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Further, a very fatal addition and burdensome accessory of the parallelistic theory is involved in the two corollaries it has above and beneath it. On the one hand there is the necessity for attributing soul to everything.
Usually after they have laid the foundations of a purely parallelistic theory, they abandon it again as quickly as possible, and revert to the expressions and images of ordinary thought. Indeed we have no clearer and more certain example of causality in general than in our own capacity for controlling changes in our own bodies.
One might write a whole history of the gradually increasing criticisms of, and reactions from the academic theories which had become almost canonical. But we may here confine ourselves to the most general of the objections to the parallelistic theory. They apply to the general idea of parallelism itself, and affect the different standpoints of the parallelists in different degrees.
But the situation is entirely changed, if we consider the smell effect from the point of view of the parallelistic theory. Now the association of facts would indicate that we got the first two impressions together, because two brain processes were going on at the same time.
Wundt himself, the most notable modern champion of parallelism, admits and defines these limits of the parallelistic theory on both sides. Furthermore, the theory of parallelism, notwithstanding its opposition to materialism, must presuppose that localisation of psychical processes of which we have already spoken, and to which all naturalism appeals with so much emphasis.
This theory of Albrecht’s has all the charms and difficulties, or impossibilities, of parallelistic interpretations in general. Its validity might be discussed with reference to the particular case of psycho-physical parallelism.
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