LIFE: ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE 49 
eye; we get in touch with the thought and 
spirit of the author. The printed letteis are 
mere symbols. It is very difficult, therefore, 
fully to account for the activities of conscious¬ 
ness on any purely materialistic view. If mat¬ 
ter cannot think, and energy cannot think, 
what is it that thinks,—since thoughts cer¬ 
tainly exist, and are (for us) the most import¬ 
ant factors in the Universe? 
Yet it is certainly true that mind and brain 
are somehow related. We know that we can 
mix poison in a man»’s blood, and his thinking 
facilities become impaired. On the contrary, 
a man may read a telegram and drop dead,—• 
seeming to show the enormous influence upon 
the body of the mind and the emotions, Some 
sort of relationship or interaction must there¬ 
fore exist between them. What is the nature 
of this relationship? How can mind and body 
be conceived of as influencing one another? 
This is one of the most interesting of all 
metaphysical questions—the relationship of 
mind and body. Various theories have been 
advanced in the past in an attempt to account 
for this relationship. The purely materialistic 
conception (that nothing but matter and energy 
exists) has now been entirely given up, since 
it fails to take into account the very obvious 
reality of consciousness. 
Huxley attempted to account for conscious¬ 
ness by assuming that it somehow followed 
along with, or resulted from, certain specific 
brain activities, and that, just as the shadow 
of a horse accompanies the horse, so thoughts 
and mental activities of all kinds accompany 
