Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/553

 LUDWIG BUSSE, Geist und Korper, Seek und Leib. 539 observes himself while he thinks. The consequent perception of the cerebral process arises as a reaction of S upon the impression which he receives from his own states ; it is therefore not simul- taneous with the states occasioning it, but follows upon them. That is, considered as a presentation, the cerebral process, the so-called outer side of the psychical thought-process is not parallel to the same, but its subsequent effect. This is clearer if we sub- stitute for the one self-observing subject two subjects S and S r On the emergence of a thought a in S, there is not simultaneously this thought as the perception of a cerebral process b in S lf but this makes its first appearance as a consequence of an impression which Sj receives from S. The physical construction of the matter would be, that the cerebral process which corresponds physically to the thought a impresses the eyes and nerves of Sj and occasions a physiological process in his brain, which is to be regarded as the physical counterpart of the perception b. Thus, to the causal relation and temporal sequence between the two processes, there must, on parallelistic premisses, correspond a causal relationship and temporal sequence between the psychical processes a and b. We have really two causations, one connecting the members of the intelligible series, which we may call longitudinal or serial causation, and another which connects the individual members, of this series with the corresponding members of the series of perceptions, which we may call transversal causation. Between the perceptions of the physical series themselves, there is no more causation than between the dots and dashes of the tape-machine. We have a parallelism which is not based on the independence of the two series, but makes the one series dependent on the other, and thus sequent in time. The unavoidable demand of parallelism that the physical should represent a total spiritual reality is incapable of fulfilment. The consciousness that a given psychical content was exactly equivalent to a given cerebral process forms an irreducible psychical residue, which would reappear each time it had found its physical equiva- lent. Moreover, on the physical side, there is everywhere lacking, the very thing which is to be added to the separate physiological processes corresponding to the psychical processes, in order that a unified physiological process should present the physical analogue to the unified psychical process. The only way out of the difficulty is for parallelism to contest the correctness of the conception of psychical unity, and to construct the psychical life in such a way that it may be entirely reproduced in the accompanying physical process. All psychical assumptions that cannot approve them- selves as correlates of definite physical facts have to be dismissed^ Thus, if the body is a plurality which can be analysed into its component parts, this constitution of the outer points to an analogous composition of the inner side. But a pluralistic or subjectless psychology is incapable of doing justice to the facts of consciousness. If the soul is a Vielheit seelischer Erlebnisse r