Now these questions are all virtually answered in the affirmative by the
dualistic theory of Spiritualism. For the Will is here regarded as an
agent bound to act in accordance with those conditions of external
necessity which dualism recognizes as natural causation. Its internal
causation thus becomes but the reflex of external; and the reflection
becomes known internally as the consciousness of motive. Hence, the Will
cannot be philosophically liberated from the toils of this external
necessity, so long as dualism recognizes that necessity as existing
independently of the Will, and thus imposing its conditions on
volitional activity. But the theory of Monism, by identifying external
with internal causation--or physical processes with psychical
processes--philosophically saves the doctrine of freedom, and with it
the doctrine of moral responsibility. Moreover, it does so without
relying upon any precarious appeal to the direct testimony of
consciousness itself. As this view of the subject is one by no means
easy of apprehension, I will endeavour to unfold it part by part.
To begin with, Monism excludes the possibility of volition being
determined by cerebration. Let us suppose, for example, that a sequence
of ideas, _A, B, C, D_, occurs in the mind, which on its obverse or
cerebral aspect may be represented by the sequence _a, b, c, d_. Here
the parallelism is not due, as supposed by Materialism, to _a_
determining _Ab_, _b_ determining _Bc_, &c.; it is due to _Aa_
determining _Bb_, _Bb_ determining _Cc_, &c.--the two apparently diverse
causal sequences being really but one causal sequence. If the
determinist should rejoin that a causal sequence of some kind is all
that he demands--that the Will is equally proved to be unfree, whether
it be bound by the causal sequence _a, b, c, d_, or by the causal
sequence _Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd_--I answer that this is a point which we have
to consider by-and-by. Meanwhile I am only endeavouring to make clear
the essential distinction between the philosophical theories of Monism
and Materialism. And the effect of this distinction is to show that, for
the purposes of clear analysis, we may wholly neglect either side of the
double reality. If we happen to be engaged on any physiological
inquiry, we may altogether neglect the processes of ideation with which
any process of cerebration may be concerned; while, if we happen to be
engaged upon any psychological inquiry, we may similarly neglect the
processes of cerebration with which any process of ideation may be
concerned. Seeing that each is equally an index of a common sequence, it
can make no difference which of them we take as our guide, although for
purposes of practical inquiry it is of course expedient to take the
cerebral index when we are dealing with the objective side of the
problem, and the mental index when dealing with the subjective. In the
following pages, therefore, I shall altogether neglect the cerebral
index.
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