of the connection. Can this not be made plain?

If it cannot, are we not employing a meaningless term, one which merely serves to conceal our ignorance?

To this I answer: We have no right to ask that the relation of mind and body be explained, in the usual sense of the term. We have seen that the interactionist, in striving to make it comprehensible, has turned mind into a material thing, and has assimilated the relation to other relations with which we are familiar, thus putting it into a class, and relieving us of the sense of strangeness which has oppressed us when we have contemplated it. We have seen also that the parallelist, although he has detected the error of the interactionist, has made use of a material analogy in his figure of mind and matter as parallels, and has unhappily taken another material analogy seriously when he has attempted to explain how it is that mental phenomena and material phenomena are concomitant. He has assimilated the relation to that of different qualities referred to one substance. In each case, the relation has been explained by putting it in the same class with certain other relations.

But it has, I hope, been made clear that all such material analogies are vain. The relation of mind and body is unique, and one gains nothing by denying its uniqueness. That there is a distinction between the subjective order and the objective is too plain to be denied. That the two orders are not independent of each other, but form one system, must be admitted by every one, explicitly or implicitly. The plain man loosely connects his mind and his body. These words have no occult significance; they sum up in a sentence all those experiences to which reference has been made above, i.e. the fact that when his eyes are open he sees things, and that when they are closed he does not; the fact that when his ears are open he hears sounds, and that when they are stopped he does not, etc. The psychologist relates mind and body somewhat more definitely. Here, again, nothing more is meant than that just such facts as these are observed and recorded in a more painstaking way, and the parts of the body concerned in the experiences are more carefully determined. The whole body of facts thus collected is conveniently symbolized under the figure of parallelism, and men talk of a point-for-point correspondence, which they are very willing to admit they are not in a position to prove. But suppose

1 See Chapter XX.

that the limitations of our knowledge in this direction were done away. Suppose that the point-for-point correspondence could be proved in completest detail. What would this mean? It would only mean that very many such facts as those above referred to were accurately known. Our knowledge would not differ in kind, but in degree, from that we now possess. Indeed, it seems inconceivable that the utmost extension of our knowledge both of matter and of mind should explain the relation of mind and matter as it seems to many desirable that it should be explained.

This by no means implies a defect in our knowledge. It does not mean that we are and must remain ignorant. If a class of facts is really unique, no one is to be pitied for his inability to find a broader class under which he may subsume it, and of which he may declare it a species. A man may cry: Mystery! if he looks in vain for something in a place in which it is conceivable that some-) thing should be found; but he has no right to call it a mystery \ that he can discover nothing in a vacuum, or that he finds himself unable to assign a location to all space.

1

We have seen that the word "explanation" has its legitimate sphere of application, as have other words. In the present case, the demand for an explanation appears to arise out of the fact that mental phenomena are more or less vaguely materialized. If we conceive them to be material, it is not out of place to ask for an explanation of their relations to the body. In giving an explanation we may try to show definitely with just what class of material relations we are concerned, or we may admit our ignorance and wait for more light. The problem becomes of the same general nature as that of the relation of the moon to the earth. But when it is realized that mental phenomena must not be materialized, the case becomes very different. It is seen that the demand for an explanation has arisen out of a misconception.

But if the relation of mind and body is so peculiar that I must give up all attempt to explain what it is, am I not, in speaking of a "reference to the body," a "relation to the body," a "connection with the body," employing empty phrases which must remain without definite significance to myself and to others? Not at all. I may point out in detail the facts of experience which are gathered up and generalized in such expressions. I may call attention to the difference between the subjective order and the objective, and 1 Chapter XV.

indicate the errors into which men may fall when they confuse the two. I may do everything save obliterate the distinction between mental and material, by subsuming the former under the latter or the latter under the former. In a true sense of the words, I may explain what I mean by the expressions I use, and may even induce men to see the reasonableness of my doctrine.

To hold clearly in mind all those experiences which together furnish us with the distinction of mind and world is clearly impos sible. Some sort of a symbol, some schema, is a necessity, and such a schema is offered us by the parallelist. To quarrel with what he offers us, because his figure may be misconceived and often has been misconceived, is not worth while. The thing to do is to use it, and to avoid being misled by it. The totality of the mental phenomena we commonly refer to a single organized body, we recognize as a mind, or a consciousness. Whether more than one consciousness may be referred to one body, and what may be meant by such a reference, are questions which will have to be discussed later. Meanwhile, I shall merely remark that a consciousness is evidently not the same thing as consciousness, in the broad sense in which the word has been used in many of the preceding chapters.

CHAPTER XXV

OF NATURAL REALISM, HYPOTHETICAL REALISM, IDEALISM AND MATERIALISM

THE man who has thought out a philosophical doctrine which seems to him wholly new and quite different from those which have been advocated by his predecessors may well ask himself anxiously whether it would not be well for him to keep his discovery to himself. The probability that all others have been sitting in total darkness, and that to him alone a light has been revealed, is too small to be seriously taken into consideration.

But he who has followed with patience the reflections of the minds which have adorned the divers schools of philosophic thought, may, if he has learned to resist the youthful impulse toward indiscriminate admiration and sweeping condemnation, hope to learn something from the successes and from the failures of all. He may see that this one has recognized one undoubted truth, and has, perhaps, by that very fact been led to do scant justice to another. He may see that that one has thereby been stirred up to protest, and has been betrayed by his zeal into the converse error. If he can devise some doctrine that seems to give recognition to the truth which has been perhaps unduly emphasized by each school, and can thus bring about something like a reconciliation of the different forms of opinion, it does not seem unreasonable for him to set it forth. He appears to find a relative justification for each, and, as he acknowledges his indebtedness to each, he makes no preposterous claim to an abnormal originality, and does not have to pose as a creator out of nothing of philosophical doctrine.

For the doctrine of the world and the mind set forth in the preceding chapters I am inclined to claim attention largely because it is neither very new, in its elements at least, nor very startling. As we have seen, it is quite in harmony with truths which have long been recognized by the psychologist. It merely invites him

to come, by a process of reflection, to a clearer comprehension of their full significance, and thus to escape from certain dangers which menace him. In the present chapter I wish to point out that it does full justice to the impulse which leads men to declare themselves adherents of one or another of certain leading schools of philosophy, and makes it quite comprehensible that such schools should have arisen. I shall begin with the doctrine of the Natural Realists.

The man of whom we most naturally think when we employ this term is Thomas Reid. The term is, to be sure, a "questionbegging" epithet, and may be misleading, for, although it is natural for a man like Reid- a man gifted with robust common sense but not born for metaphysical analysis-to think, under some circumstances, as Reid did; yet it is equally natural for an acuter mind to repudiate this philosophy and embrace another. To Reid himself his doctrine was the philosophy of Common Sense, and his appeal is everywhere from the perverted ingenuity of the philosopher to the robust judgment of the plain man. It is eminently natural to be a plain man before one has learned to be something better, and the mass of mankind have always been, from the point of view of the metaphysician, plain men. There is no serious objection to applying the title Natural Realism to the doctrine of the "natural man," but one must bear in mind that the individual thus indicated is not thereby made the subject of unqualified praise.

At one time Reid regarded himself as the disciple of Berkeley, the idealist. But the consequences that David Hume seemed logically to deduce from the principles laid down by his predecessor aroused in Reid a lively discontent. A general scepticism by no means suited the temper of his mind; he was unwilling to regard human knowledge as limited wholly to "impressions" and "ideas," and he cast about for some means of egress from the unsubstantial prison which shut him in. An external world he must have, and a soul not to be confounded with a "bundle of perceptions." The door which he sought for he found in the discovery that his predecessors, Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, all based their reasonings upon an erroneous hypothesis, the hypothesis "that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it." Once grant this hypothesis, and all is lost: "Bishop Berkeley hath proved, beyond the possibility