250 THE PROBLEM OF BODY AND MIND 



(2) It is also objected to the identity hypothesis that 

 there is lacking, except in the case of the introspecting psy- 

 chologist, any observer occupying the inner-standpoint. 

 But it is not in the least necessary to the theory that there 

 should be any continuous observation of the subjective as- 

 pect. In ordinary daily life there is introspection only at 

 intervals, when this miraculous power of self-awareness has 

 a definite role to play. In animal life there is, of course, 

 no demonstrable self-consciousness, but there is a mental life 

 which cannot be interpreted in terms of the abstractions of 

 the physiology of the nervous system. According to the 

 identity hypothesis this mental life is one aspect, hypotheti- 

 cally imagined by us, of the very highest reach of the 

 organism's activity. 



(3) It is objected that the two-aspect theory simply in- 

 vents and glorifies an X, an unknown and unknowable en- 

 tity. To make clearer what we do in some measure know, 

 it postulates an indefinable reality of which we can know 

 nothing. ^^ The one substance," says Professor Stumpf, 

 " which is supposed to manifest itself in the two attributes, 

 the physical and the psychical, is nothing but a word which 

 expresses the desire to escape from dualism, but "which does 

 not really bridge the gulf for our understanding." But 

 the charge " nothing but a word " is readily made and as 

 readily recoils. The identity hypothesis does not pretend 

 that we know anything like all about that fraction of reality 

 which we call a living creature, nor that we can explain 

 its having two aspects. It maintains, however, that we know 

 this about organisms, that they are agents that do things, 

 unique individualities that express themselves in endeavour, 

 psycho-physical beings that bum away and yet remember, 

 that ripen and rot and yet work towards ends which transcend 



