a merely quantitative one; the experience of voluntary decision is not simply a mass of experiences of reflex action. Now this qualitative distinction has to be explained somehow; and the more you insist that the whole nervous system differs only quantitatively by its greater complexity from the simple reflex arc the more difficult it becomes to explain the admitted qualitative difference in the two experiences. If then it be certain that the structure of all parts of the nervous system differs only quantitatively from that of the part which is associated with reflex action we seem forced to suppose that there must be some difference, not of structure but of process, in the part associated with voluntary action. And in view of the evidence from daily life that the mind does act on the body in volition it seems reasonable to suppose that this difference consists in the fact that certain processes in the higher nervous system are not entirely physico-chemical. The facts, then, so far from proving that the body is a purely physico-chemical system and that the mind cannot act on it, rather tend in the opposite direction. We may now sum up our results. (1) The most probable theory is that the mind sometimes acts on the body and the body sometimes acts on the mind. We have evidence for this of the same kind and the same amount as for any other case of causation. None of the objections to it are anything like conclusive, and all alternative theories lead to wildly improbable conclusions. (2) It is probable that in acting on the body the mind does not alter the total energy of the body but only determines in certain cases when and to what extent it shall be transformed. (3) It is probable that in voluntary action the mind affects. the body by modifying the resistance of certain synapses. (4) The view that the body is a purely physico-chemical system does not follow from the conservation of energy, and can neither be proved nor disproved by direct experi ment. If it were true it would still be possible and reasonable to hold that the body can act on the mind. The reason for thinking that it is not true is that it leads to the conclusion that the body would behave in precisely the same way if it had no mind connected with it, and that this seems most improbable. (5) The arguments based on the structure of the nervous system are partly mere confusions and prejudices. They have no tendency to show that the mind cannot act on the body; but, when all the facts are taken into account, they tend to make it probable that the mind does act on the body. (6) The most foolish of all theories as to the relation of body and minds seems to be epiphenomenalism; next to it comes parallelism, the doctrine that all which goes on in the body is determined by purely bodily causes, that all that goes on in the mind is determined by purely mental causes, and yet that there is a mysterious correlation between events in one series and events in the other. C. D. BROAD. IN REPLY TO DUALISTIC CONCEPTIONS OF HO MIND. OW attractive is the idea of "Mind the Creator of Matter"! In a certain sense the theory is old, as old as religion, as old as mankind, as old as the first dawn of civilization, for mind has been considered the creator of the whole world; God is the creator and God has been assumed to be mind in the narrowest sense of the word. The present number of The Monist contains an article under this caption by L. L. Pimenoff, who here presents the proposition of "mind the creator of matter" in a still more specific sense. It is not only the old idea that God created the world in the Biblical sense, “And God said 'Let there be light' and there was light," but the statement is meant in a new sense based upon the latest theories of psychical research. According to these mind is a kind of cerebral battery which sends out electric waves, and these waves have the faculty of creating matter in the sense, not that matter is made out of nothing, but that ether is transformed into tangible and gravitating mass. The author corroborates the proposition by quoting a number of authorities, some of them of scientific repute such as Oliver Lodge and Crookes, but I doubt very much whether their depositions will find credit among scientists of the normal and average stamp who are not affected by psychic theories and by a belief in extraordinary experiences of psychically abnormal people. The subject presented is one of great interest, and if it contains a mere inkling of truth it would certainly be of enormous importance to the human race, for in that case matter of all kinds, including the most necessary nourishment, could be produced by pure thought. A person in need would have simply to concentrate his mind on the materials he wanted and could thus easily appease his hunger or thirst in a most satisfactory manner. There would no longer be any attempts made to starve whole nations into submission, but the psychical men could produce without great effort the things needed for the sustenance of their comrades and families. The theory of "mind the creator of matter" as we find it in the Bible is extremely old. All heathen mythologies contain stories in which the gods produce the world, or certain parts of the world, with great ease and by the mere power either of the word or of mental faculties. The word plays an important part in Egyptian mythology, and it almost seems as if the theory of the Logos as proposed first in neo-Platonism and then in the Gospel according to St. John was ultimately derived from Egyptian sources, but even the crudest mythologies make the gods or some god, or if they have already developed into a monotheistic belief, the one sole God, shape the world in one way or another, and so it is natural that a thinking being starts his theories with the idea that mind is the primary factor in the theory of existence. Other religions, those of ancient Babylon, India, Assyria, Persia and China, developed on parallel lines. The theory of mind as the creator of the world received its first shock when science originated, and wherever we can watch that process we find that a more materialistic theory is substituted. We see mind develop in children. We see first the material bodily existence, and the mind develops gradually, first as mere sentient life endowed with feeling and desire, and then from sentiency mentality is gradually developed until a state of maturity is reached in which thought becomes dominant, and in that phase we speak of mind. Thus mind is the final product of a process which we can observe in every growing being. It is a new-fangled theory to look upon mind as a kind of dynamo or an electric motor which sends out waves that can be utilized for a physical purpose. The new theory originated with people who start with an exaggerated notion of the significance of spiritual factors, but after all it seems to us that they propose theories that are extremely materialistic. They misunderstand the nature of mind and intellectual functions and render them physical like the activities of mechanical machinery. Whatever mind may be-whether a mechanical machine that attends to the process of thinking, or some mysterious agency of a spiritual character-it is certainly the most important fact that we meet with in our experience, for it is mind that dominates all our affairs and makes man a rational and thinking being. It is the scepter of man's dominion on earth, and it alone is the quality which endows him with his superiority among other creatures by giving him the faculty of foreseeing coming events, anticipating dangers and adjusting himself to his surroundings. Mind has risen into existence in living organisms, and we are sure that it did not exist when the earth was still in its primitive condition, uninhabited and uninhabitable, before its crust had cooled down into a state that made plant and animal life possible. Nothing is more certain than this: First the earth was in a fiery state like that of our sun; gradually the planet cooled down and formed a crust on which the watery element covered the greater part of it, and the terra firma constituted the place on which life could develop in a regular evolution, reaching higher and higher planes of being. The characteristic feature of |