Page:Mind and the Brain (1907).djvu/80

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physical; panpsychism and panmaterialism will have the same meaning.[1]

But this monism can be only transitory, for it is more in the words than in the thing itself. It is brought about by the terminology adopted, by the resolution to call mental all the phenomena that it is possible to know. Luckily, our speculations are not at the mercy of such trifling details as the details of language. Whatever names may be given to this or that, it will remain none the less true that nature will continue to present to us a contrast between phenomena which are flints, pieces of iron, clods of earth, brains—and some other phenomena which we call states of consciousness. Whatever be the value of this dualism, it will have to be discussed even in the hypothesis of panpsychism.[2] As for myself, I shall also continue to make a distinction between what I have called objects of cognition and acts of cognition, because this is the most general distinction that can be traced in the immense field of our cognitions. There is no other which succeeds, to the same degree, in dividing this field into two, moreover, this distinction is derived directly from observation,

  1. An American author, Morton Prince, lately remarked this: Philosophical Review, July 1904, p. 450.
  2. This Flournoy recently has shown very wittily. See in Archives de Psychologie, Nov. 1904, his article on Panpsychism.