Body and Mind

Answers

• Q04AUTOMATON

  Does conscious intention help cause bodily action?

  No. conscious states do not act on the body. Mind and body are strictly correlated and physical events have only physical causes, so feelings run alongside the nervous process without acting on it.

  But I may very well say that among the physical facts which go along at the same time with mental facts there are forces at work. That is perfectly true, but the two things are on two utterly different platforms — the physical facts go along by themselves, and the mental facts go along by themselves. There is a parallelism between them, but there is no interference of one with the other. Again, if anybody says that the will influences matter, the statement is not untrue, but it is nonsense. The will is not a material thing, it is not a mode of material motion. Such an assertion belongs to the crude materialism of the savage. The only thing which influences matter is the position of surrounding matter or the motion of surrounding matter. … Thus we are to regard the body as a physical machine, which goes by itself according VOL. II D to a physical law, that is to say, is automatic.

  Fortnightly Review 16 (1874), 714–736 · Web search gives the Fortnightly citation; archive.org record for Lectures and Essays (1901) where it is reprinted. Did not read the essay text.