THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND. 39 



Disregarding the philosophical question as to how nervous 

 action is associated with subjective ideation, and concerning 

 ourselves only with the scientific fact that it is thus associated, 

 we may most clearly appreciate the parallel which I am about 

 to draw if we regard the objective processes as the causes of 

 the subjective. Whether or not such is really the case 

 matters nothing to the exposition on which I am about to 

 enter ; for I throughout take it for granted that the association 

 of neurosis and psychosis is as invariable and precise as it 

 would be were it proved to be due to a relation of causality. 

 Placing therefore neurosis for the purposes of my argument 

 as the cause of psychosis, I desire to show that there is a 

 very exact parallel between the ganglionic action which pro- 

 duces subjective ideation and that which produces muscular 

 co-ordination ; I desire to show that if we interpret the 

 phenomena of ideation in terms of the nervous activity 

 which is supposed to produce it, we shall find that this 

 activity is just the same in all its laws and principles as that 

 which produces muscular co-ordination. 



No doubt it sounds absurd, and from a philosophical 

 point of view alone it is absurd, to speak of ideas as the 

 psychological equivalents of muscles. So far as subjective 

 analysis could teach us, it certainly does not seem that an 

 idea presents any further kinship to a muscle than it does to 

 a stone, or to the moon ; but when we look at the matter 

 from the objective side, we perceive that the kinship is most 

 intimate. Taking it for granted that the same idea is only 

 and always aroused during the activity of the same nervous 

 structure, element, or group of cells and fibres, it follows that 

 any particular mental change resembles any particular mus- 

 cular contraction in so far as it is the terminal result of the 

 activity of a particular nervous structure. The incongruity 

 of comparing a mental change to a muscular contraction 

 arises, of course, from the emphatic distinction which must 

 always be felt to exist between mental and dynamical pro- 

 cesses. Physiology, which is concerned only with the dyna- 

 mical processes, can take no cognizance of anything that 

 happen-, in the region of mind It can trace nervous action 

 hailing to combined muscular movements of greater and 

 greater intricacy as we ascend to more and more elaborated 

 mechanisms; but even when we reach the brain of man, 

 physiology can have nothing to do with the mental side of 



