PROFESSOR BROOKS'S PHILOSOPHY 125 



second sense of the term and which yet, as made tip of the appearance 

 of new existents, is itself irreducible to continuity, and is uneliminable. 

 But it is in substance just this view which Professor Brooks accepts 

 and defends in one way or another in a number of Lectures of the 

 Foundations. In order to carry confirmation to the reader's mind 

 that this is the case a few typical passages may be quoted. Thus we 

 find Professor Brooks saying : " So far as I can see, the reduction of 

 all nature to mechanical principles would mean nothing more than that 

 all phenomena of nature are orderly." 2 " When we say nature is 

 orderly, we mean each event may be a sign which leads us to expect 

 other events with confidence." 3 " When, as commonly happens, we 

 change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity which most 

 assuredly does not lie in the observed facts." 4 Of peculiar interest, 

 since, in perfect agreement with Professor Brooks's general view as 

 above expounded, it reveals his position as to the relation of mind and 

 matter, is the statement that " if such a discovery {i. e., that these two 

 worlds are different aspects of one and the same world reduced to me- 

 chanical principles) should ever be made ... I can not see how it could 

 possibly show that mind is anything but mind." 5 Briefly, this means 

 that if consciousness were found to be, for example, energy, it would be 

 that kind of energy which would have just those properties which con- 

 sciousness is found empirically to have. Professor Brooks would then 

 bring mind itself within nature, i. e., he would treat it, like other things, 

 quite empirically, and this, I think, is the correct position. But it is 

 a position which has interesting consequences ! For, on the one hand, 

 let his interpretation of causation and " order," etc., be remembered. 

 Now Professor Brooks holds that this same interpretation applies also 

 to mental events ; the " order," causation, etc., here are factual only to 

 the limited extent actually observed ; beyond that they are assumptions. 

 But what is it that makes the assumptions ? Why the mind itself, which 

 either is, by the same interpretation, simply the series of mental events, 

 or, if not this, is something more. In the former case we have, then, 

 that which is assumed " order," namely, mind, assuming " order " else- 

 where, and so on again and again. Consistency demands, then, that it 

 be admitted that that which may be indeterminate, namely, nature, is 

 known by that which is also indeterminate, namely, mind ! But the 

 consistency is itself an element in this latter indeterminateness. The 

 situation thus resulting is, of course, a perplexing one; for, to look at 

 it from a slightly different angle, it means that Professor Brooks as 

 evolutionist makes mind and life, with their assumed " order," etc., 



2 Foundations, p. 289. 



3 Ibid., p. 305. 



4 Ibid., p. 294. 

 6 Ibid., p. 308. 



