By inference this power is at present denied to man because of his imperfect morality, his self-seeking, his lack of harmony and unity within himself and with the rest of mankind. Nor can there be human freedom-all the legislation in the world notwithstanding-until humanity grasps the inner meaning of the fundamental laws of man's spiritual development.

To sum up. The pre-condition of the mastery of mind over matter is harmony and unity in the thoughts of men, and by implication in their lives and actions. Thus harmonized and unified, mind action, giving rise to rhythmic ether waves, would liberate and direct the intra-atomic energies, and open up to humanity the new unknown source of power to which Professor Ramsey alludes. The closing words of Bergson's address before the English Society for Psychic Research seem to point in the same direction, for he predicts that "the science of mind will attain results surpassing all our hopes." The new source of power will enable man to reshape or even create his environment at will. As soon as this truth is realized a new era will dawn upon the world. Blending science and religion into one cult, mankind will devote itself to the task of harmonizing and unifying human thought. The history of civilization is the history of great religious movements. Christianity, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, shaped the destiny of the world by inspiring its people with great ethical principles. The goal of man is to become divine, and the way to attain it is the way indicated by every religion-the via beatifica. When every one awakens to the idea that he can help or hinder the bringing of heaven on earth, there will be no need of jails or standing armies. Humanity will then have set out on its quest of the Holy Grail. Thus the greatest power in the world is the power of thought, since behind it is that something-the "substance" of Spinoza, the ether of modern science-in a word, the spirit out of which all

things arise. Ultimately, the forces at work in the world. will not be measured in terms of horse-power, of footpounds, of calories, but in terms of mind-unified, harmonious, creative. There is awe-inspiring grandeur in the conception of the potential worlds embodied in ether which, at the call of man, the creator, may arise and be. L. L. PIMENoff.

BOSTON, MASS.

ALL un

BODY AND MIND.

If

unsophisticated people believe that their minds act on their bodies and their bodies on their minds. some one sticks a pin into me and I feel a painful sensation, it seems obvious that the entry of the pin into my body is the cause of the sensation in my mind. Similarly if I will to move my arm it seems obvious that the volition in my mind causes the movement of my body. The view that mind acts on body and body on mind may be called “twosided interactionism."

In spite of the fact that interactionism seems at first sight to be certainly true, we have to notice that it is at the present time rejected by what is probably a majority of scientists and a majority of philosophers. Most people who have studied the subject from the side either of philosophy, or of physics, or of physiology have come to the conclusion that the mind does not act on the body and that the body does not act on the mind. Such a strange conclusion and one so contrary to the belief with which we all start must need powerful arguments to support it; and what I propose to do in this paper is to state and criticize the most important of these as carefully as I can.

Before entering into these arguments in detail, I would like to point out that this is essentially a question which cannot profitably be discussed by mere philosophers or by mere scientists, but only by persons with a competent knowledge both of philosophy and of natural science. The

question is: are events of a certain kind causally connected with events of a certain other kind, or are they not? To answer such a question one must have a competent knowledge of the two kinds of events and their laws, and one must understand exactly what is meant by causation. Now mental events and their laws are treated by psychology, and bodily events and their laws are treated by mechanics, physics, chemistry, and physiology. Hence some knowledge of all these sciences is necessary before one can discuss this question. But, though it is necessary, it is not sufficient. All natural sciences make constant use of the notion of causation, but the notion of causation does not form part of the subject matter of any natural science. Causation, its precise limitations, are part of the subject matter of philosophy. Similarly arithmetic makes continual use of reasoning but it is not about the process of reasoning, for this is dealt with by logic.

With these preliminary remarks we may turn to the special arguments which have been used against interactionism. I will begin with two purely philosophical arguments. They seem to me quite worthless and we may as well clear them out of the way at once.

I. One argument is that body and mind are so entirely unlike each other that it is inconceivable that events in one should cause events in the other. How could two events so different as eating a beefsteak and thinking of a poem, or having a volition and making a bodily movement be causally connected? This argument assumes that events can only cause each other if they be sufficiently similar, that if they be sufficiently similar their causal connection is intelligible, but if they be very different it is inconceivable. The answer is (a) that however similar two events may be the fact that one causes the other is never selfevident but has to be learnt by experience. It is not a priori self-evident that one billiard ball moving straight on to

another will make the second move in the same straight line; we have simply learnt that this is what actually happens. We have exactly the same kind of evidence for the view that sticking a pin into a man's body causes a painful sensation in his mind. In neither case is the connection intelligible, if by intelligible you mean logically deducible from what is otherwise known of the nature of billiard balls or of pins respectively. In both cases it is intelligible, if by this you mean that it is a fact which involves no contradiction and is actually found to be true. (b) We are not told in this argument how dissimilar events must be before it becomes unintelligible that one should cause the other. A draught is not particularly like a cold in the head, but no one who habitually changes trains at Clapham Junction will deny that the former may cause the latter. And if the dissimilarity between a draught and a cold in the head does not render their causal connection impossible, I fail to see why the difference between a pinprick and a painful sensation should make their connection unintelligible.

II. A more refined form of philosophical argument is the following. It is said that wherever we have a genuine instance of causation the events are connected by a great many other relations as well as the causal one. The two billiard balls have definite spatial relations to each other, and so on. It is argued that there are no such relations between a pinprick and a painful sensation or a volition and a bodily movement. The mental states are not in space and the bodily events are, hence there can be no spatial relations between them. Hence it is argued that mental and bodily events cannot be causally connected. Although this argument has the support of so eminent a philosopher as Professor Stout, I must confess that I can see very little in it. I have four objections to it. (a) How do we know that the causal relation can only subsist between two events