358 THE RELATION OF MIND TO BODY 



consciousness which coexists with the motion of the legs, if we 

 want to talk about mental facts. . . . When, therefore, we ask, 

 'What is the physical link between the ingoing message from 

 chilled skin and the outgoing message which moves the leg ? ' and 

 the answer is ' A man's will,' we have as much right to be amused 

 as if we had asked our friend with the picture what pigment he had 

 used in painting the cannon in the foreground, and received the 

 answer, ' wrought iron.' It will be found excellent practice in the 

 mental operations required by this doctrine to imagine a train, the 

 fore part of which is an engine and three carriages linked with 

 iron couplings, and the hind part three other carriages linked with 

 iron couplings ; the bond between the two parts being made up 

 out of the sentiments of amity subsisting between the stoker and 

 the guard." l 



596. In the passages quoted both authors, professed idealists 

 however, draw a common-sense distinction between brain and mind 

 on the ground that the former is a material object, whereas the 

 latter is not. Huxley thinks it impossible that mind can affect 

 matter; but, regarding mind as a 'product' of the working of the 

 brain, believes that matter can affect mind. It is hard, however, to 

 conceive how one thing can directly affect another without being 

 affected back again. If light reaches an object, it is reflected or 

 absorbed ; if the sun attracts the earth, the earth attracts the sun ; 

 if I touch a stone, the stone touches me; if my arm makes a 

 movement, the arm suffers change. All relations are mutual. If 

 it be true that brain can affect mind, then, judging by all analogy, 

 it should be true also that mind can affect brain. 



597. Clifford is even less consistent. He supposes that mind 

 and matter do not affect one another ; but his mind was evidently 

 aware of, was affected by, guards, stokers, engines, carriages, and 

 pictures, which he describes as material existences. He derides 

 the 'crude materialism of the savage,' but the materialism of 

 common sense, which he here adopts, is every whit as crude. 

 He declares that "all the evidence that we have goes to show 

 that . . . the physical facts go along by themselves, and the 

 mental facts go along by themselves. There is a parallelism 

 between them, but there is no interference of one with the other." 

 But to imagine this unrelated but exactly coincident working is 

 to imagine the greatest of miracles. Moreover, the hypothesis 

 involves the corollary that mind is useless, and that the unfeeling, 

 unthinking brain is by itself responsible for all the more wonderful 



1 Op. cit., Right and Wrong, pp. 328-9, quoted by James. 



