to the senses; mind is body inwardly experienced in its relation to introspection.  Who can draw a strict line of demarcation between mind and body?  We should admit, so far as our present knowledge is concerned, that mind, the intangible, has been formed to don a garment of matter in order to become an intelligible existence at all; matter, the solid, has faded under examination into formlessness, as that of mind.  Zen believes in the identification of mind and body, as Do-gen[FN#180] says:  “Body is identical with mind; appearance and reality are one and the same thing.”  Bergson denies the identification of mind and body, saying:[FN#181] “It (experience) shows us the interdependence of the mental and the physical, the necessity of a certain cerebral substratum for the psychical state-nothing more.  From the fact that two things are mutually dependent, it does not follow that they are equivalent.  Because a certain screw is necessary for a certain machine, because the machine works when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken away, we do not say that the screw is equivalent of the machine.”  Bergson’s simile of a screw and a machine is quite inadequate to show the interdependence of mind and body, because the screw does cause the machine to work, but the machine does not cause the screw to work; so that their relation is not interdependence.  On the contrary, body causes mind to work, and at the same time mind causes body to work; so that their relation is perfectly interdependent, and the relation is not that of an addition of mind to body, or of body to mind, as the screw is added to the machine.  Bergson must have compared the working of the machine with mind, and the machine itself with body, if be wanted to show the real fact.  Moreover, he is not right in asserting that “from the fact that two things are mutually dependent, it does not follow that they are equivalent,” because there are several kinds of interdependence, in some of which two things can be equivalent.  For instance, bricks, mutually dependent in their forming an arch, cannot be equivalent one with another; but water and waves, being mutually dependent, can be identified.  In like manner fire and heat, air and wind, a machine and its working, mind and body.[FN#182]

[FN#180] The master strongly condemns the immortality of the soul as the heterodox doctrine in his Sho-bo-gen-zo.  The same argument is found in Mu-chu-mon-do, by Mu-so Koku-shi.

[FN#181] ‘Creative Evolution,’ pp. 354, 355.

[FN#182] Bergson, arguing against the dependence of the mind on brain, says:  “That there is a close connection between a state of consciousness and the brain we do not dispute.  But there is also a close connection between a coat and the nail on which it hangs, for if the nail is pulled out, the coat will fall to the ground.  Shall we say, then, that the shape of the nail gave the shape of the coat, or in any way corresponds to it?  No more are we entitled to conclude, because the psychical fact is hung on to a cerebral state, that there is any parallelism between the two series, psychical and physiological.”  We have to ask, in what respects does the interrelation between mind and body resemble the relation between a coat and a nail?