V GENERAL REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 301 



have been step by step involved in its evolution. In a word, the 

 increase in the complexity of the phenomena which marks the 

 transition from each of these stages to the next is itself a new 

 phenomenon and cannot be ignored. 



And herein we may perhaps discover the essence of the 

 relation between ' mind ' and ' matter ' } whether in ordinary 

 function or in development. The mind is not matter, not even 

 living matter; rather it is the new quality constituted by an 

 increase in the complexity of living matter, immaterial and as 

 distinct from that matter as is 'blueness' from vibration of 

 a certain wave-length. Dependent on and inseparable from 

 matter, however, it is ; when that matter, whether in the 

 individual or in the race, attains a certain degree of complexity, 

 then and then only does mind appear ; and with the disappear- 

 ance of that complexity it perishes. 



While, therefore, we have no reason for supposing that the 

 mind ' comes in from outside ', we are at the same time saved from 

 that somewhat extravagant ' psycho-physical parallelism ' which, 

 to explain the evolution of consciousness, postulates a complete 

 psychical, accompanying the complete physical series of causes 

 and effects, and credits, of necessity, the merest matter with the 

 rudiments of feeling, thought and will. On the other hand, 

 if the mind cannot be said to intervene in the physical series, 

 there seems to be no alternative but to suppose that the operations 

 of the one, when they exist, are parallel to those of the other. 



Such a system of philosophy as that which we have here 

 ventured to suggest can give no countenance to a Vitalism 

 which interpolates an unnecessary psychical element into the 

 complete causal chain of physical events. But it is not for that 

 reason to be condemned as materialistic ; for the mind, developed 

 out of and conditioned by matter, the last term and final cause 

 of the whole process, is not itself matter but an accompaniment 

 of certain material complexes, and still remains when they have 

 been resolved into simple mechanical expressions. And in this 

 mind, last in time but first in thought, a larger philosophy will 

 perceive not only the end towards which, in time and space, 

 matter strives, but the Understanding which, itself eternal, imposes 

 the forms of space and time upon that Nature which it makes. 



