A UNIVERSE OF MIND-STUFF 



tion that mental states are caused by physical 

 actions on the nervous system, that when you 

 begin to explain to them the wonderfully mi- 

 nute correlations between physical action and 

 brain-action which modern psychology is dis- 

 closing, they immediately take fright and think 

 you are " explaining away " the mind altogether. 

 They think that in order to refute materialism 

 it is necessary to deny that associations of ideas 

 occur simultaneously with the passage of waves 

 of molecular motion from one cell to another in 

 the gray surface of the brain. I wonder it never 

 occurs to them that they might more summa- 

 rily effect their purpose by denying, once for all, 

 that the brain has anything whatever to do with 

 mind, or has any further function than that of a 

 balance wheel or " governor " for regulating the 

 motions of the viscera ! But in point of fact 

 their alarm is altogether groundless. Those who 

 have mastered the doctrine of the conservation 

 of energy in its bearings upon the facts of psy- 

 chology will see, as I demonstrated some years 

 ago in " Cosmic Philosophy," that it is utterly 

 impossible that actions in the nervous system 

 should ever, under any circumstances, stand in 

 the relation of cause to psychical actions going 

 on in the mind. A wave of molecular motion 

 in the brain cannot produce a feeling or a state 

 of consciousness. It can do nothing whatever 

 but set up other waves of molecular motion, 

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