ENDS AND MEANS
pathy. How does' telepathy work? That it is not a
physical process akin to radio transmission is obvious; for
the strength of the messages does not diminish with distance.
After discussing various other alternatives, Professor Broad
concludes that it is probably necessary to postulate the
existence of some kind of praely mental medium, in which
individual minds are bathed, as in a kind of non-physical
ether. If there is such a thing as pre-vision, we must pre-
sume that this mental medium has its existence outside time.
It would seem, then, that mind, or at any rate something of
a mental nature—a c psychic factor* within a psychic
medium—exists independently of the body and of the
spatial and temporal conditions of bodily life.
I have considered the scientific picture of the material
world and the scientific pictures of mind. It is now time to
consider the scientific picture of the history of this mental-
material conglomerate. The only part of die universe with
which we have direct acquaintance is this planet. It is also
the only part of the universe in which we can study life and
consciousness. How far are we justified in drawing infer-
ences about the general nature of things from the inferences
previously drawn from the rather scanty evidence about
the history of life on this planet ? It is hard indeed to say.
We have seen that matter on the earth seems to be built
up' from the same energy-units as constitute matter in
remote parts of the universe and that the laws of thought
are laws of things^ not only here, but, to all appearance, also
there. This being so, to generalize from our inferences
regarding the nature of our planetary history would seem
to be a process that is at any rate not completely illegitimate.
Meanwhile, however, we have to discover what the nature
of that history is.
I am not qualified to discuss the methods of evolution,
nor, in the present context, does there seem to be any good
reason for embarking upon such a discussion. For our
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