deeply interested, remains unaffected. And now that we have seen that our notions of activity and passivity draw their whole significance from this relation of purpose and end, and are never to be confused with the notions of cause and effect, ought we not to recognize that it is mere misconception to charge the parallelist with the misdemeanor of making the mind inactive?

When is a man active? When does he do something? Is it not when mental phenomenon and physical fact stand in the relation of plan and accomplishment? Can anything be active save as it has a mind? We have seen that the word has no meaning in the realm of the purely physical; and a little reflection makes it plain that when men use it in speaking of material things they are employing a conception borrowed from a different sphere. There is a tincture of animism in common thought, and from this even the philosopher finds it difficult to free himself. Physical causes can be regarded as active only when they are more or less dimly conceived as endowed with minds.

The truth is that the phenomena of our universe can be contemplated from more than one point of view. One may fix one's attention upon the order of physical causes and effects, and note that mental phenomena stand to certain of these in a relation conveniently symbolized under the figure employed by the parallelist. But any given mental phenomenon is not to be assumed to stand only in relation to the particular physical occurrence to which the physiologist directly refers it. Ideas are, through brains, related to the whole physical and mental universe; and, when these relations are taken into account, a new world of distinctions has its birth. This is the moral world of aspirations, of purposes, and of ends. Nothing that the parallelist can say should be construed as an attack upon it. Nothing for which our experience vouches is more real and undeniable. It is an aspect of the one real world consisting of matter and of mind-it is as real as is that world; and he who desires something more real is capable of crying for what is rounder than the circle.

Thus, all those experiences which we are in the habit of characterizing as instances of the action of mind upon matter, and of one mind upon another mind stand unshaken. Men form plans, and carry them out in action. They set before themselves ends, and they attain them. They come to a knowledge of the existence of other minds, and they communicate with such minds.

Minds are not epi-phenomena, they are not shadows, they are not otiose. All these things the parallelist not only may say, but must say, if he be a good parallelist, and understands the significance of his own doctrine.

It is necessary that I should emphasize one point before bringing this chapter to a close. It has been pointed out above that an end is different from a mere result in that it is a phenomenon referred, not merely to antecedent physical phenomena, but to an idea. I beg the reader to observe that I have used the word "idea" in no equivocal sense. I have been at great pains to point out what we mean by ideas or mental phenomena, and how we are to conceive of the relation between mental phenomena and the material world. I have indicated that an unconscious idea is an absurdity. It follows that the recognition of ends in nature must always imply the recognition of consciousness somewhere.

To this some will demur. Has not the philosopher maintained again and again that nature may seek and attain her ends unconsciously that there is such a thing as an immanent finality which does not imply consciousness? When a mutilated newt reproduces its curtailed member and grows once more into the form proper to a creature of its kind, we have what appears to be the carrying out of a plan or purpose, the realization of an intention. To suppose the batrachian mind capable of such deliberate foresight that the result may be attributed to it as its end seems absurd. No one supposes that the creature plans and attains as man plans and attains when he carves a statue or builds a house. It does not seem, then, that what undoubtedly appears to be an end, can be referred to the consciousness of the animal itself. And if a man cannot see his way clear to accepting the belief in a Divine Mind, must he, on that account, deny that a plan is realized, that an end is attained? Are not the facts such as to warrant him in asserting that Nature is seeking the reproduction of a type, and unconsciously strives to attain an end?

To this I answer as follows: He who says that Nature seeks or that Nature strives is using expressions which find their significance in a world not purely physical. If they are carried over to the merely material, it is by way of metaphor, and one must not be misled by one's metaphors. A man raises his gun and a bullet reaches the target. We relate this result as end to an idea in 1 Chapters XXIII and XXIV. Chapter XXX.

2

his mind. It is, however, but one out of an indefinite series of physical consequences which follow the pulling of the trigger. The man who fired the gun may be charged with producing the whole series, if he may be charged with producing a single member. Can we say he sought to produce the series? Was it his purpose to have the bullet pass through a spot three metres in front of the target, two metres in front, one metre in front? Did he aim to heat the target by the impact of the bullet, or to stir the air which lay in its path? It is absurd to say that he sought to do these things; these are results, not ends. In the whole physical series we find but one term which may properly be called an end. It is the one term which is represented in his mind by an idea; the term which stands to that idea in the relation of accomplishment to plan. It is this relation, and this relation alone, that distinguishes this term from all the rest, and that gives it a claim upon the attention of the ethical philosopher, as well as upon that of the physicist.

If we overlook this relation, this term becomes at once as insignificant as the most insignificant of those which have preceded it or of those which may follow it to the end of time. It is useless to attempt to define an end in any other way than by a reference to this relation. Every physical fact is predetermined by the physical causes which have produced it, and the number of concurrent causes which have a share in the result may be enormous. If a given fact recurs repeatedly, and if a multitude of distinct causes appear to be concerned in its production, it is absurd to attribute the constantly recurring fact to "chance." But when we say all this, we have not shown that the fact is to be regarded as an end. Death and dissolution are as universal as birth and growth, but men do not incline to regard death and dissolution as the end of the development of the organism. Some facts they tend to look upon as ends, and some they do not. It is only from one point of view that their principle of selection becomes intelligible.

As I have said earlier in this chapter, I am not now concerned with the scope of the argument which

passes from

purpose and end purpose and end

as revealed in the realm of human activities to as revealed throughout the realm of nature. That men do follow the thread of analogy, and interpret nature after a fashion suggested by their knowledge of man, there can be no doubt. They

carry over to a broader field the conceptions of purpose and of end. And I beg the reader to observe that he who speaks of nature as seeking her ends unconsciously is at once admitting and denying this analogy. If a given physical fact beyond the realm of human activities bears to the facts which lie within that realm a sufficiently close analogy to warrant us in regarding it as an end, it is a fact which we are warranted in referring to an idea, to consciousness. To retain the notion of end and throw away the notion of purpose is to retain the notion of below and throw away the notion of above. One cannot blow hot and cold in this fashion. It is quite permissible to declare the supposed analogy a false one; but then one must abandon the conception of end as well as that of purpose.

I hope I have succeeded in making clear in the preceding pages that the world in which mechanism reigns supreme and the moral world of purposes and ends are not and never need be at war with one another. It is not necessary to shatter the former in order that, upon its ruins, we may base the stately structure of the latter. There are not really two worlds; there is but one, and that one may be contemplated now under this aspect, now under that. I should think this view of the case would be welcomed as a relief. It relieves one from the secret hope that the labors of the man of science will be in vain; that his efforts to prove the world of matter and motion the orderly thing he suspects it to be will be doomed to disappointment. It saves the timid man from the unethical temptation to rejoice in human ignorance, and to regard those who would enlighten him as heralds of misfortune. The world of matter and of motion is not our enemy, but our friend; we cause ourselves gratuitous unhappiness when we mistake its face.

CHAPTER XXXIII

FATALISM, "FREE-WILL," AND DETERMINISM

LAIUS, king of Thebes, was warned by an oracle that there was danger to his throne and to his life if his infant son were allowed to grow up. The child was delivered to a herdsman with orders for its destruction. The herdsman pierced its feet, with the intention of exposing it to the elements on Mount Citharon; but the little creature did not meet this cruel death; it was given to a shepherd, who carried it to King Polybus of Corinth, and by him the child was adopted and called Edipus.

Long after these events, Edipus, who had arrived at man's estate, learned from an oracle that he was destined to kill his father. He left the kingdom of his reputed father, Polybus. In a narrow way he met Laïus, who, with an attendant, was driving to Delphi. Edipus refused the supposed stranger the right of way, and the king's attendant retaliated by killing one of his horses. Edipus, furious at the deed, slew both master and man. Thus did Laius and Edipus, puppets in the hand of a higher power, fulfil the oracles against which they had risen in rebellion.

The story stands as an admirable illustration of the fatalist's view of things. Certain ends are fixed; they will be brought about, whatever may happen. We know that if Edipus had taken another road, he would still have met Laius sooner or later. The man was doomed; his death was a thing allotted (eiμapμévn); it was predicted (fatum).

In the Greek literature we find two conceptions of fate. “On the one hand, Fate was a decree, dependent for its effectiveness (upon the divine will. On the other hand, it was personified, and conceived of as an independent principle controlling the acts of gods and of men."1 In the "Iliad," for example, success and failure of Greek and Trojan are represented as decided, not by

1 See Alexander's "Theories of the Will in the History of Philosophy," N.Y. 1898, pp. 8 ff.