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The parallelists on this point go very much further than the materialists; the latter at least concede that the consciousness is of some use, since they compared it to a function or a secretion, and, after all, a secretion is a useful liquid. The parallelists are so strongly convinced that mechanism is alone efficacious that they come to deny any rôle to thought.
In one of the forms of this theory that has been recently invented, parallelists have gone so far as to assert that there exists no real cohesion in the mental chain, and that no mental phenomenon can have the property of provoking another mental phenomenon by an act of true causality. It is within the nervous tissue, they say, that the nexus of psychic states should be enclosed.
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.
To escape the mystery of the genesis of the mind from matter, this new system places them parallel to each other and side by side, we might almost say experimentally, so much do parallelists try to avoid talking metaphysics.
Very often, certain parallelists, after thinking they have discovered the duality of nature, endeavour to bring it back to unity by supposing that the two faces of the reality are as two effects of one unique reality, inaccessible to our senses and underlying appearances. Why go so far afield to seek unity? It is trouble in vain: for it is to be found in the phenomenon itself.
A few convinced materialists and parallelists, to whom I have read the above criticisms on their systems, have found no answer to them; my criticisms have appeared to them just, but nevertheless they have continued to abide by their own systems, probably because they were bound to have one. We do not destroy an erroneous idea when we do not replace it by another.
It is one of the greatest difficulties in the way of the mechanistic and materialistic theories. But it must give some trouble to the parallelists too. We need not speak of the wonderful duplication of all existence which parallelism must establish, though it is difficult to evade the question how a natura sive deus could have come, so superfluously, to say the same thing twice over.
Until we have done this, we are in great danger of error. We are actually uncertain of our materials. Again. The psychologist speaks of the relation of mind and body. Some psychologists incline to be parallelists, some are warm advocates of interactionism. Now, any theory of the relation of mind to body must depend on observation ultimately.
The parallelists have seen this mistake, and have taken steps to respect this principle: we shall see in what way. They are especially prudent, and they excel in avoiding being compromised. They put forth their hypothesis as a provisional one, and they vaunt its convenience.
The consciousness of being, through the will, the actual cause of our own bodily movements is so energetic and direct and certain, that it maintains its sway in spite of all objections, and confuses the argument even of the parallelists themselves.
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