material system without expending energy is, the critics of 

 animism continue, to forsake scientific procedure, for the 

 law of the conservation of energy cannot be broken. 



Now we are not concerned in the defence of animism, 

 but this criticism is not one that commends itself to us. 

 The doctrine of the conservation of energy includes two 

 propositions. In the first place, it suggests that the total 

 amount of energy in the universe is a constant, but this is 

 rather a pious opinion than an established fact. The less 

 we say regarding the universality of the conservation of 

 energy the better, for we do not know. But in the second 

 place it is a regulative principle, based on experimental 

 evidence, which states that in any closed physical system 

 at work the energy expended in one way must be gained in 

 another. The organism and its environment are comparable 

 to the change-office outside an exhibition ; there are ceaseless 

 transformations, but the amount of cash is not only the same 

 in the evening as in the morning, it is the same all through 



