254 METAPHYSICS 



have an exhibition of the method of correlation. Originating first in 

 the sphere of thought and purpose, the design has been actualized 

 through the operation of mechanical agencies which it has some- 

 how contributed to liberate. On the scale of individual experience 

 we have the classic instance of the arm moving through space in 

 obedience to a hidden will. There can be no question as to the fact 

 and the great difficulty of metaphysics does not arise in the task of 

 generalizing the fact and conceiving the world as a system of thought- 

 purposes working out into forms of the actual through mechanical 

 agencies. This generalization somehow lies at the foundation of all 

 metaphysical faith, and, this being the case, the real task here, aside 

 from the profounder question of the rationale, is that of exhibiting 

 the actual points of correlation; those points in the various stages 

 of the sciences from physics to ethics and religion, at which the 

 last category or result of science is found to hold as its immediate 

 implication some first term of the more ultimate construction of 

 metaphysics. The working out of this task is of the utmost import- 

 ance, inasmuch as it makes clear to both the man of science and the 

 metaphysician the intrinsic necessity of the correlation. It is a task 

 analogous to the Kantian deduction of the categories. 



IV 



QUESTIONS OF THE ULTIMATE NATURE OF REALITY 



We come, then, to the question of the rationale of this correlation, 

 and it is clear here that we are dealing with a phase of the problem 

 of the ultimate nature of reality. For the question of the correlation 

 now is how it is possible that our thoughts should affect things so 

 that they move in response; how mind influences body or the re- 

 verse, how, when we will, the arm moves through space. And with- 

 out going into details of discussion here, let us say at once, that 

 whatever the situation may be for any science, and it maybe that 

 some form of dualism is a necessary presupposition of science, 

 for metaphysics it is clear that no dualism of substances or orders 

 can be regarded as final. The life of metaphysics depends on finding 

 the one for the many; the one that when found will also ground the 

 many. If, then, the phenomenon of mind and body presents the 

 appearance of a correspondence of two different and, so far as can 

 be determined, mutually exclusive agencies, the problem of meta- 

 physics is the reduction of these agencies to one species. Here we 

 come upon the issue between materialism and immaterialism. But 

 inasmuch as the notion of metaphysics itself seems to exclude ma- 

 terialism, the vital alternative is that of immaterialism. Again, if 

 psycho-physics presents as its basal category a parallelism between 

 two orders of phenomena, psychic and physical, it is the business of 



