ummoned, but it
stands outside the dynamic circuit, as something utterly alien from and
incomparable with the events which summon it. No doubt, as Professor
Tyndall observes, if we knew exhaustively the physical state of the
brain, "the corresponding thought or feeling might be inferred; or,
given the thought or feeling, the corresponding state of the brain
might be inferred. But how inferred? It would be at bottom not a case
of logical inference at all, but of empirical association. You may
reply that many of the inferences of science are of this character; the
inference, for example, that an electric current of a given direction
will deflect a magnetic needle in a definite way; but the cases differ
in this, that the passage from the current to the needle, if not
demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the
final mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage from the
physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is
unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular
action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the
intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which
would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one to the
other. They appear together, but we do not know why." [10]

[8] The Nation once wittily described these people as "people who
believe that they are going to die like the beasts, and who congratulate
themselves that they are going to die like the beasts."

[9] For a fuller exposition of this point, see my Outlines of
Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II. pp. 436-445.

[10] Fragments of Science, p. 119.

An unseen world consisting of purely psychical or spiritual phenomena
would accordingly be demarcated by an absolute gulf from what we call
the material universe, but would not necessarily be discontinuous with
the psychical phenomena which we find manifested in connection with the
world of matter. The transfer of matter, or physical energy, or anything
else that is quantitatively measurable, into such an unseen world, may
be set down as impossible, by reason of the very definition of such a
world. Any hypothesis which should assume such a transfer would involve
a contradiction in terms. But the hypothesis of a survival of present
psychical phenomena in such a world, after being denuded of material
conditions, is not in itself absurd or self-contradictory, though it may
be impossible to support i