Nature and Freedom. 69 



justified. That the problem of nature and conscious freedom is 

 not to be solved by annihilating one of its factors, I will not re- 

 peat ; but will only ask that an analysis of mind, whose ultimate 

 point, is element of mind equals nervous shock, even if it allow Mr. 

 Fisketo substitute ''psychical shock" must necessarily fail to satisfy 

 many who earnestly seek for truth. For it leads us to ask, 



1. What are elements of mind in me, whose self is kuown, if 

 known at all, as an enduring, invisible unit ; at least that is what 

 I mean when I say "I," and you must first prove that lam 

 wrong ; and in doing it, you also will use the same word, and I 

 shall understand the same enduring, indivisible unit in you. 



2. What one-sided tendency led a writer on psychology to 

 employ nervous shock as the ultimate element of mind? 



8. Call it psychical shock, and what is the thing that is 

 shocked, noticnown apart from its shocks ; but known as shocked? 

 Or, if the question be relegated to the unknowable, how is a 

 shock of self related to a perceived shock of the air, or the in- 

 ferred shock of an electrified body? A figure of speech settles 

 nothing in philosophy or science. One of the above is a fact of 

 consciousness referred to self; the other, to something outside of 

 ego ; the air, when the brain is shocked. 



4 G-ranting that Spencer aad Fiske have rendered some ac- 

 count of the passive factor in phenomena, what is to be said of 

 the active, which our consciousness reveals and Mr. S., we pre- 

 sume, employed in finding out his explanation ? 



An historical retrospect is instructive as showing the tendencies 

 of thought, and giving some account of opinions now prevailing. 

 I come to the 



PRESENT STATE OF THE QUESTION, 



Is any reconciliation possible whore there is such wide diverg- 

 ence ? Only, I maintain, when we acknowledge and keep steaidly 

 in view the dual aspect of the truth. This is not by any means 

 a fundamental dualism, from the metaphysical point of view. 

 But sciences of phenomena, as ihe accidents of true being, may be 

 separated by their objects and methods, from the science of true 

 being with its proper method ; whether we are dualists or monists, 



