APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 163 



You may make more of failing to get money, and 

 of succeeding in getting abuse — until such time in 

 your life (if you are teachable) you have ceased to 

 care much about either. 



CCCLXI 



The doctrine of the conservation of energy tells 

 neither one way nor the other [on the doctrine of 

 immortality]. Energy is the cause of movement of 

 body, i.e. things havmg mass. States of conscious- 

 ness have no mass, even if they can be conceded to 

 be movable. Therefore even if they are caused by 

 molecular movements, they would not in any way 

 affect the store of energy. 



Physical causation need not be the only kind of 

 causation, and when Cabanis said that thought was 

 a function of the brain, in the same way as bile 

 secretion is a function of the liver, he blundered 

 philosophically. Bile is a product of the transforma- 

 tion of material energy. But in the mathematical 

 sense of the word "function," thought may be a 

 function of the brain. That is to say, it may arise 

 only when certain physical particles take on a certain 

 order. 



By way of a coarse analogy, consider a parallel- 

 sided piece of glass through which light passes. It 

 forms no picture. Shape it so as to be a bi-convex, 

 and a picture appears in its focus. 



Is not the formation of the picture a "function" 

 of the piece of glass thus shaped ? 



So, from your own point of view, suppose a mind- 

 stuff— A($7os— a noumenal cosmic light such as is 

 shadowed in the fourth gospel. The brain of a dog 

 will convert it into one set of phenomenal pictures, 

 and the brain of a man into another. But in both 

 cases the result is the consequence of the way in 

 which the respective brains perform their "func- 

 tion." 



M 2 



