Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/275

 VII. NEW BOOKS. Human Immortality : Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. By WILLIAM JAMES. London : Archibald Constable. Pp. 126. IT has become a tacit convention among philosophers to preserve the loftiest and profoundest silence on the very questions which formed the first motive to philosophic effort and still form the culmination of philo- sophic interest. Hence it seems at first to savour of impertinent airai- 8(v<ria that any one should still be found to take so much as 5000 dollars' worth of (posthumous) interest in the question of his immortality, and it causes a shock of surprise that a great academic institution like Harvard University can be found to endorse such a procedure and to supervise the delivery of an annual "Ingersoll Lecture on the Immortality of Man ". Perhaps however it may quiet some alarm among those who dread no worse fate for philosophy than that it should arouse popular interest, to add that even so there is less money spent on the exploration of the future life than on almost any other human fad, from arctic exploration to the recovery of the Lost Tribes, and that the establish- ment of the Ingersoll Lecture stands alone. Nevertheless the fact re- mains that even so slight a beginning is calculated to stir up discussion of a topic which is full of all sorts of scientific and religious taboos. When moreover a writer and thinker of Prof. James's eminence is induced to deliver an opinion upon any aspect of such a question, the most jaded and cynical of sceptics may well be pardoned if he finds the equanimity of his indifference slipping from him. Our author himself however appears quite unconscious of his audacity in braving such prejudices, and handles his thonry subject in a perfectly straightforward and matter-of-fact way, which cannot but arouse the admiration of the less courageous. He has a reply to make to two wide- spread objections to the belief in a future life, and there is no mistaking the tenor of his answer. In the first place he will not allow the conclusiveness of the traditional materialist view which infers from the correlation of physical and mental phenomena that consciousness is a function of the brain and that a mental life without a brain is strictly inconceivable. This production theory of the working of the brain overlooks an alternative interpretation of the facts. The brain may just as well be regarded as an organ for the transmission of a consciousness which manifests itself through a brain with more or less difficulty, but is intrinsically independent of it and belongs to a different order of existence. Now a transmission theory obviously will explain all the facts equally well, and can never be refuted by empirical evidence, for the reason that it simply inverts the causal interpretation of the same psychophysical concomitance. Logically we have always the choice of explaining the higher by the lower or the lower by the higher, and scientifically all we can demand is that their connexion should not be denied. Prof. James points out that his view is not altogether novel, although it has never been properly considered