248 THE PROBLEM OF BODY AND MIND 



activity are, on this view, different aspects of one natural 

 occurrence. What we have to do with is the unified life 

 of a psycho-physical being, a body-mind or mind-body. 



The advantages of the two-aspect theory, if it is tenable, 

 are (1) that it does justice to the extraordinarily intimate 

 inter-dependence of what we call ' mental processes ' and 

 ' brain-processes '. It regards them as two equally real 

 aspects of the continuous life of the organism. There is 

 not merely a material watch with a ticking which we call 

 consciousness; there is not merely a thought-life with an 

 illusion of associated things; there are not two watches 

 which keep time without interacting, nor yet two watches 

 which interact; there is one watch with two sides, which 

 we call objective and subjective. The objective side is the 

 body as a living whole; the subjective side in Man's case 

 is the unity of mind. (2) The psycho-physical being is one, 

 but its two aspects are not always equally clear to us. In 

 thinking out a mathematical problem we may be quite un- 

 aware of anything but our thought-experiments, yet the 

 evidence points to the possibility of these being continued 

 by us (by the organism) without any conscious endeavour. 

 In the application of an anaesthetic, one level after another 

 of the conscious life is obliterated in precise relation to the 

 degree of chloroforming, till by and by complete uncon- 

 sciousness may result. It looks as if the uninterrupted 

 life of the instrument kept the player in being, it looks as 

 if the life were one. (3) It is extremely difficult to think 

 of the mind in the ante-natal period; it is less difficult to 

 think of a psycho-physical being, in whose one-cell phase 

 the psychical aspect is as non-explicit as it is in the adult 

 life during deep anaesthesia. (4) It is easier to think of 

 evolution on this double-aspect view, for what has come 



