CHAPTER XIX 

 THE RELATION OF MIND TO BODY 



Huxley and Clifford Their inconsistencies Mind and body are causally 

 related Professor William James Theories of the relation of Mind to Body 

 Probably mind is the work done by the brain The bodies of human progenitors 

 and descendants are more closely alike than their minds. 



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594. ""f"^ ETURNING now altogether to the thinking of every- 

 day life and of science, common sense tells us 

 that we have minds and bodies, and that these 

 two sharply distinct things influence one another have causal 

 relations with one another. This causal relation has been denied, 

 however, and sometimes on very high authority. 



"The consciousness of brutes would appear to be related to 

 the mechanism of their body simply as a collateral product of its 

 working, and to be as completely without any power of modifying 

 that working as the steam-whistle that accompanies the work of a 

 locomotive engine is without influence on its machinery. Their 

 volition, if they have any, is an emotion indicative of physical 

 changes, not a cause of such changes. . . . Much ingenious argu- 

 ment has at various times been bestowed on the question. How 

 is it possible to imagine that volition, which is a state of conscious- 

 ness, and, as such, has not the slightest community of nature with 

 matter in motion, can act upon the moving matter of which the 

 body is composed, as it is assumed to do in voluntary acts ? But 

 if, as is here suggested, the voluntary acts of brutes or, in other 

 words, the acts which they desire to perform are as mechanical 

 as the rest of their actions, and are simply accompanied by the 

 state of consciousness called volition, the inquiry, so far as they 

 are concerned, becomes superfluous. Their volitions do not enter 

 into the chain of causation of their actions at all. . . . The soul 

 stands related to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, 

 and consciousness answers to the sound the bell gives out when 

 it is struck. . . . Thus far I have strictly confined myself to the 

 automatism of brutes. ... It is quite true that, to the best of my 

 judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally 



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