Thus mind is
purely subjective, the brain is only mediately objective. It is because
the mental and the material are so intimately related that the monist
believes them to be connected as are the lungs and respiration, the hand
and grasping, or the eye and the reception of visual impressions from
without.
But whichever one of these explanations we choose to adopt as our own, the
basic fact of primary importance is that there is an invariable dependence
of human thought upon a brain comprising a highly developed cerebrum,
whatever may be the ultimate nature of the way mental processes are
determined by physical processes, or _vice versa_. This fact stands
unquestioned and unassailable; human faculty and the brain cannot be
considered apart, even if they may not actually be different aspects of
the same basic "mind-stuff," as Clifford calls the ultimate dual thing.
Like all of the other organs of lesser importance belonging to the nervous
system, the brain is a complex of tissues which in the last analysis are
groups of cell-bodies with their fibrous prolongations. When these
cellular elements are in operation, mental processes go on; the unit of
the mental process therefore is the functioning of a brain-cell.
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