THE SCOPE OP MIND. 237 



Professor Herbert says,* "The common supposition, then, 

 tliat the material universe and the conscious beings around 

 LIS are directly and indubitably known, and constitute a 

 world of ' positive ' fact, in which reason can certainly 

 pronounce without any exercise of faith . , . is an 

 entire mistake, based upon astonishing ignorance of the 

 essential limitations of human knowledge, of which thinkers 

 who lived in the very dawn of philosophy were perfectly 

 aware. The fact is we are equally obliged to transcend 

 phenomena, and to put faith in events and powers and 

 realities which do not appear, when we recognise the past^ 

 or the distant, or the material universe, or the minds of men, 

 as when we infer the existence of God and of the unseen 

 Avorld." 



That life involves mind has, of course, like all else, been 

 vigorously disputed and equally vigorously affirmed. "Life,' 

 says Professor Bascom,t "is not force, it is combining power. 

 It is the product and presence of mind." No mechanical 

 process can indeed ever adequately represent or account for 

 the processes of life, and yet life is not in itself a force, it is 

 the power to use force for unique ends. 



The extent to which the Avord " mind " may be em- 

 ployed as the inherent cause of purposive movements in 

 organisms is a very difficult question to solve. There can 

 be no doubt that the means employed to produce such 

 movements are the natural forces, but behind these the 

 directing and starting power seems to be psychic. "From 

 the first movement," says Dr. R. Dunn in the Journal of 

 Mental Science, " when the primordial cell-germ of a human 

 organism comes into being, the entire individual is present, 

 fitted for human destiny. From the same moment matter,, 

 life, and mind are never for an instant separated, their 

 union constituting the essential work of our present exis- 

 tence."' Again, " one cannot forbear assuming in the vital 

 process of each individual organism an idea, which contin- 

 ually supports and renews the organism."^ Carpenter goes 

 further still. § "The convertibility of physical forces and 

 correlation of these with the vital and the intricacy of that 

 nexus between mental and bodily activity which cannot be- 



*■ Realistic Assumptions of Modern Science Examined, Professor Herbert,, 

 p. 455. 



+ Comparative Psi/cliology, Professor Bascom, p. 58. 

 X Psychology, F. Kircheuer, p. 141. 

 § Mental Physiology. 



