iv.] PARALLELISM AND MONISM 355 



necessary to a certain machine, because the machine works 

 when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken 

 away, we do not say that the screw is the equivalent of 

 the machine. For correspondence to be equivalence, 

 it would be necessary that to any part of the machine a 

 definite part of the screw should correspond — as in a literal 

 translation in which each chapter renders a chapter, each 

 sentence a sentence, each word a word. Now, the re- 

 lation of the brain to consciousness seems to be entirely 

 different. Not only does the hypothesis of an equivalence 

 between the psychical state and the cerebral state imply a 

 downright absurdity, as we have tried to prove in a former 

 essay, 1 but the facts, examined without prejudice, cer- 

 tainly seem to indicate that the relation of the psychical 

 to the physical is just that of the machine to the screw. 

 To speak of an equivalence between the two is simply 

 to curtail, and make almost unintelligible, the Spinozis- 

 tic or Leibnizian metaphysic. It is to accept this philos- 

 ophy, such as it is, on the side of Extension, but to mutilate 

 it on the side of Thought. With Spinoza, with Leibniz, 

 we suppose the unifying synthesis of the phenomena of 

 matter achieved, and everything in matter explained 

 mechanically. But, for the conscious facts, we no longer 

 push the synthesis to the end. We stop half-way. We 

 suppose consciousness to be coextensive with a certain 

 part of nature and not with all of it. We are thus led, 

 sometimes to an " epiphenomenalism" that associates 

 consciousness with certain particular vibrations and puts 

 it here and there in the world in a sporadic state, and some- 

 times to a "monism" that scatters consciousness into as 

 many tiny grains as there are atoms; but, in either case, 

 it is to an incomplete Spinozism or to an incomplete Leib- 



1 "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (Revue de mitaphysique et 

 de morale, Nov. 1904, pp. 895-908). Gf. Matiere et m&noirc, Paris, 1896, 

 chap. i. 



