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But we must not confound this apparent extension with a real mathematical point, and call the tree nonextended in this sense. If we do this we are still in the old error we have not gotten away from real space, but have substituted position in that space for extension in that space. Nothing mental can have even a position in real space.
And if we keep clearly before us the view of the mind which I am advocating, we shall find an easy way out of the difficulties that seem to confront us when we consider it as nonextended and immaterial. Certain complexes of mental phenomena for example, the barber's pole above alluded to certainly appear to be extended. Are they really extended?
In what sense the mind may be said to be in the body, and how it may be conceived to be related to the body, are topics that deserve to be treated by themselves in a chapter on "Mind and Body." Here I shall consider what the metaphysician has to say about the mind as substance, and about the mind as nonextended and immaterial. It has been said that the Lockian substance is really an "unknowable."
Is it in the face of such facts reasonable to suppose that our friends and acquaintances, who strike us as having reflective powers in nowise remarkable, have independently arrived at the conception that the mind is a nonextended and immaterial substance? Surely they have not thought all this out for themselves.
It seems odd to maintain that a something as devoid of parts as is a mathematical point should yet appear to have parts and to be extended. On the other hand, if we allow the image to be extended, how can we refer it to a nonextended mind? To such questions as these, I do not think that the plain man has an answer. That they can be answered, I shall try to show in the last section of this chapter.
He does not make very clear to himself just what is in his thought, but I think we do him no injustice in maintaining that he is something of a Lockian, even if he has never heard of Locke. The Lockian substance is, as the reader has seen, a sort of "unknowable." And now for the doctrine that the mind is nonextended and immaterial.
To do that it would have to be a real thing in the sense indicated. Let us, then, agree with the plain man in affirming that the mind is nonextended, but let us avoid misconception. The mind is constituted of experiences of the subjective order. None of these are in space real space. But some of them have apparent extension, and we must not overlook all that this implies.
That the mind is in the body? That it acts and reacts with matter? That it is a substance with attributes? That it is nonextended and immaterial? I must remark at the outset that this collection of opinions is by no means something gathered by the plain man from his own experience. These opinions are the echoes of old philosophies.
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