Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/310

294 the ego does no physical work, but can only by hypothesis decree something as to the direction of work, while it may or may not connote for us anything that is geometrically more definite.

This quasi-perpendicularity appears to me the natural, and perhaps almost necessary, solution of other difficulties that have nothing to do with freedom, but only with the apparent dualism of mind and matter, and with their apparent interaction; while it may also sufficiently suggest the deeper unity in which that dualism doubtless rests. We do somehow receive impressions from the outer material world, and do, whether freely or as mere automata or channels of influence, produce impressions upon it; while, on the other hand, we are aware of phenomena in ourselves, like intelligence, joy, gratitude, obligation, remorse, which seem to us essentially independent of space and matter, though they often have reference to the external world. Now I know of no other figure by which, so well as by that of quasi-perpendicularity, we can represent to ourselves this apparent independence and this apparent interdependence of the physical and the psychical. Our hypothesis may be held as hardly more than such a figure, and it still suffices for the present purpose: though I incline to think it is not merely a figure of speech.

Admitting in a general way such a solution, many curious questions of detail would remain which we cannot as yet adequately discuss; nor need we, for the purpose of the present argument. For instance, shall we think of the quasi-perpendicularity as mutual; the physical forces exerting a merely directive effect upon the spiritual phenomena, as well as the spiritual forces upon the physical phenomena, and the law of conservation presumably holding in the spiritual as well as in the material system? Is there any spiritual force that involves the element of Time, or Inertia, and in virtue of which every system of spiritual forces must be in equilibrio just as a falling stone hangs balanced between the pull of gravity and its own resistance to further acceleration? Again, must this quasi-perpendicularity be regarded as a mere convenient metaphor, or may it be an actual perpendicularity, the spiritual forces pulling in a space of their own, more or less like our known space? In the