BODY AND SOUL 
The term mental state is as ambiguous and contradictory 
as the more comprehensive designation mental faculty 
indeed, the latter is less open to criticism than the former. What 
we really have to do with is an activity or its absence. In the 
latter case there is a state’’ of non-existence or of not-being. 
In the former case we have an unwarranted postulate. A state 
of activity implies a something apart from the activity which 
may at some other time be in a state of inactivity. But this 
assumption is gratuitous. Mind is not a something which can 
under suitable conditions get into ^^a state,” and so produce this 
and that activity recognized as mental. The totality of the activi- 
ties constitutes the mind. 
But is there not a physical basis of mind of which these activi- 
ties may be said to be states? What the physical basis of mind 
is it does not here concern us to inquire. Whatever this is, 
mind is not a state of matter. If one chooses to describe mind 
as one of the forms of the activities of matter, we shall have no 
quarrel with him if the same treatment be applied to the other 
so-called qualities of matter. When this is done, we have a collec- 
tion of activities and nothing else. Common usage describes 
matter at one moment as something whose reality consists in 
its ability to be affected in certain ways by forces. What this 
property is which permits force to affect it we are not told. 
But plainly it is itself a disguised force, for it is able to alter the 
mode of force. At other times usage seems to assume that the 
properties of matter are forces. Without this assumption, it 
is impossible to treat of the phenomena of elasticity. It is evident 
that this whole field is clothed in densest obscurity and crudest 
ambiguity. It is necessary to accept one or the other basis 
of physical reality: (1) matter as a metaphysical generator of 
force, (2) force as a multiform expression of a spontaneous primal 
energy back of which it is impossible and unnecessary to go. 
Everyday experience teaches us that there is a certain seg- 
ment of our objective experience that has a closer relation to 
the ego than other portions. The child may offer to its toe a 
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