m along to the place of banquet and which
prompted the hero to remark: "Faith, if it wasn't for the honor of the
thing, I might as well have come on foot."

It is this empty show of respect which the interactionists seek to
avoid when they make the mental a distinct link in the causal sequence.
The physical first causes the mental, and the mental in turn brings
about a change in the physical. In this way a certain importance is
indeed secured to mental facts, but it appears that, so far as purposive
action is concerned, we are no better off than we were before. The
mental is simply another kind of cause; it has as little option
regarding its physical effect as the physical cause has with regard to
its mental effect. Non-mechanical behavior is again ruled out, or else a
vain attempt is made to secure a place for it through the introduction
of an independent psychic agency.

It is true, indeed, that we are under no antecedent obligation to
maintain the existence of an activity that is not entirely reducible to
the type of everyday cause and effect. But neither does scientific zeal
and incorruptibility require us to do violence to the facts in order to
secure this uniformity of type. Not to speak at all of the difficulties
inherent in this dualism, it seems undeniable that some facts
persistently refuse to conform to the type of mechanism, unless they are
previously clubbed into submission. Foresight and the sense of
obligation, for example, must learn to regard themselves as nothing more
than an interesting indication of the way in which the neural machinery
is operating before they will fit into the scheme. And similarly the
progress of an argument is no way controlled or directed by the end in
view, or by considerations of logical coherence, but by the impact of
causation. Ideas lose their power to guide conduct by prevision of the
future, and truth and error consequently lose their significance, save
perhaps as manifestations of cerebral operations. Since reasoning
involves association, it must be reducible to bare association; the
sequence of the process is just sequence and nothing more. A description
of this kind is on a par with the celebrated opinion that violin music
is just a case of scraping horse-hair on catgut. Everything that is
distinctive in the facts is left out of account, and we are forced to
the conclusion that no conclusion has any logical significance or value.

In the end these difficulties, and i