BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1243 



our thinking, make sense of it unless we start with the storm of 

 emotion, the "feehng" storm which- the cat experiences. 



In a case hke this the biologist acknowledges the unity of the 

 organism, and he pleads with his colleague working on higher 

 spheres not to forget this. For even man may be falsely simplified 

 into a Robot. The Industrial Age is still making Robots wholesale. 



It does not seem that we have made much progress recently in 

 regard to the relation between mind and body; it eludes us. No very 

 essential advance has been made on the subject of the mind-body 

 relation since the time of Aristotle. There are experts, like Prof. 

 WilHam McDougall, who appear to regard the mind as a sort of 

 musician that plays upon the instrument of the body — a dualistic 

 view which has a great deal of attractiveness. But then there are 

 other experts, like Prof. Lloyd Morgan, who speak of the mental 

 aspect as if it were just the inner subjective side of life — as if mind 

 and body were the concave and convex sides of a dome, inseparable 

 from one another. Between these views it does not as yet seem 

 possible to choose — one is dualist or monist according to one's 

 temperament; but the important thing is to appreciate both aspects, 

 for both are realities. At one time the organism is predominantly 

 Body-mmd, the physiological aspect (Bio-psychosis) being accentu- 

 ated. At another time the organism is predominantly Mind-body, 

 the psychological aspect (Psycho-biosis) being accentuated. If 

 a man is digesting his meal, this is mostly an affair of Body, for 

 the main thing is the bodily process of digestion, a breaking up of 

 proteins, and so forth. It is mostly Body, yet not wholly, for if the 

 digestion is not getting on very well, and a messenger comes with 

 good news, there is at once an improvement in the fermentative 

 process and a eupeptic influence is evident. So it is not all body, it is 

 Body-mind. At another time the man is in his armchair reflecting 

 on the universe, and it is mostly of course a mental adventure. But 

 it is not altogether activity of Mind, since the flow of the philosopher's 

 thought is influenced by his digestion. Even when he is philosophising 

 in his armchair he is not mind only, but Mind-body. 



To recognise this commonplace is what the biologist pleads for. 

 In every case we must recognise the shifting about from Body-mind 

 to Mind-body and back again to Body-mind. So with your trouble- 

 some adolescent, with your sailor who comes to port, with the 

 members of a household rubbing one another the wrong way, with 

 anybody and everj^body — they must always be treated as Mind- 

 bodies and Body-minds. If one uses a diagram of the prism of life, 

 one should make the sides convex like those of a spherical triangle, 

 the outer convexness to express the objective aspect, and the inner 

 concaveness to express the subjective. (Fig. 198.) 



Does not the organism side correspond, in subjective aspect, 

 to feeling; the environment side to knowledge; and the functioning 



