EPILOGUE.

PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.

What the Word Metaphysics means.—In the last chapter we handed the question of free-will over to metaphysics.' It would indeed have been hasty to settle the question absolutely, inside the limits of psychology. Let psychology frankly admit that for her scientific purposes determinism may be claimed, and no one can find fault. If, then, it turn out later that the claim has only a relative purpose, and may be crossed by counter-claims, the readjustment can be made. Now ethics makes a counterclaim; and the present writer, for one, has no hesitation in regarding her claim as the stronger, and in assuming that our wills are free.' For him, then, the deterministic assumption of psychology is merely provisional and methodological. This is no place to argue the ethical point; and I only mention the conflict to show that all these special sciences, marked off for convenience from the remaining body of truth (cf. p. 1), must hold their assumptions and results subject to revision in the light of each others' needs. The forum where they hold discussion is called metaphysics. Metaphysics means only an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and consistently. The special sciences all deal with data that are full of obscurity and contradiction; but from the point of view of their limited purposes these defects may be overlooked. Hence the disparaging use of the name metaphysics which is so common. To a man with a limited purpose any discussion that is over-subtle for that purpose is branded as 'metaphysical.' A geologist's purposes fall short of understanding Time itself. A mechanist need

not know now action and reaction are possible at all. A psychologist has enough to do without asking how both he and the mind which he studies are able to take cognizance of the same outer world. But it is obvious that problems irrelevant from one standpoint may be essential from another. And as soon as one's purpose is the attainment of the maximum of possible insight into the world as a whole, the metaphysical puzzles become the most urgent ones of all. Psychology contributes to general philosophy her full share of these; and I propose in this last chapter to indicate briedy which of them seem the more important. And first, of the

Relation of Consciousness to the Brain.-When psychology is treated as a natural science (after the fashion in which it has been treated in this book), 'states of mind' are taken for granted, as data immediately given in experience; and the working hypothesis (see p. 6) is the mere empirical law that to the entire state of the brain at any moment one unique state of mind always 'corresponds.' This does very well till we begin to be metaphysical and ask ourselves just what we mean by such a word as 'corresponds.' This notion appears dark in the extreme, the moment we seek to translate it into something more intimate than mere parallel variation. Some think they

make the notion of it clearer by calling the mental state and the brain the inner and outer aspects,' respectively, of 'One and the Same Reality.' Others consider the mental state as the reaction' of a unitary being, the Soul, upon the multiple activities which the brain presents. Others again comminute the mystery by supposing each braincell to be separately conscious, and the empirically given mental state to be the appearance of all the little consciousnesses fused into one, just as the brain' itself is the appearance of all the cells together, when looked at from one point of view.

We may call these three metaphysical attempts the monistic, the spiritualistic, and the atomistic theories re

spectively. Each has its difficulties, of which it seems to me that those of the spiritualistic theory are logically much the least grave. But the spiritualistic theory is quite out of touch with the facts of multiple consciousness, alternate personality, etc. (pp. 207-214). These lend themselves more naturally to the atomistic formulation, for it seems easier to think of a lot of minor consciousnesses now gathering together into one large mass, and now into several smaller ones, than of a Soul now reacting totally, now breaking into several disconnected simultaneous reactions. The localization of brain-functions also makes for the atomistic view. If in my experience, say of a bell, it is my occipital lobes which are the condition of its being seen, and my temporal lobes which are the condition of its being heard, what is more natural than to say that the former see it and the latter hear it, and then combine their information'? In view of the extreme naturalness of such a way of representing the well-established fact that the appearance of the several parts of an object to consciousness at any moment does depend on as many several parts of the brain being then active, all such objections as were urged, on pp. 23, 57, and elsewhere, to the notion that parts' of consciousness can combine' will be rejected as far-fetched, unreal, and metaphysical' by the atomistic philosopher. His purpose' is to gain a formula which shall unify things in a natural and easy manner, and for such a purpose the atomistic theory seems expressly made to his hand.

But the difficulty with the problem of 'correspondence' is not only that of solving it, it is that of even stating it in elementary terms.

"L'ombre en ce lieu s'amasse, et la nuit est la toute."

Before we can know just what sort of goings-on occur when thought corresponds to a change in the brain, we must know the subjects of the goings-on. We must know which sort of mental fact and which sort of cerebral fact are, so to speak, in immediate juxtaposition. We must

find the minimal mental fact whose being reposes directly on a brain-fact; and we must similarly find the minimal brain-event which can have a mental counterpart at all. Between the mental and the physical minima thus found there will be an immediate relation, the expression of which, if we had it, would be the elementary psycho-physic law.

Our own formula has escaped the metempiric assumption of psychic atoms by taking the entire thought (even of a complex object) as the minimum with which it deals on the mental side, and the entire brain as the minimum on the physical side. But the entire brain' is not a physical fact at all! It is nothing but our name for the way in which a billion of molecules arranged in certain positions may affect our sense. On the principles of the corpuscular or mechanical philosophy, the only realities are the separate molecules, or at most the cells. Their aggregation into a 'brain' is a fiction of popular speech. Such a figment cannot serve as the objectively real counterpart to any psychic state whatever. Only a genuinely physical

fact can so serve, and the molecular fact is the only genuine physical fact. Whereupon we seem, if we are to have an elementary psycho-physic law at all, thrust right back upon something like the mental-atom-theory, for the molecular fact, being an element of the brain,' would seem naturally to correspond, not to total thoughts, but to elements of thoughts. Thus the real in psychics seems to 'correspond' to the unreal in physics, and vice versa; and our perplexity is extreme.

The Relation of States of Mind to their 'Objects.'-The perplexity is not diminished when we reflect upon our assumption that states of consciousness can know (pp. 2–13). From the common-sense point of view (which is that of all the natural sciences) knowledge is an ultimate relation between two mutually external entities, the knower and the known. The world first exists, and then the states of mind; and these gain a cognizance of the world which gets gradually more and more complete. But it is hard

to carry through this simple dualism, for idealistic reflections will intrude. Take the states of mind called pure sensations (so far as such may exist), that for example of blue, which we may get from looking into the zenith on a clear day. Is the blue a determination of the feeling itself, or of its 'object'? Shall we describe the experience as a quality of our feeling or as our feeling of a quality? Ordinary speech vacillates incessantly on this point. The ambiguous word 'content' has been recently invented instead of 'object,' to escape a decision; for 'content' suggests something not exactly out of the feeling, nor yet exactly identical with the feeling, since the latter remains suggested as the container or vessel. Yet of our feelings as vessels apart from their content we really have no clear notion whatever. The fact is that such an experience as blue, as it is immediately given, can only be called by some such neutral name as that of phenomenon. It does not come to us immediately as a relation between two realities, one mental and one physical. It is only when, still thinking of it as the same blue (cf. p. 239), we trace relations between it and other things, that it doubles itself, so to speak, and develops in two directions; and, taken in connection with some associates, figures as a physical quality, whilst with others it figures as a feeling in the mind.

Our non-sensational, or conceptual, states of mind, on the other hand, seem to obey a different law. They present themselves immediately as referring beyond themselves. Although they also possess an immediately given 'content,' they have a 'fringe' beyond it (p. 168), and claim to 'represent' something else than it. The 'blue' we have just spoken of, for instance, was, substantively considered, a word; but it was a word with a meaning. The quality blue was the object of the thought, the word was its content. The mental state, in short, was not self-sufficient as sensations are, but expressly pointed at something more in which it meant to terminate.

But the moment when, as in sensations, object and con