548 The Outline of Science 



we think of the organism as one ; as, while it lives, an indis- 

 soluble psycho-physical being. . . . The living creature gives 

 an account of itself in two ways. It can know itself as 

 something extended and intricately built up, burning away, 

 moving, throbbing; it can also know itself as the seat of sen- 

 sations, perceptions, feelings, wishes, thoughts. But there 

 is not one process, thinking, and another process, cerebral 

 metabolism (vital processes in nerve-cells) ; there is a psycho- 

 physical life a reality which we know under two aspects. 

 Cerebral control and mental activity are, on this view, differ- 

 ent 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 that it does justice to the extra- 

 ordinary intimate interdependence of what we may call 

 "mental processes" and "brain-processes." It regards them 

 as two equally real aspects of the continuous life of the 

 organisms. . . . The objective side is the body as a living 

 whole; the subjective side, in Man's case, is the unity of 

 mind. 1 



In these days the now old-fashioned materialism of the 

 previous generation, as Mr. Bertrand Russell says, "receives no 

 support from modern physical science if, as seems to be the case, 

 physics does not assume the existence of matter." We saw in 

 a previous chapter ("The Foundation of the Universe") what the 

 new view of the constitution of matter is. The atom of every 

 element of matter is revealed as a particle of electricity; what 

 electricity itself is we do not know. But we see how it comes 

 about that the physicist tends to think of "matter" as less and less 

 material. So does the chemist, and so the biologist. In that 

 sense the old-fashioned "materialism" has gone. 



The view of Mr. William James and others is that the "stuff" 

 of the world is neither mental nor material, but, for the lack of a 

 better name, a "neutral stuff," out of which both are constructed. 

 Mr. Bertrand Russell, in his work The Analysis of Mind, endea- 



*J. Arthur Thomson, The Syttem of Animated Nature. 



