146 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



Acknowledging, then, the great value of thelstic 

 belief, admitting even that it may be and may long 

 have been an essential condition of the welfare and 

 progress of mankind, admitting that its decay might 

 well result in the moral decadence and destruction of 

 the human race, I put all such considerations aside 

 and ask myself cold-bloodedly what evidence in sup- 

 port of Theism do I find in my studies of the mind? 



Let me make clear also that I am leaving on one 

 side all other evidences, such, for example, as evi- 

 dences of design in the physical realm or in the adap- 

 tation of the organic realm. 



I accept organic evolution as established fact; but 

 I hold that we have no adequate theory or explana- 

 tion of the way in which it has been effected. On the 

 other hand, the view, commonly accepted by men of 

 science, that living things have been evolved from a 

 realm of inorganic matter and energy that preceded 

 them in time, does not seem to me to be established; 

 indeed it seems to me very improbable and to be re- 

 garded with much suspicion. 



So much by way of clearing the ground and defin- 

 ing my initial position. I can best proceed by reject- 

 ing as unproven and improbable certain views or theo- 

 ries that are widely accepted by psychologists and by 

 indicating the alternative view to which I incline. 



I do not believe that what we call mental activity 

 or experience or consciousness is a by-product of the 

 chemistry and physics of the brain, an epiphenomenon, 

 as T. H. Huxley called it. Nor do I believe that the 

 relation between bodily and mental processes can be 

 stated in terms of parallelism without interaction.^ I 



^Cf. my Body and Mind. Macmillan Company. 1912. 



