A UTOMA TON-TUEOR Y. 135 



tlie '' unscientific ' half of existence, and any one who enjoys 

 calling himself a ' scientist ' will be too happy to purchase 

 an untrammelled homogeneity of terms in the studies of his 

 predilection, at the slight cost of admitting a dualism 

 which, in the same breath that it allows to mind an inde- 

 pendent status of being, banishes it to a limbo of causal 

 inertness, from whence no intrusion or interruption on its 

 part need ever be feared. 



Over and above this great postulate that matters must 

 be kept simple, there is, it must be confessed, still another 

 highly abstract reason for denying causal efficacity to our 

 feelings. We can form no positive image of the modus 

 operandi of a volition or other thought affecting the cere- 

 bral molecules. 



" Let US try to imagine an idea, say of food, producing a movement, 

 say of carrying food to the mouth. . . , "What is the method of its 

 action ? Does it assist the decomposition of the molecules of the gray 

 matter, or does it retard the process, or does it alter the direction in 

 which the shocks are distributed ? Let us imagine the molecules of the 

 gray matter combined in such a way that they will fall into simpler 

 combinations on the impact of an incident force. Now suppose the in- 

 cident force, in the shape of a shock from some other centre, to impinge 

 upon these molecules. By hypothesis it will decompose them, and they 

 will fall into the simpler combination. How is the idea of food to pre- 

 vent this decomposition ? Manifestly it can do so only by increasing 

 the force M'hich binds the molecules together. Good ! Try to imagine 

 the idea of a beefsteak binding two molecules together. It is impossi- 

 ble. Equally impossible is it to imagine a similar idea loosening the 

 attractive force between two molecules."* 



This passage from an exceedingly clever writer expresses 

 admirably the difficulty to which I allude. Combined with 

 a strong sense of the ' chasm ' betw'een the two worlds, and 

 with a lively faith in retlex machinery, the sense of this 

 difficulty can hardly fail to make one turn consciousness 

 out of the door as a superfluity so far as one's explanations 

 go. One may boAv her out politely, allow her to remain as 

 an ' epiphenomenon' (invaluable word !), but one insists that 

 matter shall hold all the power. 



"Having thoroughly recognized the fathomless abyss that separates 

 mind from matter, and having so blended the very notion into his very 



* Cbas. Mercier : The Nervous System aud the Mind (1888), p. 9. 



