Eventual goods and evils have no present existence and no
power: they cannot even be discerned prophetically, save by the vaguest
fancy, entirely based on the present impulses and obsessions of the soul.
No future good, no future evil avails to move us, except--as Locke said
after examining the facts more closely--when a _certain uneasiness_ in the
soul (or in the body) causes us to turn to those untried goods and evils
with a present and living interest. This actual uneasiness, with the dream
pictures which it evokes, is a mere symptom of the direction in which
human nature in us is already moving, or already disposed to move. Without
this prior physical impulse, heaven may beckon and hell may yawn without
causing the least variation in conduct. As in religious conversion all is
due to the call of grace, so in ordinary action all is due to the ripening
of natural impulses and powers within the psyche. The _uneasiness_
observed by Locke is merely the consciousness of this ripening, before the
field of relevant action has been clearly discerned.
When all this is considered, the ostensible interaction between mind and
body puts on a new aspect. There are no _purely mental_ ideas or
intentions followed by material effects: there are no material events
followed by a _purely mental_ sensation or idea. Mental events are always
elements in total natural events containing material elements also:
material elements form the organ, the stimulus, and probably also the
object for those mental sensations or ideas.
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