132 PSYCHOLOGY. 



thing which influences matter is the position of surrounding matter or 

 the motion of surrounding matter. . . . The assertion that another 

 man's volition, a feeling in his consciousness that I cannot perceive, is 

 part of the train of physical facts which I may perceive, — this is neither 

 true nor untrue, but nonsense ; it is a combination of words whose cor- 

 responding ideas will not go together. . . . Sometimes one series is 

 known better, and sometimes the otlier ; so that in telling a story we 

 speak sometimes of mental and sometimes of material facts. A feeling 

 of chill made a man run ; strictly speaking, the nervous disturbance 

 which coexisted with that feeling of chill made him run, if we want to 

 talk about material facts ; or the feeling of chill produced the form of 

 sub-consciousness which coexists with the motion of legs, if we want 

 to talk about mental facts. . . . When, therefore, we ask : ' What is the 

 physical link between the ingoing message from chilled skin and the 

 outgoing message which moves the leg ? ' and the answer is, ' A man's 

 will,' we have as much right to be amused as if we had asked our friend 

 with the picture what pigment was used in painting the cannon in the 

 foreground, and received the answer, ' Wrought iron.' It will be found 

 excellent practice in the mental operations required by this doctrine to 

 imagine a train, the fore part of which is an engine and three carriages 

 linked with iron couplings, and the hind part three other carriages 

 linked with iron couplings ; the bond between the two parts being 

 made up out of the sentiments of amity subsisting between the stoker 

 and the guard." 



To comprehend completely the consequences of the 

 dogma so confidently enunciated, one should unflinchingly 

 apply it to the most complicated examples. The move- 

 ments of our tongues and pens, the flashings of our eyes in 

 conversation, are of course events of a material order, and as 

 such their causal antecedents must be exclusively material. 

 If we knew thoroughly the nervous system of Shake- 

 speare, and as thoroughly all his en-vdroning conditions, we 

 should be able to show why at a certain period of his life 

 his hand came to trace on certain sheets of paper those 

 crabbed little black marks which we for shortness' 

 sake call the manuscript of Hamlet. We should under- 

 stand the rationale of every erasure and alteration therein, 

 and we should understand all this without in the slightest 

 degree acknoAvledging the existence of the thoughts in Shake- 

 speare's mind. The words and sentences would be taken, 

 not as signs of anything beyond themselves, but as little 

 otitward facts, pure and simple. In like manner we might 

 exhaustively write the biography of those two hundred 



