If it does not strictly _explain_ anything, it is at any rate less positively objectionable than either mind-stuff or a material-monad creed. _The bare_ PHENOMENON, _however, the_ IMMEDIATELY KNOWN _thing which on the mental side is in apposition with the entire brain-process is the state of consciousness and not the soul itself._ Many of the stanchest believers in the soul admit that we know it only as an inference from experiencing its _states_. In Chapter X, accordingly, we must return to its consideration again, and _ask ourselves whether, after all, the ascertainment of a blank unmediated correspondence, term for term, of the succession of states of consciousness with the succession of total brain-processes, be not the simplest psycho-physic formula, and the last word of a psychology which contents itself with verifiable laws, and seeks only to be clear, and to avoid unsafe hypotheses._ Such a mere admission of the empirical parallelism will there appear the wisest course. By keeping to it, our psychology will remain positivistic and non-metaphysical; and although this is certainly only a provisional halting-place, and things must some day be more thoroughly thought out, we shall abide there in this book, and just as we have rejected mind-dust, we shall take no account of the soul. The spiritualistic reader may nevertheless believe in the soul if he will; whilst the positivistic one who wishes to give a tinge of mystery to the expression of his positivism can continue to say that nature in her unfathomable designs has mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other's being, but how or why, no mortal may ever know. FOOTNOTES: [160] Psychol. § 62. [161] _Ibid._ § 272. [162] Fragments of Science, 5th ed., p. 420. [163] Belfast Address, 'Nature,' August 20, 1874, p. 318. I cannot help remarking that the disparity between motions and feelings on which these authors lay so much stress, is somewhat less absolute than at first sight it seems. There are categories common to the two worlds. Not only temporal succession (as Helmholtz admits, Physiol. Optik, p. 445), but such attributes as intensity, volume, simplicity or complication, smooth or impeded change, rest or agitation, are habitually predicated of both physical facts and mental facts. Where such analogies obtain, the things do have something in common. [164] Psychology, § 131 [165] 'Nature,' as above, 317-8. [166] 'Nascent' is Mr. Spencer's great word. In showing how at a certain point consciousness must appear upon the evolving scene this author fairly outdoes himself in vagueness.