Page:The Realm of Ends or Pluralism and Theism (1911).djvu/26

 further mechanism hitherto concealed. Mind then is to be interpreted as an impotent and shadowy concomitant of brain, which is itself but a part of this mechanism inextricably linked in with the rest: we are conscious to be sure, but only conscious automata. This would seem to be the one possible conclusion from the naturalistic premises, if any conclusion were possible at all. But it also becomes a complete refutation of them the moment we raise an obvious question which Naturalism, owing to its absorption in the material aspect, has entirely overlooked: the question, I mean, How from the standpoint of consciousness is any knowledge of this independent mechanical system to be accounted for? Or, what comes to the same thing, how from the naturalistic standpoint can it be known that consciousness is concomitant with certain mechanical motions? Agreeably to its contention for the priority of its own standpoint, Naturalism terms the contents of its world phenomenal, and those of consciousness merely epiphenomenal. But now the tangible, visible, sonorous world, the world of external perception — from which the naturalist starts and to which in all his observations and experiments he appeals to verify the applicability of his theory — this world belongs entirely to the epiphenomenal series. So too does every concept in his theory as such; so that his appeal to experience to validate it is but an admission of its connexion with the perceptual, the so-called epiphenomenal. In short, awaken the naturalist from his mathematical ecstasy and the ‘epi’ at once drops away from our phenomena, while his phenomena — since he regards them as independent existences — turn out not to be phenomena