INTRODUCTION 



one another, and so as furnishing in their mu- 

 tual relations examples of the transformation, 

 if not of the measurable equivalence of forces, 

 Fiske, in the most definite fashion, maintains 

 that in all the changes of the nervous system 

 physical energies are inevitably transformed into 

 physical energies and nothing else. He main- 

 tains that a transformation of physical into men- 

 tal energy, or vice versa^ is simply inconceiv- 

 able. He does this upon a basis of the very fact 

 that what we mean by matter is wholly phe- 

 nomenal, and that the way in which we come 

 to the knowledge of this phenomenon excludes 

 the possibility of conceiving it as the source of 

 mental energies. In consequence of this, it is 

 wholly impossible to attempt a materialistic in- 

 terpretation of the origin of mental phenomena, 

 or a materialistic interpretation of the theory of 

 the evolutionary process. Moreover, since we 

 symbolize the Unknowable, so far as its mani- 

 festations force us to speak of it, in terms of our 

 experience, and since our experience (as Berke- 

 ley's analysis showed) is primarily of the psychi- 

 cal and only indirectly of the material, we reach 

 the result that : "In so far as the exigencies of 

 finite thinking require us to symbolize the in- 

 finite Power manifested in the world of pheno- 

 mena, we are clearly bound to symbolize it as 

 quasi-psychical rather than as quasi-material." 

 xcvi 



