Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/244

228 as an epiphenomenon; while, if thus regarded, we ascribe to it properties resembling those of an organized body. The causes for this conception are two, psychological and historical. Thought invariably seems to be the antecedent, hence the cause of our acts. We transform the motive series into the conscious series. The historical prejudice that body is inferior to mind comes about through ancient theology; the belief in the immortality of the soul strengthens the doctrine. In order to work, any hypothesis must account for the 'freedom of the will.' Under the doctrine of the transcendent there is no physiological equivalent of freedom, i.e., no corporeal phenomenon or freeing of energy, things which parallelism posits. Parallelism says the free act is a readaptation and movements have no antecedents. Freedom is then a property of the body, not of mind. The birth of the doctrine of the transcendent is due to the historical precedence of this apparent freedom, and it really falls under the domain of the church in the form of grace. It implies that the destiny of the mind is different from that of the body, for the mind represents the interest and appeals of the supernatural. The principle of heterogeneity works within limits between automatism and epiphenomenalism. This, together with plain facts, supports parallelism. The consciousness of automatism is complete, except for the active, self-knowing, self-feeling thing, epiphenomenon, and epiphenomenon means nothing without its substratum, corporeal automatism. The doctrine of epiphenomenalism and automatism are then complementary. Emotions are responsible for images and their arrangement. There are no laws in psychology, only sequential relations. Corporeal concomitants sometimes seem to disappear in the more complex mental states ; but they are always present in one form or another, e.g., the sign or cry. Here the emotion loses its name in becoming a sign. Abstractions begin with the use of the sign. Each thought is accompanied in the brain or peripheral sense organ by a more or less reduced movement. When no muscular movement results, there are always intercellular changes in the brain. Hence the principle of heterogeneity works throughout, and this complementariness of epiphenomenalism and automatism results in a positivism which says that corporeal phenomena and consciousness are neither the cause of the other, but the conditions.

This article contains a modified restatement of the doctrine of interaction, and an examination of the parallelistic arguments of Stout, Ebbinghaus, and Münsterberg. The argument is ruled out that, since immediate experience gives no distinction between mind and body, there can be no question of interaction. This appeal to immediate experience must undo all previous scientific constructions, since the distinction is essential to science. The real problem is, in Münsterberg's words, not to find the connection