ary qualities as idle adjectives which issue from primary. It means that all psychical changes are effects, brought about by what is physical, while themselves absolutely without any influence on the succession of phenomena. I have been forced to state this view in my own terms as, though widely held, I do not find it anywhere precisely expressed. Its adherents satisfy themselves with metaphors, and rest on half worked out comparisons. And all that their exposition, to me, makes clear, is the confusion which it springs from.
The falseness of this doctrine can be exhibited from two points of view. It involves the contradiction of an adjective which makes no difference to its substantive,[1] and the contradiction of an event in time, which is an effect but not a cause. For the sake of brevity I shall here confine myself to the second line of criticism. I must first endeavour, in my own way, to give to the materialistic doctrine a reasonable form; and I will then point out that its inconsistency is inherent and not removable.
If we agree to bring psychical events under the head of what is “secondary,” we may state the proposed way of connection as follows:
| A | — | B | — | C. |
| | | | | | | ||
| α | β | γ |
A, B, C is the succession of primary qualities, and it is taken to be a true causal series. Between the secondary products, α, β, γ, is no causal connection, nor do they make any difference to the sequence of C from B and of B from A. They are, each of them, adjectives which happen, but which
- ↑ The same false principle, which is employed in the materialistic view of the soul, appears in the equally materialistic doctrine of the Real Presence.
