But what was
contained in that _then_ is precisely what we do not understand.
Incoming motions may be transmuted into thought; or, as in effort,
outgoing thought may be transmuted into motion. But alike in both
cases, on the nature of that transmutation, the very thing we most
desire to know, we get no light. In regard to this crucial point no
one, materialist or idealist, can offer a suggestion. We may of
course, in fault of explanation, restate the facts in clumsy
circumlocution. Calling thought a kind of motion, we may say that in
action it propagates itself from the mind through the brain into the
outer world; while in the apprehension of an idea motions of the outer
world pass into the brain, and there set up those motions which we
know as thought. But after such explanations the mystery remains
exactly where it was before. How does a "mental motion" come out of a
bodily motion, or a bodily from a mental? It is wiser to acknowledge a
mystery and to mark the spot where it occurs.
This marking of the spot may, however, illuminate the surrounding
territory. If we cannot explain the nature of the crucial act, it may
still be well to study its range. How widely is effort exercised? We
should naturally answer, as widely as the habitable globe. I can sit
in my office in Boston and carry on business in China.
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