HUMAN IMMORTALITY 295 



only the actual good of the actual world here below. 

 Judged by the light of this "vale of tears" alone, 

 there is no evidence that good will toward us is the 

 chief or the permanent aim of the eternal Lord or 

 lords. 



The transmissive interpretation of brain-function, 

 then, must unavoidably fail to do the work we need 

 to have done. Is there perhaps some other way ? Is 

 there some other mode of conceiving the correlation 

 between brain-changes and psychic experience — 

 some conception of their persistent correspondence 

 that regards brain-function as neither productive nor 

 releasing nor transmissive .'' I suppose there is ; and 

 that it is gained by taking two important steps char- 

 acteristic of the exacter philosophy. 



The first of these steps is, to read the doctrine of 

 modern psychology with a still stricter interpretation 

 than Professor James has read it with — to construe 

 it rigidly as a case, to borrow his own words, simply 

 of concomitant variation. When we say that the mifid 

 is a /miction of the brain, we are therefore to under- 

 stand that in exact scientific truth we can mean noth- 

 ing more than this : That physical and physiological 

 changes go on, seriatim, side by side with changes 

 in psychic experience ; or vice versa, that psychic 

 changes run parallel, pari passu, with physiological 

 changes in the brain and the other neural tissues. 

 We do not even mean that the brain is a transmitter 



