HUMAN IMMORTALITY 



293 



to immortality, and enable us to move onward, far 

 beyond, to some positive //w^" of our individual per- 

 manence ? 



It certainly seems plain, not only that Professor 

 James's method with the transmission-theory is un- 

 equal to this task, but that )io form of transmissive 

 relation between brain and experience is equal to it, 

 or can be. For every form of the transmission-theory 

 must regard the brain and its operations as a prior 

 condition of such consciousness — as a fact not sim- 

 ply concomitant with the consciousness, but prereq- 

 uisite to its existence. In every such theory the 

 brain is supposed to exist, somehow, whether any con- 

 sciousness that can be called ours exists or not. So it 

 must either exist (i) as the creation of the assumed 

 one Mind behind the scenes, and be the medium he 

 uses to display himself in his perhaps endlessly shifting 

 transient disguises ; or (2) as the creation, similarly, 

 of the many minds behind the scenes, used by each 

 for the same object of transient disguise; or (3) as 

 somehow self-existent, an unintelligible mystery in 

 being, thwarting more or less the assumed eternity 

 and infinity of the Absolute Mind or the absolute 

 minds. In either case, it acts as a limiting and sup- 

 pressive condition upon its, reducing us to mere shad- 

 ows of something else, converting us into instrumental 

 effects merely, and only giving us being that is desti- 

 tute of conclusive reality — being that is only deriva- 



