the caricaturist means us to infer when he turns the corners of a mouth up or turns them down; but our information as to what is revealed by facial expression goes much beyond this, and we may confidently infer calm strength or a secret sadness where we are wholly unable to indicate any definite mark which is made the basis of our judgment.

There is no department of our mental life in which judgments of this sort do not play their part. We are apt to say, in such cases, that we feel that this or that is true, or that we know by intuition that it is true. Such judgments may be said to have their roots in the subconscious, and the immense significance of the subconscious in the life of man ought to be given due recognition. But it must not be forgotten that to recognize the existence of the subconscious in this sense is nothing else than to recognize that consciousness-contents do not all stand out with equal vividness, and that much may be known and may influence our judgments without on that account being clearly and analytically known.

Touching the subconscious in this sense of the word, I beg the reader to bear in mind two things:

First, let him remember that between the conscious and the subconscious there is no clear line. Experiences of the one class fade gradually into those of the other; the difference is one of degree and not one of kind. Moreover, there is no reason to regard the realm of the subconscious as the abode of a mystery which can never be dispelled. Regions which do not lie open to the eye of direct introspection may, nevertheless, be explored and mapped out with the aid of approved scientific methods. The psychologist is constantly occupied in doing work of this kind, and it is not inconceivable that the time may come when his information touching the dimmest and vaguest of the elements which enter into our mental life may be reasonably clear and satisfactory.

In the second place, let it not be forgotten that we have no warrant for assuming that "intuitions" are infallible, or even that they are of necessity a safer guide than the deliverances of conscious reflection. For example, most of the persons with whom we come in contact have little interest in Ethics as a science, but they have very definite opinions upon the subject of what is right and what is wrong in individual cases. If we ask why an action is right or how it is known that an action is right, we receive from them no intelligible answer. They feel that it

is right, and that is sufficient. Now, I have no desire to underrate the importance of the unsystematic and sometimes erratic ethical training to which we are all subjected from the cradle, nor would I maintain that any course in Ethics could take its place. But it is just to point out that the ethical "intuitions" of the individual may reflect the prejudices of an age, of a nation, of a community, or of a social class, and may seem sadly in need of revision to one capable of a wider vision.

Science is not infallible, and the attempt to think clearly may result in one's taking the wrong path; but to heap obloquy upon science and clear thought and to turn by preference to the subconscious as the ground of one's judgments, is to close deliberately the windows which admit the light of day, and to prepare for oneself that darkness in which the ghosts of superstition may be expected to appear.

I may be excused for uttering a somewhat similar note of warning touching our attitude toward the subconscious in the sense of other-consciousness. That more than one consciousness may be referred to the one organism we may accept as fact. The contents of such consciousnesses and their relations to each other are legitimate matter for scientific investigation. There is no field of science, however, which calls for more patience and more caution in him who would cultivate it successfully. This is a soil upon which every superstition has flourished in the past, and it appears ever ready to give birth to hasty generalizations, far-reaching inferences, and bold flights of the poetic imagination. To do good work in this field one needs to have in one's composition a grain of scepticism, and one needs also to possess a nice sense of what constitutes scientific evidence. Unhappily, it appears that this field offers irresistible attractions to the man who revels in the mystery of the subconscious, who thrills in the presence of spiritualistic mediums, who looks for short cuts to the solution of great problems, who loves the poetry of science rather than the dry facts which constitute the body of exact knowledge. Of the subconscious in the sense under discussion we have so little knowledge that is worthy to be called scientific, that the prudent man will regard with no other feeling than curiosity the airy edifices which uncritical minds have optimistically founded upon it and whose mushroom growth may safely be accepted as a mark of their unsubstantial character.

CHAPTER XXXI

MENTAL PHENOMENA AND THE CAUSAL NEXUS

IN the doctrine of mind and world which has been set forth in the preceding chapters, mental phenomena have not been placed in the one series of causes and effects with the occurrences which belong to the physical world.

In common life we use the words "cause " and "effect" loosely, and there is no reason why we should affect a rigorous exactness which is not called for by the exigencies of the situation, and which savors of pedantry. But one who has seen the force of the considerations urged by the parallelist, and has come to appreciate the distinction between the subjective order of experience and the objective, cannot be inclined to regard sensations or ideas as the effects of physical causes or as the causes of physical effects, when the words “cause" and "effect" are used in their strict and proper significance. If the physical world is a perfect mechanism, there is no physical occurrence which cannot theoretically be completely accounted for by a reference to physical causes, and there is none whose effect can be other than a physical occurrence. Cause and effect are seen to be a name for antecedent and consequent in the series of changes that constitute the life history of the mechanism of nature. In this series of changes mental phenomena have no place; they belong to a different order they are not antecedent or consequent, but have their place on a parallel line. Their abstraction does not leave the order of causes and effects incomplete.

Again. Mental phenomena have not been shown to belong to a single orderly world of their own, in which the appearance of a sensation or of an idea could be accounted for somewhat as the fall of a raindrop can be accounted for in the physical world. It is true, we sometimes point to the laws of the association of ideas; and speak as though the idea which "introduces" another were a cause of the appearance of the latter. The analogy, however,

between such antecedence and succession and the order of physical causes and effects is an extremely remote one.

In the mechanical order of nature it is inconceivable that a given cause should produce any other than one single effect, and the precise nature of this effect may (theoretically) be calculated by any one who is acquainted with the cause. On the other hand, any sort of idea may suggest any other, if the two happen to be connected a sight may suggest a sound, another sight, or the idea of a movement. We can trace no fixed proportion between. the antecedent idea and its successor; nothing that in the least corresponds to the nice adjustment of causes and effects in the external world. Moreover, even were we inclined to regard such a relation of ideas as a causal connection, we should be compelled to admit that the rise of a sensation could not be accounted for by a reference to any antecedent mental fact. Finally, the realm of minds appears to be broken up into a great number of relatively independent principalities, which transact their business without much reference to each other. An idea in a mind may suggest another idea in the same mind, but the chain soon comes to an end, and we cannot follow it through a series of minds into an indefinite past. But it is conceivable that one who knew enough should trace the antecedents of the falling drop along the series of physical causes to the cosmic mist from which in the fulness. of time our universe was precipitated.

In the seventeenth century a man of genius made the bold attempt to treat mental phenomena after the fashion of physical phenomena. Spinoza accepted a physical world complete in itself and wholly cut off from any interference from the world of mind. But he also assumed a mental world equally complete in itself, and unaffected by any of the changes taking place in the world of material things. He conceived all nature to be animated, and held that each corporeal thing has corresponding to it a mental thing, which may be called its idea. He would have us believe that all these mental things or ideas are interrelated as are the physical things to which they correspond; that they constitute a system of essentially the same character; and that, just as happenings in the material world are completely accounted for by a reference to their physical causes, so we may account completely for all happenings in the world of ideas by a reference to mental causes, which are other ideas. This is a parallelism which does

not content itself with a somewhat parsimonious distribution of halos, but conjures up and places beside the material world a second world coextensive with it, as complex, as self-sufficing, as well able to get along entirely by itself. The boldness of the speculation compels our admiration.

Our conviction, however, it cannot compel. When we open our eyes and ask ourselves what are actually the facts in the case, we realize that our philosopher has given free rein to his imagination. We have seen, in discussing the distribution of minds, that our evidence for the existence of mind gradually fades out. That human bodies reveal mind, it does not occur to us to doubt at all. That certain other bodies, widely different from human bodies, yet bearing some analogy to them, reveal mind, we think possible and perhaps probable. But we must admit that we have no evidence that consciousness or anything like consciousness accompanies the fall of a raindrop, the rending of a rock through the influence of frost, the chemical changes which reveal themselves to us under the form of combustion, the electric discharge that spreads devastation in the storm.

The geologist informs us that there was a time when the occurrences on this planet were of no other character. We now find it a little world in which one of the most striking facts is the distribution of minds. The evolutionary philosopher, if he venture to touch upon the matter at all, seems forced to conclude, with Mr. Spencer, that, at some point in the world's history, consciousness has become "nascent." And this, the appearance of a new sort of being, has been followed by what may be called a whole series of beginnings. With the gradual development of organisms and the increasing complexity of nervous structures, there have come into existence new classes of sensations, colors, sounds, tastes, odors. Such as these did not exist and could not exist so long as the life of the world was of a low order.

We need not, however, go back to a remote and little known past in order to find ourselves confronted with this problem of beginnings. Spinoza's notion that all the mental phenomena that exist form one directly interrelated system is, as I have above indicated, by no means borne out by the facts. If the coming into existence of a consciousness at some distant past time is a problem, the coming into existence of a new consciousness at the present moment is equally a problem. I cannot say that consciousness