136 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



conception which it is very dangerous to accept at its face 

 value. There exists a notion that in regard to any event 

 there is something which may be called the cause of that 

 event some one definite occurrence, without which the 

 event would have been impossible and with which it be- 

 comes necessary. An event is supposed to be dependent 

 upon its cause in some waynvhich in it is not dependent 

 upon other things. Thus men will urge that the mind is 

 dependent upon the brain, or, with equal plausibility, that 

 the brain is dependent upon the mind. It seems not im- 

 probable that if we had sufficient knowledge we could 

 infer the state of a man's mind from the state of his brain, 

 or the state of his brain from the state of his mind. So 

 long as the usual conception of causal dependence is re- 

 tained, this state of affairs can be used by the materialist 

 to urge that the state of our brain causes our thoughts, 

 and by the idealist to urge that our thoughts cause the 

 state of our brain. Either contention is equally valid or 

 equally invalid. The fact seems to be that there are many 

 correlations of the sort which may be called causal, and 

 that, for example, either a physical or a mental event can 

 be predicted, theoretically, either from a sufficient number 

 of physical antecedents or from a sufficient number of 

 mental antecedents. To speak of the cause of an event is 

 therefore misleading. Any set of antecedents from which 

 the event can theoretically be inferred by means of correla- 

 tions might be called a cause of the event. But to speak of 

 the cause is to imply a uniqueness which does not exist. 



The relevance of this to the experience which we call 

 *' seeing the sun " is obvious. The fact that there exists 

 a chain of antecedents which makes our seeing dependent 

 upon the eyes and nerves and brain does not even tend to 

 show that there is not another chain of antecedents in 

 which the eyes and nerves and brain as physical things 

 are ignored. If we are to escape from the dilemma which 



