234 THE PROBLEM OF BODY AND MIND 



words; that an area at the posterior part of the second pari- 

 etal convolution on the left side is similarly associated with 

 visual images of words and letters (see Bergson's Creative 

 Evolution) . 



The senescence of the worker hive-bees after their all too 

 strenuous short life is correlated with observable fatigue- 

 changes in their brains, and the influence on the human 

 nervous system of degeneracy of the thyroid gland is cor- 

 related with the semi-idiocy of cretinism. There is no 

 question-begging in giving these illustrations of the way in 

 which our mind's activity and development are bound up 

 with the health and development of the body, for it is 

 quite open to any one to hold that the brain, for instance, 

 is the instrument in and through which the mind realises 

 its desires and ideals. " It may be held also," an expert 

 psychologist writes, " that the gradual failure of powers 

 with old age or the temporary failure with illness or fatigue 

 failure which, though primarily physical, seems to reach 



!. to the very core of the mind's being is defect not of the 

 player, but of the instrument on which he plays, and through 

 which alone his genius can find fitting expression " ( J. L. Mc- 

 Intyre; Hastings' Cyclopaedia, vol. x, p. 778). Our pres- 

 ent point is simply that, whatever be our theoretical inter- 

 pretation, it must do justice to the facts of correlation. For 

 whatever theory we adopt, these facts remain. 



3. What Must Be Recognised from the Humanist Side. 



In pondering over the body and mind problem we must 

 never lose sight of the supreme reality of ' mind '. We need 

 not dwell on the fact that we do not know anything of Na- 

 ture save in the selective mirror of our minds; it is more 

 important to insist on the positive reality of the thought-life, 



