symptom of the direction in which
human nature in us is already moving, or already disposed to move. Without
this prior physical impulse, heaven may beckon and hell may yawn without
causing the least variation in conduct. As in religious conversion all is
due to the call of grace, so in ordinary action all is due to the ripening
of natural impulses and powers within the psyche. The _uneasiness_
observed by Locke is merely the consciousness of this ripening, before the
field of relevant action has been clearly discerned.

When all this is considered, the ostensible interaction between mind and
body puts on a new aspect. There are no _purely mental_ ideas or
intentions followed by material effects: there are no material events
followed by a _purely mental_ sensation or idea. Mental events are always
elements in total natural events containing material elements also:
material elements form the organ, the stimulus, and probably also the
object for those mental sensations or ideas. Moreover, the physical strand
alone is found to be continuous and traceable; the conscious strand, the
sequence of mental events, flares up and dies down daily, if not hourly;
and the medley of its immediate features--images, words, moods--juxtaposes
China and Peru, past and future, in the most irresponsible confusion. On
the other hand, in human life it is a part of the conscious
element--intentions, affections, plans, and reasonings--that _explains_
the course of action: dispersed temporally, our dominant thoughts contain
the reason for our continuous behaviour, and seem to guide it. They are
not so much links in a chain of minute consecutive causes--an idea or an
act of will often takes time to work and works, as it were, only
posthumously--as they are general overarching moral inspirations and
resolves, which the machinery of our bodies executes in its own way, often
rendering our thoughts more precise in the process, or totally
transforming them. We do roughly what we meant to do, barring accidents.
The reasons lie deep in our compound nature, being probably inarticulate;
and our action in a fragmentary way betrays our moral disposition: betrays
it in both senses of the word betray, now revealing it unawares, and now
sadly disappointing it.

I leave it for the reader's reflection to decide whether we should call
such cohabitation of mind with body interaction, or not rather sympathetic
concomitance, self-annotation, and a partial prophetic a