the revealing, transforming Christ of the other. It would seem, if we attend to the teaching of the New Testament and of Christian history, that these latter conclusions are near the truth. Christ was no mere exhibition of God, nor authoritative teacher of the truth concerning him, nor sage with wise reflections upon the beauty of virtue and the danger of sin. His was a dynamic mission. By all declaration, manifestation, and ministry he toiled to get this uncovered, illustrated, divine life lodged in human souls to cure their sin and make their character. And it is this life, this abundant life, redeeming, transforming, gloriously and eternally satisfying, of which our nerves are scant. And this must be the treasure we keep in view for ourselves and for those to whom we minister. By personal example, by church life and worship, by social service, by theological thought and speech, by beautiful character to make common man's experience of God, until the treasure shall be so valued and the search for it such a fixed habit that in all our varied human activities, industrial and political as well as social and religious, he shall be known and declared.

Wallace Mac Mullen

ART. IV.-A MODERN THEORY OF MIND.

PRESIDENT STARR JORDAN, of Leland Stanford University, in an article published two or three years ago in a leading scientific magazine, defines mind as "the collective function of the sensorium or brain of men and animals," "the sum total of all psychic changes, actions, and reactions," psychic changes being understood to "include all operations of the nervous system." "The study of the development of mind in animals and men," he continues, "gives no support to the medieval idea of the mind as an entity apart from the organ through which it operates. . There is no ego except that which arises from the coordination of the nerve cells. All consciousness is colonial consciousness, the product of cooperation. . . . The 'I' in man is the expression of the coworking of the processes and impulses of the brain." This quotation is given somewhat at length because it lucidly states the theory, held by many of our leading scientific men, that our mental states are compounds, and the ego is the sum of the resultants of certain nervous processes. When we investigate the grounds of this theory we find that they pretty much reduce to three, namely, the desire of evolutionists to preserve universally the continuity of their law in its application to every domain of thought, the widely observed dependence of mind upon its physical organism, and the revolt which is felt against dualism, with the desire to find a consistent monistic basis. Let us turn to consider whether these grounds are adequate and can be consistently held.

Advocates of the theory of evolution feel that it is necessary to pass without break from inorganic matter to organic and from organic to its highest manifestation, mind. Consciousness must therefore be transformed energy, or attendant phenomena of matter, and since the basis of matter is atoms, the synthesis that we find in thought must be "the coworking of the processes and impulses of the brain, which is made up of individual cells," as "England is made up of individual men." But the necessities of a theory do not establish its truth; and while it suits the imagination well to think of each atom as having a little endowment of

mind, and the more highly organized structure as being accompanied by corresponding increase of mental development, there are objections to the scheme which have so far proved insurmountable. Not the least of these is to see how an atom can possess such contrary qualities as mind and extension, how these qualities are related to each other, and how they can work alongside of each other in the development of more complex forms. But, waiving this difficulty for the present, we have the task presented to us of seeing how these little bits of consciousness with which atoms are supposed to be endowed can fuse together to produce such a larger and fuller consciousness as we find in the higher organic beings, and especially in man. It is easy to use the word blend, or fuse, but by waving the magical wand of a word over a difficulty we cannot logically solve it. The "I" we have in consciousness is something more than a sum of elements, it is a unity; but the heaping of elements together can never make a true unity. It can give us an aggregate, but an aggregate or sum is a unity only to the mind that thinks it, and never in itself. The realities are always the elements. Even the thought of forces fusing does not help us, for force properly conceived is only a static condition of an atom. It is nothing that can pass out of the atom and exist apart from it, helping make up a new thing. The activities of the molecules of the brain can exist only in the molecules, and the mind in the molecule, if it has it, can exist likewise only in the molecule, and cannot get out of it to come and joint itself to other bits of mind which have also left their molecules to fuse together and make a new product, the consciousness of the particular ego. When we use the word "sum" in the sense Mr. Jordan does when he says the mind is "the sum of all psychic changes" we commit the fallacy of the universal, and give to a concept objective reality as much as when we give to triangle or horse a real existence. Class words have their reality in thought, the only ontological existences being the individuals which compose them; and this is true when applied to the statement that mind is the sum of the bits of consciousness with which the molecules of the brain are supposed to be endowed. We claim, therefore, that there is no way of conceiving how the atoms can so unite the mental elements

claimed for them by the theory before us as to make the unity we find in consciousness when we say, "I feel," "I think."

If we turn to the second consideration which has led to the theory of a "collective" or "colonial mind," we shall find that many facts at first seem to sustain it. Nothing is more apparent than that our mental condition is affected by our physical states. If the activities of the brain are paralyzed by chloroform a cessation of consciousness ensues. If the brain is disordered there is a corresponding disorder in mental action. A stimulant will quicken thought and a narcotic depress it. The illustrations are innumerable and have been observed from the time men began to ponder psychic phenomena. But to conclude, from this dependence of mind on brain, that thought is a product of molecular activity is to make a hasty and unwarranted inference. In the first place, it is to be noted that we have here an argument from observation and experience; but experience also teaches us that mind can affect brain. Says Dr. Strong: "If the facts of sensation indicate an action of the physical on the mental, then those of volition with equal clearness indicate an action of the mental on the physical, and the latter is as much an ascertained fact as the former. The case of volition is the exact converse of sensation, and by as much as the one set of facts proves the dependence of mind on the body the other set proves the dependence of body on mind. If, on the other hand, the facts of volition do not prove that the mental state sets up the neural process, then those of sensation do not prove that the neural process sets up the mental state. To admit the evidence for causation in the one case but reject it in the other is to have two weights and two measures." We have few experiences which come to us more positively than our ability to control our physical activities to a certain extent, and also our mental states. We can both will and do. If a thought comes to us which we think is not profitable we can refuse to consider it and give our attention to other things. We can also set before us ends to achieve, and start a train of physical movements which will accomplish what we have in view. This fact of observation and experience makes the question of dependence at best a drawn battle. Nor does it by any means follow, as Shadworth Hodgson would

try to convince us, that the dependence of mind upon body is equivalent to causality; for it may be otherwise explained. We must remember what Hume has taught us about not seeing causes, and that a concurrence of events does not necessarily prove cause and effect. Things may be in relations of interdependence without one being caused by the other. It may be that the phenomena of mental and cerebral action are to be regarded "as conjugate of an unknown cause which has coupled them together for a time," as Mr. Richmond suggests. This is much easier to think than that consciousness is produced by the molecular activities of the brain, a conception which Professor Tyndall has truly said "eludes all mental presentation." Concomitant relations would give us exactly the same phenomena as if the relations were causal. Theories of interaction, or parallelism, or mediation, each of which has strong advocates, would quite as well account for the observed dependence of mind on brain activity as the theory we have under consideration.

Let us now turn to consider whether a "mind stuff" theory can furnish us with a consistent monistic basis for our thinking. Writers of this school tell us we have thought too poorly of matter and have failed to appreciate the higher qualities with which it is endowed. Matter is not simply the old matter with which physics has made us familiar; but, as one phrases it, is a "double-faced somewhat," or, in the words of Bain, "a double-faced unity;" a substance with two sides-on the one side matter and on the other side mind. In all organic forms there is the psychic element; and as organisms become more complex this appears in higher manifestations until it reaches its climax in man. Thus we are informed that, besides being material, atoms have a mental endowment, and occasionally, when the conditions are ripe, run a side line and do a little business in mentality besides doing their ordinary work. Our first objection to this new conception of matter is that it is incapable of being thought. The imagination can picture it, but no one can form an intelligent conception of it. A double-faced somewhat, on the one side matter and on the other mind, is as unintelligible to clear thinking as a round square or a black white. When we posit such a substance we try to solve a