6 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



The whole theory of correspondence has not one explicit 

 fact to sustain it. The senses are definite in their outer con- 

 ditions and inner impressions; the activities are definite in 

 their inner conditions and outer effects; but our experience 

 does not extend or cannot extend to any pure mental state 

 as the exact counterpart of a physical one embraced between 

 these two lines of ingress and egress. Arguments looking 

 to such a conclusion are all inferences from insufficient 

 grounds. 



There are two contrasted views that we may take of the 

 relation of the processes of pure thought to cerebral action. 

 We may regard them as strictly incident co cerebral changes 

 which intervene between sensation and action. This sup- 

 position implies an exact and causal connection of each 

 specific cerebral state with a corresponding state in con- 

 sciousness. The line of efficient forces is thus maintained in 

 the physical world. Or, we may regard pure intellectual 

 activity as a distinct term, under its own laws, which is in- 

 troduced between sensor impressions and muscular actions, 

 as the musician is an independent agent between the sheet 

 of music that lies on the piano and the instrument itself. 

 On this supposition the mind as mind receives impressions, 

 correlates them in its own fashion, arrests them or passes 

 them on in effects according to its own ends. We may, if we 

 choose, modify this second opinion by still further supposing 

 that there is a distinct molecular state of brain as the neces- 

 sary accompaniment of each thought, but that it is secured by 

 existing states of mind and not by antecedent sensations. 

 This expansion of the theory, however, seems to be a weak 

 concession to physical ideas, as no such correspondence can 

 be proved, and the cerebral states thus accompanying pure 

 thought would have causal connections neither with antece- 

 dent nor subsequent cerebral states, would be a dead term in 

 the material world, and serve no known purpose in the 

 mental one. 



This intervention of mind does not imply any chasm in 

 physical sequences, any break of relations between sensa- 

 tions and actions, but simply the power of the mind to pen- 

 etrate, and in a great variety of ways to modify, these 



