252 Heredity- 



matter into so-called spirit, than to translate so-called spirit into 

 so-called matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible), yet 

 no translation can carry us beyond our symbols. Such vague con- 

 ceptions as loom before us are illusions conjured up by the wrong 

 connotations of our words. The expression ' substance of mind,' 

 if we use it in any other way than as the x of our equation, in- 

 evitably betrays us into errors ; for we cannot think of substance 

 save in terms that imply material properties. Our only course is 

 constantly to recognize our symbols as symbols only, and to rest 

 content with that duality of them which our constitution necessi- 

 tates. The unknowable, as manifested to us within the limits of 

 consciousness in the shape of feeling, being no less inscrutable 

 than the unknowable as manifested beyond the limits of conscious- 

 ness in other shapes, we approach no nearer to understanding the 

 last by rendering it into the first. The conditioned form under 

 which being is presented in the subject cannot, any more than the 

 conditioned form under which being is presented in the object, be 

 the unconditioned being common to the two.' x 



v. 



In the preceding paragraph we said that on the question of the 

 relations between the physical and the moral some authors, taking 

 the metaphysical point of view, think that the problem can be 

 resolved, while others, basing themselves on experience, hold it to 

 be insoluble. Further, we have seen that metaphysics fails to 

 solve it : mechanism fails, because it reduces all to motion, which 

 ultimately is not cognized, save on the condition of thought ; and 

 idealism fails, because it reduces all to thought, which does not 

 exist without an object ; so that neither of these two antithetic 

 terms can absorb the other. The conclusion, therefore, must be 

 that the problem is by its very nature insoluble. This, however, 

 is not a return to a proposition long accepted, and in a manner 

 classical. We will explain why it is not 



The commonly accepted dualism takes the metaphysical point of 

 view; it opposes a substance which it does not know mind 



1 Principles of Psychology, 2nd Edition, 63. 



