other edge of the physical break, and determines the active response—two shores of the material with an intervening ocean of the immaterial. There is, in fact, no rupture of nervous continuity. The only tenable supposition is, that mental and physical proceed together, as undivided twins.”
On reading this passage it is easy to see the idea which forms the basis of the doctrine. It is, as I have already said, the fetichism of mechanics: parallelism takes its inspiration from this quite as directly as does materialism, but with more skill, inasmuch as it avoids the most dangerous question, that of the interaction of physics and morals, and replaces it by an hypothesis much resembling Leibnitz’s hypothesis of the pre-established harmony. On the other hand, a second merit of this prudent doctrine is the avoiding the question of genesis. It does not seek for the origin of thought, but places this last in a relation of parallelism with the manifestations of matter; and in the same way that parallel lines prolonged ad infinitum never meet, so the partisans of this doctrine announce their resolution not to inquire how the actual state of things has been formed, nor how it will end if, for example, one of the terms should disappear by the death of the bodily organism.
Notwithstanding so many precautions, criticisms have not been wanting; only they would seem not
