inning of this section.

We have seen that certain men of science are inclined to look upon the
physical world as a great system, all the changes in which may be
accounted for by an appeal to physical causes. And we have seen that the
parallelist regards ideas, not as links in this chain, but as parallel
with physical changes.

It is argued by some that, if this is a true view of things, we must
embrace the conclusion that _the mind cannot be active at all_, that it
can _accomplish nothing_. We must look upon the mind as an
"epiphenomenon," a useless decoration; and must regard man as "a physical
automaton with parallel psychical states."

Such abuse of one's fellow-man seems unchristian, and it is wholly
uncalled for on any hypothesis. Our first answer to it is that it seems
to be sufficiently refuted by the experiences of common life. We have
abundant evidence that men's minds do count for something. I conclude
that I want a coat, and I order one of my tailor; he believes that I will
pay for it, he wants the money, and he makes the coat; his man desires to
earn his wages and he delivers it. If I had not wanted the coat, if the
tailor had not wanted my money, if the man had not wanted to earn his
wages, the end would not have been attained. No philosopher has the
right to deny these facts.

Ah! but, it may be answered, these three "wants" are not supposed to be
the _causes_ of the motions in matter which result in my appearing
well-dressed on Sunday. They are only _concomitant phenomena_.

To this I reply: What of that? We must not forget what is meant by such
concomitance (section 39). We are dealing with a fixed and necessary
relation, not with an accidental one. If these "wants" had been lacking,
there would have been no coat. So my second answer to the objector is,
that, on the hypothesis of the parallelist, the relations between mental
phenomena and physical phenomena are just as dependable as that relation
between physical phenomena which we call that of cause and effect.
Moreover, since activity and causality are not the same thing, there is
no ground for asserting that the mind cannot be active, merely because it
is not material and, hence, cannot be, strictly speaking, a cause of
motions in matter.

The plain man is entirely in the right in thinking that minds are active.
The truth is that _nothing can be active except as it has a mind_. The
relation of purpose and end is the one we have in