Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/696

 in given space-relations to surrounding objects. My body is in a place because it is upon the ground, in the air, below the clouds, amid a certain environment which constitutes the country and locality of that country which it is in. But my mind has no surrounding objects of this nature at all. The thought, say, of a distant friend can by no possibility be imagined as enclosed within the grey matter of the brain, just to the right of a nerve A, and in contact with a ganglion B. This thought, and its accompanying emotion, could not be found by any vivisection (if such were possible), though its correlative physical condition might. Hence the mind is not in the body, but is an independent entity whose phenomena, successive in time, run parallel to but never intermingle with the phenomena of body, extended in space.

From the view here stated of the irremoveable distinction between mind and matter an important corollary will be seen to follow. No physical movement (it has been shown) can be conceived as passing into a state of consciousness, for each physical movement begets further physical movement, and while it is fully spent in its physical consequent is itself fully accounted for by its physical antecedent. The converse of this doctrine must therefore be equally true. That is to say, no state of consciousness can pass into a physical movement, for, if it could, this movement would have another than a physical antecedent. In other words, the mind can in no way influence the actions of the body. It cannot stand in a casual relation to any physical fact whatever. Hence the doctrine of the will (not only of free will but of any will) falls to the ground. For the current conception of a will supposes that a chain of material events passes at some point in its course into a state of consciousness, and that this state of consciousness again originates a chain of material events. Say that I hear some one call my name, and go to the window to ascertain who it is. Then the common explanation would be, not only that the atmo-*