SUBJECT 
 
 and OBJ ECT 
 
 , — 
 
 REV. J. E.WALTER 
 
Class 1 
 
 Book. 
 
 Gopyright^N?_ 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 

SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHNSTON ESTEP WALTER 
 
 Author of "The Perception of Space and Matter," 
 
 "The Principles of Knowledge," and "Nature 
 
 and Cognition of Space and Time." 
 
 JOHNSTON AND PENNEY 
 
 WEST NEWTON PA. 
 1915 
 
35 
 
 lb' 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 JOHNSTON ESTEP WALTER 
 
 J. F. TAPLEY CO. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 QGT 251915 
 
 ©CI.A414225 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Subject ob Soul 1 
 
 I. Theories of the Soul — Hume's theory of the mind as 
 the broken succession of our perceptions or thoughts without 
 subject or substance — His doctrine of the knowable relations 
 among the separately existing perceptions composing mind — 
 His explanation of the knowable relations by foisting in a 
 second mind of a peculiar nature — The theory self-contra- 
 dictory and baseless, and involves a return to the theory of 
 substance — The later form of the theory, in which mind is 
 regarded as, not a disconnected, but a connected, succession 
 of thoughts, a stream — Professor James' exposition — It is 
 chargeable with similar inconsistency and errors to those 
 of Hume's — Its grave faults especially as an account of 
 memory and the sense of personal identity — Making a mind 
 of the permanent and extended brain — II. The Soul maintained 
 as a permanent and identical reality — Relation of soul and 
 body — Mind as the producer of the conscious modes — Re- 
 lation of the conscious affections and the producing mind — 
 What do we really know of mind, and how? — Knowledge of the 
 Succession of mind — Of its Permanence — Memory as a mode of 
 mediate knowledge — Knowledge of the mind superior to knowl- 
 edge of the brain and every other physical object — Knowledge 
 of personal identity — Knowledge of the mind our supreme 
 knowledge, as being the most direct and certain and the 
 basis of the knowledge of all else. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Subject and Object in their Relation 75 
 
 Subject and Object discriminated — The two sorts of objects, 
 Subject-Objects and Object- Objects — (1) Relation of subject 
 and subject-object — Subject-objects constitute a distinct 
 internal procession and system — (2) Relation of object- 
 objects to subject and subject-objects — Possible cognition of 
 object-objects — The cognition is inferential — Comparison with 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 the "window" theory of perception — Projection of sensations 
 and percepts — The immediate materials of both mental science 
 and physical science are the same — Mental science and phys- 
 ical science distinguished — The two worlds, the internal and 
 the external, and their correspondence — Does the knowledge 
 of self require the knowledge of other selves ? — Does the knowl- 
 edge of physical objects require the knowledge of other per- 
 sons? — The view that "what science finds in Nature is the 
 mind's own latent wealth" — Dualistic realism since Locke. 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 The Nature and our Perception of Matter 109 
 
 Nature of Matter — Reality and nature of atoms — Perception 
 of matter to be treated with special reference to the Berkeleian 
 immaterialism — Relation of Berkeley to Locke — Berkeley's rea- 
 soning against the knowableness and the reality of external 
 matter — His doctrine of the relation of spatial extension to 
 the so called Secondary Qualities, as color — His doctrine of 
 causation within mind — In his teachings respecting subjective 
 extension and subjective causation, Berkeley states and ad- 
 vocates principles which constitute a substantial basis for 
 a true representative knowledge of matter; and which, there- 
 fore, turn about, so to speak, and serve as means of his 
 own refutation — Berkeley's place in the historical development 
 of the science of external perception. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Truth 151 
 
 Truth objective and subjective; or truth as fact or reality, 
 and as correspondence of thought to reality — In this essay 
 truth is taken as entirely subjective — The correspondence of 
 thought to its object or to reality — Four sorts of truth or 
 correspondence of thought : ( 1 ) Correspondence to the sub- 
 stantial mind; (2) to other thought; (3) to past events; (4) 
 to external objects — Truth and knowledge compared — Antago- 
 nism of idealists to truth defined as correspondence of thought 
 to objects external to mind — The same as Berkeley's main 
 opposition to the doctrine of the representative cognition of 
 external matter — Possibility of correspondence, and known 
 correspondence, of thought to external things — Truth a mat- 
 ter of progression — 1. How far do we make truth? — The 
 "cognitive making" of reality — Reality as determined by our 
 wishes — The making of truth by our thinking and wishing — 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The intellect as conditioned in the making of truth by the 
 original and indispensable materials and forms given to it — 
 Nature of the sense-materials supplied to the intellect — De- 
 pendence of intellect also upon the action of external objects. — 
 2. Stability of truth — It results from the constancy of the in- 
 ternal and the external conditions of knowledge — 3. Utility as 
 the criterion of truth — The real as the useful — All things use- 
 ful to us because of the systematic unity and uniformity of 
 nature — Neither reality nor truth, though inseparable from 
 utility, is identical with it; they are more, they have a 
 primacy — The conception of God considered as beneficial and as 
 a "working hypothesis" — The truth of our knowledge of God. 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 
 
 "To write a chapter for the purpose of showing 
 that nothing is known, or can be known, of the sub- 
 ject which the title of the chapter indicates, will be 
 thought strange." These are the words with which 
 Mr. H. Spencer opens the chapter in his Psychology 
 on the i ' Substance of Mind. ' ' 1 The present discus- 
 sion has its occasion in the conviction that the human 
 mind is a permanent entity or substance, which can be 
 and is known; and the primary purpose of the dis- 
 cussion is to expound and defend that conception. 
 This statement is made for the convenience of the 
 reader, that at the very beginning he may know clearly 
 and certainly the point of view and aim of the essay; 
 and it is hoped he will not be repelled by the frank 
 avowal. 
 
 But this purpose, it must be admitted, goes against 
 what seems to be the main psychological tendency of 
 the time. It is the contention of many that "the ex- 
 planation of psychic life demands the complete elimi- 
 nation of the concept of substance ' ' ; and that the con- 
 cept prevails only among ' ' unreflective minds. ' ' Some 
 of the most zealous opponents deride mental substance 
 as an " accursed idol. ' ' 
 
 i Psychology, I, p. 145. 
 
2 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 It might be supposed that, of all realities, the Mind, 
 Soul, Self, Ego, should be the most directly and cer- 
 tainly known ; and that there should be complete agree- 
 ment among men in all their main tenets and decisions 
 regarding its nature and functions. Bespecting agree- 
 ment in doctrine, the truth is just the contrary. Hardly 
 a wider variety and opposition of theories are found 
 on any other subject than on what for us, as some would 
 say, is the immediate centre and focus of all reality and 
 knowledge — the Self. 
 
 The theory of mind now most prevalent apparently 
 among professional psychologists is, that mind is the 
 stream, flux, process, of our thoughts, feelings or con- 
 scious states. The process-mind is conceived to be 
 purely successive, purely temporal. It is the flow of 
 the rapidly rising and perishing thoughts. It has no 
 relation to a real or knowable permanent spiritual sub- 
 ject or substratum, or to one entitled to consideration 
 in psychology. Hume is the most distinguished repre- 
 sentative of this hypothesis of mind. He is the chief 
 protagonist for modern times of psychology without a 
 soul. 
 
 Another theory defines mind as the permanent pos- 
 sibility of feeling — of sensation, idea, volition — or as 
 consisting of the present feeling and the permanent 
 possibility of other feelings. Its most distinguished 
 advocate is J. S. Mill, who has expounded it especially 
 in the chapter on the " Psychological Theory of Mind, ,, 
 in his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy. 
 An important question regarding the theory is as to 
 what we are to understand by a "permanent possibil- 
 ity," or as to what a "permanent possibility" is when 
 yet in its unrealized state or before actualization, or 
 after feeling ceases. Mr. Mill does not furnish a clear 
 
THE SUBJECT OE SOUL 3 
 
 answer to this question. He tells us what the per- 
 manent possibility is not, rather than what it is. 1 It 
 appears to be an abstract, non-substantial capability 
 or potentiality suspended in the void, having no rest 
 for the soles of its feet. If this be its character, then 
 we must admit the conception is one of the most cun- 
 ningly devised and elusive ever fabricated by the hu- 
 man intellect. It is scepticism respecting mental sub- 
 stance developed to the limit. We remark further now 
 only on this specific point, namely, that, whatever mind 
 may be as a possibility of feelings, it is, according to 
 this theory, not a pure succession or stream; for per- 
 manence is postulated of the ultimate possibility; and 
 identity, time, and memory are thus apparently con- 
 ceived as supported by permanence, and not only by a 
 pure flow of momentary and perishing experiences. 2 
 
 i He says of the permanent possibility of sensation [Matter] : "But 
 though the sensations cease, the possibilities remain in existence; they 
 are independent of our will, our presence, and everything which belongs 
 to us." (Exam. Hamilton, I. p. 241.) The permanent possibilities are 
 not supposed to be, or to be in, a universal mind that embraces or 
 governs the particular finite minds and is the immediate author of all 
 their conscious experiences. 
 
 2 Mr. Mill makes some statements respecting memory and the uncon- 
 scious which are worthy of note. In speaking of "stored-up knowl- 
 edge," he denies that it is an unconscious state or action of mind. 
 "It is not a mental state, but a capability of being put into a mental 
 state. When I am not thinking of a thing it is not present to mind 
 at all." (Exam. Hamilton, II. p. 7.) He says again of latent mem- 
 ory: "It is not the mental impressions that are latent, but the power 
 of reproducing them. Every one admits, without any apparatus of proof, 
 that we have powers and susceptibilities of which we are not conscious; 
 but these are the capabilities of being affected, not actual affections" 
 (p. 9). He remarks also: "I am myself inclined to agree with Sir W. 
 Hamilton, and to admit his unconscious mental modifications, in the 
 only shape in which I can attach any very distinct meaning to them, 
 namely unconscious modifications of the nerves" (p. 22). Mill here 
 seems to favor the theory that the capabilities or possibilities of 
 memories, and probably of all other mental states, are wholly in the 
 permanent nervous matter. But it will be remembered that matter itself 
 he defines as the permanent possibility of sensation; by which definition, 
 
4 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 A third hypothesis declares that mind and body con- 
 stitute one reality, a psycho -physical organism; and 
 that a mental change and a bodily or nervons change 
 are phases of the same event. There is no interaction 
 between mind and body, because they are one ; but there 
 is an established parallelism between conscious states 
 and nervous motions. The theory of psycho-physical 
 unity and parallelism often ends in giving great su- 
 premacy to the physical side of the organism, or in 
 making it the " whole thing.' ' The mental modes are 
 treated as if products or creations of the physical mo- 
 tions. The latter have not a reciprocal like depend- 
 ence upon the former. 
 
 An older and long popular theory holds that mind 
 or soul is a substance distinct from the body, and that 
 the human constitution is a duality of mental and ma- 
 terial substances. Mind, in its essence a permanent 
 and identical entity, is the producer of the procession 
 of the various conscious phenomena. It is supposed 
 to be the permanent support or subject of the proces- 
 sion, just as a material body is generally regarded as 
 the permanent subject of its own successive and tran- 
 sient motions. Though mind is substantially distinct 
 from body, it is united with body in a close relation of 
 interdependence and interaction. With this theory is 
 commonly combined the belief that the soul survives in 
 its integrity, with its memories and identity, the disso- 
 lution of the body. 
 
 It is our purpose now to return to the theory of the 
 process-mind, the mind of the pure temporal series of 
 feelings without substrate, that is, the mind of Hume 
 and his followers, and to subject it to a more full and 
 
 with these other statements, we are at length involved in an almost 
 bewildering maze. 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 5 
 
 particular examination. There is no force in present- 
 day psychology more potent than that of Hume; and 
 some careful consideration of the main principles of 
 his hypothesis of mind will therefore be especially ap- 
 propriate. It will also serve as a convenient prepara- 
 tion for our own independent treatment of mind which 
 is to follow. 
 
 According to Hume's formal definition, mind is a 
 pure abstract collection or succession of perceptions. 
 He says : ' ' What we call a mind is nothing but a heap 
 or collection of different perceptions." * Again: 
 "They are the successive perceptions only that con- 
 stitute the mind" (I 313). Perceptions is Hume's gen- 
 eral term for ' ' impressions and ideas ' ' ; and these are 
 the two great classes into which all the phenomena or 
 contents of the mind are divided. He observes: "All 
 the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves 
 into two distinct kinds, which I shall call impressions 
 and ideas" (15). These two kinds of " perceptions ' ' 
 correspond to what are often called in the later 
 psychology presentations and representations. They 
 differ only in "force and liveliness. ' ' Impressions are 
 vivid perceptions; ideas are faint perceptions. All 
 ideas are effects and copies of precedent impressions. 
 
 Hume notes three main characteristics of the suc- 
 cession of perceptions which alone constitute mind. 
 The first of these is, that the perceptions rapidly pass 
 and vanish. He says: "All impressions are internal 
 and perishing" (245) ; perceptions have no "continued 
 existence" (265); they "succeed each other with an 
 inconceivable rapidity" (312). The two other char- 
 acteristics Hume repeatedly distinguishes and empha- 
 
 i Philosophical Works, 4 vols., Boston, 1854. (Edinburgh 1825.) 
 I. p. 260. 
 
6 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 sizes as of the greatest importance. The one is, that 
 the successive and transient perceptions forming mind 
 " exist separately, ' ' are perfectly isolated from one 
 another. The other is, that certain relations are cog- 
 nizable among the isolated perceptions; namely, the 
 relation of resemblance, relation in space and time, and 
 the relation of canse and effect. 
 
 The isolation of the successive perceptions composing 
 the mind is affirmed by Hume in the most express and 
 decided terms. He says: "All our perceptions are 
 different from each other and from everything else in 
 the universe, they are also distinct and separable, and 
 may be considered as separately existent' ' (290). 
 ' ' Our perceptions are all really different, and separable, 
 and distinguishable from each other, and from every- 
 thing else which we can imagine; and therefore it is 
 impossible to conceive how they can be the action or 
 abstract mode of any substance' ' (304). " Every dis- 
 tinct perception which enters into the composition of 
 the mind, is a distinct existence, and is different, and 
 distinguishable, and separable from every other per- 
 ception, either contemporary or successive" (320). 
 "There is no known [real] connection among objects 
 [perceptions] " (278). "All events seem entirely loose 
 and separate. One event follows another, but we never 
 can observe any tie between them. They seem con- 
 joined but never connected" (IV 84). Mind, according 
 to these and other like declarations frequently made by 
 Hume, is a collection or succession of perceptions di- 
 vided from one another by absolutely void intervals. 
 It is like a flock of birds on the wing, or a stream of 
 leaves in the wind, the individuals of which are sepa- 
 rated by empty spaces. 
 
 In his repeated and vehement assertions that there 
 
THE SUBJECT OE SOUL 7 
 
 is no real tie, bond, or connection among the percep- 
 tions composing mind, Hume generally has in view, 
 and wishes to oppose, Locke's doctrine of mental sub- 
 stance. Locke held to the existence of mental sub- 
 stance, the " subject' ' or " substratum" in which it is 
 supposed ideas "inhere," "subsist," are "united," to 
 which they "belong," by which they are "supported." 
 But he yet held also that though the mental substance 
 exists, it is unknown. He affirms : ' * The substance of 
 spirits is unknown to us ; and so is the substance of body 
 equally unknown to us." 1 "All our ideas of the sev- 
 eral sorts of substances are nothing but collections of 
 simple ideas, with a supposition of something to which 
 they belong, and in which they subsist; though of this 
 supposed something we have no clear distinct idea at 
 all. ' ' 2 Hume takes a very important step beyond 
 Locke and antagonizes him, in asserting that mental 
 substance is not only unknown, but does not exist ; that 
 the mind is a collection of ideas without any supporting 
 subject or substratum whatever, but self-sustained. 
 He says explicitly: Perceptions are distinct and 
 separable "and have no need of anything else to sup- 
 port their existence" (I 290). "We have no idea of a 
 substance. . . . Nothing appears requisite to support 
 the existence of a perception. We have therefore no 
 idea of inhesion" (291). "The understanding never 
 observes any real connection among objects [percep- 
 tions] " (330). "Objects exist distinct and independ- 
 ent, without any common simple substance or subject of 
 inhesion" (II 549). It may be remarked that Hume 
 thus exceeds Berkeley, the nearer successor of Locke, 
 by a very distinct advance. Berkeley rejected ma- 
 
 i Essay, II. xxiii. 30. 
 2/6., 37. 
 
8 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 terial, but admitted mental, substance. Hume emphat- 
 ically rejects both. 
 
 But, as above remarked, one of the most frequently 
 and forcibly asserted principles of Hume's psychology 
 is the doctrine that among the collected perceptions 
 composing mind — which are separated from one an- 
 other and are never connected by a real bond or tie, by 
 a medium or substance — certain significant relations 
 are cognized ; namely, the relations of resemblance, con- 
 tiguity in space and in time, and cause and effect. He 
 says of these perceivable relations: "To me there 
 appear to be only three principles of connection among 
 ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or 
 place, and Cause or Effect" (IV 23). "The three con- 
 necting principles of all ideas, are the relations of re- 
 semblance, contiguity, and causation" (29). "We 
 have already observed that nature has established con- 
 nections among particular ideas, and that no sooner one 
 idea occurs to our thoughts than it introduces its 
 correlative, and carries our attention toward it, by a 
 gentle and insensible movement. These principles of 
 connection or association we have reduced to three, 
 namely, Resemblance, Contiguity, and Causation; 
 which are the only bonds that unite our thoughts to- 
 gether" (58). Hume expressly observes that these re- 
 lations are not real connections among perceptions, and 
 are not based upon or made possible by real connec- 
 tions; but are only relations which the separate per- 
 ceptions have in our "thought,' ' "fancy," "imagina- 
 tion." "When we say that one object is connected 
 with another, we mean only that they have acquired a 
 connection in our thought" (86). "The only qualities 
 that can give ideas a union in the imagination are these 
 three relations above mentioned. These are the uniting 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 9 
 
 principles in the ideal world" (I 321). "We only feel 
 a connection or determination of the thought to pass 
 from one object to another" (II 551). "Events . . . 
 seem conjoined, but never connected"; that is, they are 
 conjoined in thought but have no "tie" in reality, no 
 "real bond" or "real connection." Particularly, per- 
 ceptions are not connected by the being of a unitary 
 owner, subject or substratum. 
 
 By a moment's consideration of this doctrine of cog- 
 nizable relations, it becomes quite obvious that Hume is 
 here introducing a principle that is entirely incon- 
 sistent with the character of mind described as a collec- 
 tion of separately existing, and never really connected, 
 perceptions. To a mind so defined the cognition of 
 such relations would evidently be impossible. The 
 separation of the elements of mind carries with it the 
 impracticability of perceiving the relations. What is it 
 that will perceive the relations? Where is there any 
 provision for any combining cognition of the collected 
 perceptions "which constitute a thinking mind"! 
 Hume posits no arch-perception, analogous to the 
 "arch-monad" of Leibnitz, which might supervise the 
 other perceptions and discern their relations. There 
 is no thinking factor in mind other than each of the 
 separately existing perceptions. These are the whole 
 of mind. What imaginable means, then, can there be 
 for any knowledge of the relations of the associated but 
 isolated perceptions? If each perception may know 
 itself, yet its severance from all others clearly makes 
 impossible to it any knowledge of its relations to them. 
 It cannot be supposed to leap the gulfs between itself 
 and the others, and thus ascertain its resemblance to 
 them, and measure the distance of its position from 
 theirs in space and in time. That would require at 
 
10 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 least that each separate perception should be a soul, a 
 person, capable of visiting his fellows, of coming into 
 immediate real connection with them and embracing 
 them. 
 
 The two great principles of Hume's psychology (1) 
 that the mind is a collection of separately existing per- 
 ceptions, and (2) that there are important relations 
 cognized among the perceptions — the relations of re- 
 semblance, coexistence and separation in space, and 
 succession — certainly seem to be, and certainly are, in- 
 compatible with one another, even mutually contradic- 
 tory. In the denned and avowed mind there is no 
 acknowledged knowing factor beside the severed per- 
 ceptions; there is not the slightest place or provision 
 with them or among them for any sort of knower ; and 
 their separation absolutely forbids the cognizability of 
 the relations. A cognized relation between the con- 
 stituent perceptions would be possible only on the con- 
 dition of a real connection. The positive denial of a 
 real connection necessitates the denial of a perceivable 
 relation. Yet, as Hume constantly and confidently 
 affirms the actual cognition of these relations, it be- 
 comes interesting and important to consider how he 
 construes in his own mind the feasibility of the cog- 
 nition. 
 
 This he does by blandly supposing and employing, 
 over and above the avowed mind of the separately 
 existing perceptions, what is in reality a second mind 
 possessing a peculiar and remarkable character. This 
 second mind is variously denominated "mind," 
 "thought," "imagination," "we," "I"; and is repre- 
 sented as, like an outside observer, surveying the suc- 
 cession and mass of our perceptions, as moving among 
 them, as combining and commanding them. It is 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 11 
 
 noticeable that Hume makes this assumption with the 
 utmost ease and serenity, without the slightest concern, 
 as if it were a postulate which no one should ever think 
 of questioning or condemning as inconsistent with any- 
 other of his tenets. 
 
 In the following passages this surprising conception 
 of an extra mind is made clear and unmistakable. 
 Speaking of "the mind," Hume says: "The qualities 
 ... by which the mind is conveyed from one idea to 
 another are these three, viz., resemblance," etc. (I 26). 
 "The thinking of any object readily transports the 
 mind to what is contiguous" (133). "The relation 
 facilitates the transition of the mind from one object 
 [perception] to another, and renders its passage as 
 smooth as if it contemplated one continued object" 
 (314). "The mind has the command over all its ideas, 
 and can separate, unite, mix, and vary them, as it 
 pleases" (II 544). Similar and the same functions are 
 attributed to "thought" and "imagination": "Our 
 notions of personal identity proceed entirely from the 
 smooth and uninterrupted progress of the thought 
 along a train of connected ideas" (I 321). "A deter- 
 mination of the thought to pass from one object to 
 another" (II 551). "When one idea is present to the 
 imagination, any other united by these relations nat- 
 urally follows it, and enters with more facility by 
 means of that introduction" (13). "The imagination 
 has the command over all its ideas" (IV 57). "Our 
 imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that 
 resembles it"; and runs "along the parts of space and 
 time in conceiving its objects" (I 26). Ideas have a 
 "union in the imagination" (321). Likewise, in very 
 many instances, "we" and "I" are represented as 
 observing, uniting, controlling, remembering, the sep- 
 
12 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 arately existing ideas, objects, perceptions. Thus 
 under these different names, and with these various 
 representations, Hume very clearly introduces an extra 
 mind which has no recognition or place whatever in 
 the avowed mind of the collection, bundle, train, suc- 
 cession, of perceptions. But, in view of the fact that 
 Hume defines mind to the last as a collection of loose, 
 unconnected, isolated perceptions, this quiet foisting in 
 of a second mind as the observer, possessor, combiner 
 and master of the perceptions is undeniably one of the 
 most obtuse or, if not that, then one of the most un- 
 scrupulous and flagitious surreptions and self-contra- 
 dictions in the annals of mental philosophy, and on 
 account of it he deserves to be everlastingly chas- 
 tised. 
 
 Hume's interpolation of an extra mind is essentially 
 a bringing back of the spiritual subject of Locke and 
 the substantialists which he had decidedly rejected. 
 Locke had taught, as before remarked, that ' ' our spe- 
 cific ideas of substances are nothing else but a collec- 
 tion of a certain number of simple ideas, considered as 
 united in one thing. ' ' x He variously speaks of this 
 "one thing' ' or substance as something to which ideas 
 belong, in which they inhere, subsist, are united, by 
 which they are supported. But Hume would maintain 
 against Locke that the only mind and all of mind is the 
 collection of ideas ; and that they do not have and do 
 not need anything to support them; that they subsist 
 without any real or substantial connection, upholding 
 themselves in perfect reciprocal isolation in the void; 
 that we cannot form any idea of what a substance or 
 inhesion is. The introduction of a second mind, how- 
 ever, undoes all this; it constitutes a glaring self-con- 
 
 i Essay, II. xxiii. 14. 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 13 
 
 tradiction; it is a complete recantation; it is a clear re- 
 call of the repudiated and excluded substance. In 
 these many instances in which Hume declares of the 
 second mind that it possesses, combines, commands, 
 ideas and perceptions, it is evidently made essentially 
 identical with Locke 's uniting, owning, supporting sub- 
 ject, Locke's connecting of ideas in one thing Hume 
 emphatically rejected ; but here he freely accepts what 
 amounts to the same connecting. Locke's doctrine of 
 the inhesion or subsistence of ideas in a common sub- 
 ject he held to be unintelligible; but here he treats a 
 nearly or quite identical inherence or subsistence as if 
 it were perfectly intelligible. There is obvious in this 
 procedure the singular turn in Hume's speculation, 
 that the extra mind which he tacitly foists in comes to 
 hold the chief place and to be the supreme mind; and 
 that the separately existing perceptions, which by them- 
 selves, with nothing else whatever, compose the ex- 
 pressly avowed and denned mind, are made objects 
 which it observes, unites, controls. Further, the inter- 
 polated mind is made to give all plausibility to the often 
 asserted cognition of the relations, among the isolated 
 perceptions, of resemblance, space and time. 
 
 This interjection of a second mind by Hume must be 
 denounced as an inconsistency and self-contradiction of 
 the most flagrant sort. But it had more causes than 
 Hume's love of paradox and dilemma, or delight in 
 acting the sceptic. It is in part a demonstration of how 
 an important fact, which has been arbitrarily excluded 
 from the theory of mind and ignored and denied, will 
 at times force itself forward into recognition, compel 
 respect, and accuse and retaliate its unjust exclusion. 
 There was more in Hume 's experience of mind than was 
 embraced in his theory ; and his full experience there- 
 
14 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 fore spontaneously and necessarily came into conflict 
 with his theory. 
 
 As illustrating and tending to confirm some of the 
 main points that have just been dwelt on, we shall yet 
 produce a familiar declaration of Hume, which has 
 often been quoted as being a particularly clear and com- 
 pact statement of what is most distinctive in his psy- 
 chology. Its main doctrine has been by many regarded 
 as embodying very important truth, and dominates 
 much of the psychology of our time. "For my part," 
 says Hume, "when I enter most intimately into what I 
 call myself, I always stumble on some particular per- 
 ception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or 
 hate, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at 
 any time without a perception, and never can observe 
 anything but the perception. ' ' He soon adds, that men 
 ' ' are nothing but a bundle or collection of different per- 
 ceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceiv- 
 able rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and move- 
 ment" (I 312). In here saying that he never can 
 observe anything but the perceptions, or flux of differ- 
 ent isolated perceptions, he means especially that he 
 cannot observe, in addition to the perceptions, any con- 
 necting substance among them, any single, permanent, 
 identical, subject or support for them. 
 
 This passage then is a very plain and direct affirma- 
 tion of psychology without a soul, in opposition to the 
 substantialists. It is also a further clear exhibition of 
 the profound self-contradiction within Hume 's hypoth- 
 esis of the nature and cognition of mind. No one will 
 wish to question in the least the truth of Hume's as- 
 severation, that when entering into the most intimate 
 examination of himself he always stumbled upon some 
 particular perception or perceptions; for it is undeni- 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 15 
 
 able that, universally, mind is known or knows itself 
 only in its conscious modes; but Hume is chargeable 
 with a gross self-contradiction in asserting that he 
 observed nothing more than the perceptions. He ob- 
 served something more in the very act of denying it. 
 The something more is in this "I," this "self," this 
 permanent, identical, unitary, remembering being, 
 which, as he says, always " stumbles,' ' etc., never " ob- 
 serves,' ' etc.; and must therefore be something more 
 than the inconceivably rapid flow of the perishing iso- 
 lated perceptions ; must be something which stores up 
 memories of perceptions that it experienced in the past, 
 holding thus in the unity of knowledge both the present 
 and the past, and certainly being capable of doing this 
 only because it did not perish with the past perceptions 
 but survives in its sameness to the present. Hume's 
 theory of mind as a flux of unconnected perceptions in- 
 volves the indubitable corollary that if, in his closest 
 self -inspection, he never observed aught but the isolated 
 perceptions, then he never observed even the percep- 
 tions. He must catch more than the perceptions, or 
 there is no possibility of catching even them, or catch- 
 ing any one of them in any relation to others. 
 
 We have been dwelling upon the two fundamental, 
 but inconsistent and contradictory, principles of 
 Hume 's psychology : first, that the mind is a succession 
 of severed perceptions, without a single subject or any- 
 thing to connect and support them ; and, secondly, that 
 the relations of resemblance, space, time, and causa- 
 tion, are constantly perceived among the severed per- 
 ceptions. We have considered also his flagrant sur- 
 reption of an extra mind which is supposed to survey 
 the isolated perceptions, to observe the relations among 
 them, to possess, unite and command them. It will re- 
 
16 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 ward us if we now turn back to consider further and 
 attentively what Hume's original mind, denned as a 
 succession of separately existing perceptions, is in and 
 by itself, or what it is capable and incapable of knowing 
 by itself, expelling entirely from the view the inter- 
 jected second mind. We should note especially what 
 the successive mind can know of time, personal identity 
 and causation, or of the alleged primary relations of its 
 swiftly passing constituent terms. 
 
 First, it is obvious that the successive mind cannot 
 know succession, cannot know its own succession. A 
 succession of separately existing perceptions evidently 
 does not implicate in itself alone the knowledge of suc- 
 cession. The succession's knowledge of its own suc- 
 cession is impossible, because, owing to the mutual iso- 
 lation of the perceptions by void intervals, not one of 
 them can know itself as the predecessor or successor of 
 another. A perception cannot know its position in the 
 succession, and therefore cannot even be cognizant that 
 it belongs to a succession or that there is a succession. 
 This manifest impossibility of the abstract mental suc- 
 cession's being aware of itself as a succession and of 
 any succession at all, should have convinced Hume, and 
 forced him to the open and honest acknowledgment, 
 that the mind must be something more than a train of 
 isolated terms ; that the idea of succession imperatively 
 requires a more adequate reason, a far more competent 
 cause and support. 
 
 Secondly, the impossibility of the abstract successive 
 mind's knowing its own succession, makes certain the 
 impossibility of its possessing memory and the sense of 
 permanent identity. As a perception, because of its 
 isolation, can have no knowledge of any predecessor, 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 17 
 
 it can have no remembrance of any. It can not retain 
 a knowledge of what it never did and never could know. 
 And where there is no memory it is also evident there 
 cannot be the thought of permanence and identity. 
 The present passing perception could not know any- 
 thing beyond its own momentary existence, if it could 
 know that; and it could not have any thought of per- 
 manence, because there is no real permanence from 
 which the thought could rise and upon which it could 
 rest. 
 
 Induced probably by the manifest incompatibility 
 between the ordinary idea of identity and his concep- 
 tion of the pure succession-mind, Hume attempts to 
 force the idea of identity into conformity with this con- 
 ception. He would have us believe that the idea of 
 identity is a fiction, or a mistake for what is really but 
 the idea of diversity and of succession. The occasion of 
 the mistake is the ease and rapidity of the transition 
 of our thought along the train of our ideas. The dif- 
 ferent ideas are taken, in the facile and quick survey, 
 for one and the same; and their succession for per- 
 manence. The essence of Hume's doctrine is couched 
 in the following extracts: "The relation [of succes- 
 sion] facilitates the transition of the mind from one 
 object [idea] to another, and renders its passage as 
 smooth as if it contemplated one continued object' ' (I 
 314). "Our notions of personal identity proceed en- 
 tirely from the smooth and uninterrupted progress of 
 the thought along a train of connected ideas" (321). 
 Identity is a fictitious notion which we entertain by mis- 
 take for what is really the idea of a succession of dif- 
 ferent objects or perceptions. The easy passage of 
 the thought along the successive perceptions we erro- 
 
18 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 neously imagine is the contemplation of the same object. 
 We substitute invariability for diversity, identity for 
 succession. 
 
 A conspicuous fault of Hume's account of personal 
 identity is the gross surreption of a second mind, which 
 we have already considered. He says there is a "tran- 
 sition of the mind from one object to another,' ' a "prog- 
 ress of thought along a train of connected ideas. ' • But 
 the separately existing ideas or perceptions that are 
 said to compose mind admit of no such transition or 
 progress. The perceptions are "islands without 
 bridges and without boats," and intercommunication is 
 impossible. There cannot be a mind or thought pass- 
 ing from one perception to another, and perceiving and 
 remembering any relation between them; for there is 
 no mind or thought distinct from the separate percep- 
 tions themselves to compass them and think of them 
 as in any conjunction. We need not dwell on Hume's 
 sinister introduction and use of a second mind. He 
 virtually assumes the existence of a real permanent and 
 identical mind in the very sentences in which he de- 
 nies it. 
 
 Instead of striving to force the idea of personal iden- 
 tity into consistency with his successive serial mind, 
 Hume should have frankly fashioned mind into con- 
 sistency with the idea. The clear, persistent and uni- 
 versal idea of permanent identity, which is certainly 
 not the idea of succession, but of sameness lasting 
 through succession, should have proved to him that 
 there must be something more of mind than a temporal 
 series of severed perceptions; that within mind there 
 must be, in addition, a permanent element as the neces- 
 sary occasion and foundation of the idea of permanence 
 and even as indispensable to the idea of succession. 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 19 
 
 Hume's adored idol of the successive mind imperiously 
 excluded from his thought all facts of experience, how- 
 ever strong and certain, that would not do obeisance 
 to it. 
 
 Thirdly, the abstract succession-mind of Hume could 
 never be cognizant of causation, power, or succession 
 with power. Since not any of the separate perceptions 
 composing mind could know itself as preceding, or as 
 simultaneous with, another perception, it necessarily 
 could not know itself as exerting power on or affecting 
 another perception. Inability to know perceptions as 
 successive or simultaneous, involves the inability to 
 know them as cause and effect. But Hume attempts to 
 make the idea of causation consistent with his theory of 
 the succession-mind, by falsifying it as he falsified the 
 idea of identity. He argues with much elaboration that 
 the idea of causation is really only the idea of a mode 
 of succession, as the idea of identity is but a mode of 
 the idea of succession. Causation is but a customary 
 succession of ideas. He asserts: "We have no other 
 notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects 
 which have been always conjoined together, and which 
 in all past instances have been found inseparable ' ' (I 
 124) ; and, "The union of cause and effect, when strictly 
 examined, resolves itself into a customary association 
 of ideas' ' (321). The result of his teaching is that 
 causation is only constant or customary succession 
 without involving any power whatever. The idea of 
 power is a fiction or phantom ; the word is • ' absolutely 
 without any meaning. ' ' 
 
 Hume contends that the idea of power is not true or 
 real, because there is no impression, or direct, vivid, 
 original experience, of power from which it should be 
 derived. Here is one of his most arbitrary denials of 
 
20 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 fact. We have in truth original and certain conscious- 
 ness of power, in the voluntary command of the mind 
 over its activities, or when one act of mind determines 
 another. This experience is clear and sure, and per- 
 fectly distinct from that of pure succession. Succes- 
 sion of experiences without power, and succession with 
 power, must be regarded as an original and primordial 
 difference. They are both first facts of experience and 
 reality, and neither can be rightly reduced to the other. 
 It was then wholly perverse in Hume to attempt to 
 represent causation as pure succession, and thus to 
 make it consistent with his conception of the character 
 of mind. He should exactly have reversed his action 
 here, as he should have done in the case of identity, and 
 made the character of mind consistent with the genuine 
 experience. Just as the real experience of identity 
 should have led him to perceive and acknowledge that 
 there is more in mind than succession, namely, a per- 
 manent and identical element as the necessary ground 
 of the cognized succession and conviction of identity; 
 so the real experience of causation should have per- 
 suaded him that there is a real connection of power or 
 determination within the mental succession, that is, be- 
 tween mental cause and mental effect, as the indis- 
 pensable source and foundation of the conscious ex- 
 perience — a quality or factor upon which the experience 
 is grounded and to which it corresponds. The final 
 animadversion is justifiable, that hardly anything can 
 be more wanton and false than Hume's juvenile con- 
 jectures as to the nature and conditions of the ideas of 
 mental identity and mental power or causation. 
 
 We have dwelt at some length and with some minute- 
 ness, possibly with excess, upon the nature of mind as 
 understood by Hume and upon the extent of its capa- 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 21 
 
 bility especially as to knowledge, and shall bring our 
 survey to a close. Enough has been seen to prove that 
 his theory of mind is, in its main or most distinctive 
 propositions, a scheme of misrepresentation and in- 
 ternal discord and falsity. Hereafter we shall see some- 
 thing of the baneful influence it has exercised upon the 
 later psychology. 
 
 Hume has had and continues to have many to follow 
 him in advocating psychology without a soul, or the doc- 
 trine that mind is a pure succession of perceptions, 
 ideas, thoughts, and in positively denying the cogniza- 
 bility and reality of a permanent mental subject or 
 substratum, or in denying at least that such a subject 
 has any scientific value in psychology. But there is an 
 important difference between Hume's conception of 
 mind and that of most of his present-day followers. 
 These maintain that the successive serial mind is, not 
 as Hume taught, a succession of separately existing per- 
 ceptions, of perceptions with empty intervals or abso- 
 lute breaches among them, but a continuous, unbroken, 
 succession, a flow or stream. With this meaning they 
 speak of the ' * process ' ' of the mental affections or phe- 
 nomena, ' * the stream of thought, ' ' the ' ' stream of con- 
 sciousness,^ etc. The conception of continuity or un- 
 broken flow they suppose is a truer knowledge of mind 
 than the conception of the broken, and not liable to the 
 grave accusations that may be made against the latter. 
 This supposed superiority of continuity of the mental 
 succession over discontinuity deserves the most careful 
 consideration, a much more careful consideration than 
 has been generally given to it ; especially respecting its 
 accord with, and competency to account for, the near, 
 persistent and confident knowledge and conviction we 
 
22 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 have of succession, time, personal identity, and mental 
 power or causation. The connecting points of the 
 closely successive terms of the abstract mental stream 
 are too often made the habitat of surreption and fallacy. 
 
 In our treatment of the later form of the theory of 
 the successive mind, we propose to give somewhat 
 special and exclusive attention to Professor W. James ' 
 discussion of it in his Psychology, because his discus- 
 sion is one of the latest and most complete and capable. 
 This course will probably serve the interests of brevity 
 and be found otherwise advantageous. 
 
 Let us first consider attentively Professor James' 
 description of the nature of mind, and his conception of 
 the matter and scope of scientific psychology. He 
 defines mind as the stream of thought or thoughts. He 
 represents it as a stream of a unique kind in the decla- 
 ration, that it is a "succession of perishing thoughts." 
 The stream consists at any moment of only the one thin 
 "section," namely, the present thought. The upper 
 part of the stream, all its past, has perished ; the lower 
 part, the future, has not yet come. Further, the stream 
 of thoughts is conceived of as existing by itself, as ab- 
 stract or detached, or as having no relation to or 
 support in a real, or necessary, or at any rate known, 
 soul or mental substance. Moreover, as the only part 
 of the stream that exists at any one moment is the 
 present thought, then the only mind and the whole of 
 mind ever immediately known, the only "verifiable 
 thinker," is the present passing thought. 1 If there is 
 
 i "The passing Thought itself is the only verifiable thinker." {Psy- 
 chology, I. p. 346. ) The / "is a Thought, at each moment different from 
 that of the last moment, but appropriative of the latter, together with 
 all that the latter called its own" ( p. 401 ) . "// the passing thought be 
 the directly verifiable existent which no school has hitherto doubted 
 it to be, then that thought is itself the thinker, and psychology need 
 not look beyond" (p. 401). 
 
THE SUBJECT OE SOUL 23 
 
 anything else in or known of mind, it can be known 
 only mediately, by memory or by inference. 1 Such is 
 Professor James' conception of mind. Mind is the ab- 
 stract continuous succession or stream of the perishing 
 thoughts. But all of the stream that exists at any 
 moment, and can be immediately known, is the present 
 thought. All we ever certainly know of mind in any 
 way, is the present thought and the ideal stream to 
 which it belongs. 
 
 We pass on to Professor James ' notion of the content 
 and scope of scientific psychology. First, he resolutely 
 excludes the soul from the proper matter of psychology. 
 He does not positively deny the existence of the soul ; he 
 will allow us to believe in it if we care to do so ; but he 
 is emphatic in declaring its inaccessibility to direct 
 knowledge and its "superfluity for scientific purposes" 
 (p. 350). The only thing of a mental nature that 
 rightly comes into the science of psychology is the ab- 
 stract stream of thoughts. If our psychology should 
 embrace the soul, then it would embrace something that 
 is not immediately known, and is of doubtful existence ; 
 it would become metaphysical, and lose the character of 
 strict and pure scientific psychology. 
 
 But in addition to the only proper mental matter, 
 Professor James introduces into psychology some very 
 significant things that are not mental. Of this addi- 
 tional content are the physical motions, the nervous 
 molecular processes, that accompany and parallel the 
 mental processes. The correlation of states of con- 
 sciousness and states of brain requires that states of 
 
 i "The bare Phenomenon, however, the Immediately Known thing 
 which on the mental side is in apposition with the entire brain-process, 
 is the state of consciousness and not the soul itself. Many of the stanch- 
 est believers in the soul admit that we know it only as an inference from 
 experiencing its states" (p. 182). 
 
24 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 brain shall have place and consideration in psychology 
 as well as states of consciousness. Our author asks: 
 "Whether, after all, the ascertainment of a blank un- 
 mediated correspondence, term for term, of the succes- 
 sion of states of consciousness with the succession of 
 total brain-processes , be not the simplest psycho-physic 
 formula, and the last word of a psychology which con- 
 tents itself with verifiable laws, and seeks only to be 
 clear, and to avoid unsafe hypotheses" (p. 182). He 
 says also : ' ' Psychology when she has ascertained the 
 empirical correlation of the various sorts of thought or 
 feeling with definite conditions of the brain, can go no 
 farther, — can go no farther, that is, as a natural science. 
 If she goes farther she becomes metaphysical. ... I 
 have therefore treated our passing thoughts as integers, 
 and regarded the mere laws of their coexistence with 
 brain-states as the ultimate laws for our science' ' (pp. 
 vi, vii). It is worthy of express remark that Professor 
 James does not treat the brain-processes as if they were 
 abstracted from the brain itself, but as belonging to the 
 brain and as inseparable from it. The brain is always 
 regarded as the owner and immediate bearer of the 
 processes, and as abiding through their transiency. It 
 is therefore perfectly obvious that he introduces into 
 psychology the permanent and extended brain with its 
 molecular processes or motions. According to this 
 view, then, the succession of thoughts, and the brain- 
 processes occurring with and corresponding to them, 
 together with the permanent and extended brain which 
 is inseparable from the processes, constitute the whole 
 of the materials of scientific psychology. 
 
 One or two observations pertinent to this conception 
 of the science of psychology should here be made. 
 Professor James' apparent implication, that the brain- 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 25 
 
 motions are as directly and certainly known as the 
 states of consciousness, and that, for this reason at 
 least, they are as fully entitled to a place in psychology 
 as the related states of consciousness, should be re- 
 garded as one of the gravest epistemological errors ever 
 countenanced by psychologists. Another error of like 
 significant character is the apparent tacit assumption 
 that the permanent and extended brain is known more 
 directly and certainly than the permanent mental sub- 
 stance or soul, and therefore should be included in psy- 
 chology, while the soul should be shut out. We are not 
 wishing to be understood as advocating the exclusion of 
 the brain and its processes from the science of psy- 
 chology; but only as decidedly opposing the inclusion 
 of these processes upon the supposition that they are as 
 immediately and certainly known as the mental affec- 
 tions, and opposing also the exclusion of the soul upon 
 the supposition that it is not as immediately and cer- 
 tainly known as is the brain. We shall hope to show 
 hereafter that our contention is not without justifica- 
 tion. 
 
 It may be noted further, respecting the contamina- 
 tion of psychology with metaphysics, that Professor 
 James seems to be involved in a serious self-contradic- 
 tion. He annuls his own proposition against mixing 
 metaphysics with psychology; for, though he excludes 
 from psychology mental substance and its metaphysics, 
 yet in bringing in a material mass, the permanent and 
 extended brain, he gives the readiest and warmest wel- 
 come to the metaphysics of matter. 
 
 Now we come to the most important question that 
 can be asked respecting Professor James ' theory of the 
 nature of mind. The question is crucial, and it is this : 
 What account does the theory give of Memory and the 
 
26 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 conviction of Personal Identity, and what is the worth 
 of the account? The best testing demand upon the 
 theory of the soulless stream of perishing thoughts is 
 for it to show how the experiences of memory and 
 identity are consistent with or possible to the hypo- 
 thetical mind. The theory seems to break down utterly 
 under this demand. 
 
 First, of Memory. Professor James very confidently 
 claims memory, both retention and reproduction, for 
 the abstract stream of perishing thoughts. He ex- 
 plains the possibility and reality of memory by the 
 postulate, that each thought transmits to its successor 
 the record of its own individual experience and its 
 recollections, or that each successor " appropriates," 
 "adopts," its predecessor and all its contents. The 
 sinking thought hands on to its rising successor its ex- 
 perience and mnemonic stores; the rising thought re- 
 ceives them. "Each pulse," it is affirmed, "of cogni- 
 tive consciousness, each Thought, dies away and is re- 
 placed by another. The other among the things it 
 knows, knows its own predecessor. . . . Each Thought 
 is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting 
 whatever it realized as its Self to its own later pro- 
 prietor" (p. 339). It is said also, that the nascent 
 thought immediately takes up the expiring thought and 
 adopts it with all it contains ; and, again, that no other 
 agent need be supposed than "a succession of perishing 
 thoughts endowed with the functions of appropriation 
 and rejection" (p. 342). It should be observed, by the 
 way, that Professor James does not make quite clear 
 what he conceives to be the ontologic relation between 
 two immediately connected thoughts in the succession. 
 Does a thought perish or die away by melting itself into, 
 or becoming, its own successor, and thus carry along 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 27 
 
 all it possesses including its memories? Is the relation 
 in a peculiar way causal? In what respect are the suc- 
 cessive thoughts distinct or different from one another? 
 These questions are not clearly answered. 
 
 It should be explicitly remarked of this hypothesis of 
 a thought's transmitting its mnemonic stock to its suc- 
 cessor, that memory is thus conceived as if it were en- 
 tirely mental, as if the successive transmitting and re- 
 ceiving thoughts were independent of relationship, for 
 instance, with cerebral processes and substance. All 
 that is distinctly recognized as concerned is the pure 
 succession of perishing thoughts, the pure stream- 
 mind. The present thought remembers, because it has 
 received the experiences of its predecessor by imme- 
 diate impartation or appropriation. It retains and re- 
 produces, because of the direct gifts from its dying 
 forerunner in the stream of thoughts. 1 
 
 Professor James begins his theory of the memory of 
 the stream-mind with an assumption of superlative im- 
 portance, which deserves to be closely considered. He 
 assumes as if it were an elementary and self-evident 
 fact, that the present thought knows its predecessor as 
 a predecessor, and holds implicated in that the knowl- 
 edge of time, of the past, of succession. But in this 
 
 i Elsewhere Professor James expresses himself in this manner : "In 
 radical empiricism there is no bedding [no substance connecting our 
 thoughts] ; it is as if the pieces clung together by their edges, the tran- 
 sitions experienced between them forming their cement. ... The meta- 
 phor serves to symbolize the fact that Experience itself, taken at large, 
 can grow by its edges. That one moment of it proliferates into the 
 next by transitions which, whether conjunctive or disjunctive, continue 
 the experiential tissue, cannot, I contend, be denied." {Radical 
 Empiricism, pp. 86, 87.) 
 
 "In the same act by which I feel that this passing minute is a new 
 pulse of life, I feel that the old life continues into it, and the feeling 
 of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous feeling of a 
 novelty." (lb., p. 95.) 
 
28 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 assumption he obviously begs the whole question. The 
 most important problem, the problem above all other 
 problems for the stream-mind respecting memory, is to 
 explain, or show the possibility of, the present thought 
 knowing past thoughts as having been past — knowing 
 itself as a successor — knowing that there is any succes- 
 sion at all or that there was a past. The only "verifi- 
 able thinker," he admits, is the present passing 
 thought ; and the question before all others then is, how 
 can this transitory thinker have any acquaintance with 
 the past of which he has no immediate knowledge, how 
 can he even dream of a predecessor or of the past? 
 
 The two main principles of Professor James ' theory 
 of mental-memory are these: First, a thought trans- 
 mits to its successor its possessions, including its mem- 
 ories ; or a thought adopts the possessions of its prede- 
 cessor. Secondly, a thought knows its predecessor as a 
 predecessor ; and it knows the memories which it has 
 appropriated from its predecessor, not only as its own 
 present experiences but also as memories, as represen- 
 tations of the past. 
 
 The direct transference by a thought of its posses- 
 sions to its succeeding thought in the mental stream is 
 a sufficiently conjectural and mysterious transaction. 
 Yet it is not the greatest difficulty for this theory of 
 memory. Granting that the transference takes place, 
 it does not help or warrant the second principle just 
 noted. The very grave question yet remains: How 
 can the present solitary thought, which is only for the 
 present, and whose whole inherited content is for itself 
 only in the present and for the present, know any 
 element of this content, or anything whatever within 
 itself, as having come from the past or as representing 
 the past? The possibility of such knowledge is in no 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 29 
 
 wise made credible. There is no ground whatever for 
 supposing that a thinker which never had a past itself, 
 but has its only and total existence in the present mo- 
 ment, can know, or can even imagine, any possession of 
 its own, or anything else, as having had a past, or as 
 having come down from the past, or as in any wise 
 related to the past ; or can know that it is itself a mem- 
 ber of a succession, or be aware of succession at all. 
 There can be no actual, but only a fancied dove-tailing 
 of thoughts, or "clinging together' ' by their edges. 
 For there is but one verifiable piece, the present 
 thought ; all other pieces have perished. Also there is 
 but one edge, the edge of the present thought ; all other 
 edges are gone. The edge of the present thought 
 touches or clings to nothing; it subsists in the void with 
 no correlate. What result might follow for memory if 
 past thoughts perished not, or perished not quickly, and 
 remained to form at every moment a temporal stream 
 of some length, we shall not undertake to say; but it 
 seems manifest that, if one of its experiences be felt by 
 the hypothetical present transient thought as different 
 from another in quality, yet it cannot be felt as differ- 
 ent in time, as having a predecessor or as being a suc- 
 cessor, as forming a new experience in comparison with 
 an old. If it be cognizant of simultaneity, it cannot be 
 also cognizant of succession. It would appear, finally, 
 that if the present thought have the conviction of the 
 past, the conviction can be only an effect which the 
 thought produces at the moment in order to entertain 
 itself with a fiction ; or be only the arbitrary effect of 
 creative evolution. The thought cannot know any- 
 thing as having existed before itself, but at the farthest 
 know only itself and the present production or creation. 
 It is quite evident of Hume's serial mind, in which 
 
30 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 the successive thoughts are discontinuous, are sepa- 
 rated from one another by absolute breaches, that one 
 thought cannot have any knowledge of its temporal, or 
 of any other kind of relation, with a predecessor. The 
 void intervals between the thoughts permit to any one 
 of them at the utmost only a knowledge of its own being 
 and momentary duration. The series cannot be aware 
 of itself as a series. No thought can know that it is a 
 member of, or has a place in, a series. It cannot have 
 any memory of an antecedent, or of the past, or of suc- 
 cession. By the most unscrupulous presumption Hume 
 claims for his serial mind a knowledge of temporal and 
 other relations of the terms which is manifestly im- 
 possible. It is just as evident that the serial mind of 
 the later psychologists, the mind of the continuous suc- 
 cession, is as incapable of memory, of the knowledge of 
 the past and of succession, as the broken serial mind. 
 For all of the continuous mind existing at one moment 
 is the present passing thought. This is the only mind 
 and all of mind. It is divided from its predecessors by 
 all the profound abyss, so to speak, subsisting between 
 a thing that exists and things that do not exist; and 
 there is no basis or possibility of the knowledge of the 
 past as past, or the knowledge of any part of its pos- 
 sessions as having existed before itself and having come 
 from the past. It can know itself at the best, not as an 
 heir, but solely as a present possessor of what is in its 
 hand without its knowing whence. 
 
 It is to be remembered that the stream of thoughts, 
 the stream-mind, is supposed to be a pure abstract 
 succession. Now many psychologists maintain as a 
 fundamental principle, that a succession of thoughts is 
 not the thought of succession; that a succession of 
 thoughts, in and of itself, is not aware of itself as a sue- 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 31 
 
 cession and does not possess memory. They hold that 
 there must be a permanent element or factor by asso- 
 ciation and contrast with which the succession or stream 
 is known, or knows itself, as a succession or stream. 
 They follow Kant's teaching, that the permanent " must 
 always be coexistent with succession.' ' * But where is 
 there a permanent element or factor in or with the ab- 
 stract stream of thoughts? The hypothesis indeed 
 claims, as we must recognize, one permanent element; 
 namely, in the identical mnemonic stock that passes 
 along the stream of thoughts, being handed down by 
 each thought to its successor and constantly receiving 
 accretions. "The identity,' ' says Professor James, 
 "which the I discovers . . . can only be a relative 
 identity, that of a slow shifting in which there is al- 
 ways some common ingredient retained. The com- 
 monest element of all, the most uniform, is the posses- 
 sion of the same memories. However different the 
 man may be from the youth, both look back on the same 
 childhood, and call it their own" (p. 372). The ques- 
 tion inevitably occurs here, is this identical body of 
 memories a person or soul! If it be, then we would 
 seem after all our wanderings to have gotten back into 
 the company of the substantialists. But yet it is a soul 
 of a very peculiar character : it passes through the suc- 
 cessive thoughts, instead of having the successive 
 thoughts pass through it ; or it belongs to them, instead 
 of their belonging to it. 
 
 We cannot be required to admit that the permanent 
 stock of memories (if we should grant for the time its 
 own possibility), which glides along the stream of 
 thoughts, affords a permanence adequate to the work 
 of making known by comparison the stream as a stream, 
 
 i Kritik d. r. V. ( Hartenstein ) , p. 77. 
 
32 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 the succession as a succession. Succession certainly is 
 known only by association with permanence; but the 
 permanence must be of a more real and stable sort than 
 that of the transient common mnemonic store. 
 
 The inadequacy of the identical and moving stock of 
 memories, in its permanency, to make possible to a suc- 
 cession of thoughts the thought of succession implying 
 memory, and of the whole theory of memory as be- 
 longing to the pure stream of thoughts without a per- 
 manent soul, seems indisputable. And Professor 
 James himself in a surprising manner tacitly acknowl- 
 edges the inadequacy and unsatisfactoriness of the 
 theory. He does this by introducing a very important, 
 a genuine permanent, reality in association with the 
 stream of thoughts and the transitive mnemonic store. 
 This reality is the permanent brain. To the permanent 
 brain he now assigns the whole function of retention 
 and the permanent possibilities of recollections. The 
 retention and reproduction which he seemed to hold as 
 belonging to the pure rapid stream of thoughts in itself, 
 because each thought by melting itself into, or when 
 "hugged' ' by, its successor, hands over its memories 
 directly to it, are now assigned to the permanent sub- 
 stance and paths of the brain. According to the men- 
 tal theory of memory, ' ' each thought is born an owner 
 and dies owned"; the nascent thought immediately 
 takes up the expiring thought and appropriates its con- 
 tents; each "section" of the stream of consciousness 
 knows and adopts all those that went before it (p. 340) ; 
 memory is possible because the successive thoughts 
 "cling together by their edges.' ' A thought gets its 
 memories thus directly from the preceding thought, not 
 from the retention of the brain alone. It is just like 
 one man bequeathing a herd of cattle to another and the 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 33 
 
 same cattle being thus possessed in succession by dif- 
 ferent men. But according to this additional, that is, 
 this cerebral, theory of memory, the tendency to think 
 an experience again has its permanent ground in the 
 ' * organized neural paths. ' ' Moreover, retention of ex- 
 perience is ' ' neither more nor less than the brain-paths 
 which associate the experience with the occasion and 
 cue of the recall. When slumbering, these paths are the 
 condition of retention; when active, they are the condi- 
 tion of recall" (p. 655). It is also expressly averred 
 that retention ' ' is not a fact of the mental order at all. 
 It is a purely physical phenomenon, a morphological 
 feature, the presence of these ' paths/ namely, in the 
 finest recesses of the brain's tissue" (p. 655). The 
 present thought gets its memories from the brain, the 
 enduring and only retainer, and not directly from the 
 preceding thought as was supposed in the account of 
 mental memory. Retention, which seems to have been 
 treated before as wholly a mental fact, is now said to be 
 not a mental fact at all. In fine, not the passing 
 thought, but the permanent brain, appears here to be 
 made the real thinker and agent of conservation and re- 
 call. 
 
 Professor James' bringing in, to the side of the mind 
 of the pure stream of thoughts, the brain as the one es- 
 sential foundation and organ of memory, is a pro- 
 cedure, quite analogous to, and forcibly recalls, Hume's 
 introduction of the permanent extra mind as reviewing, 
 owning, controlling, and remembering, the successive 
 but separately existing perceptions constituting his 
 only explicitly avowed mind. He does not, as should 
 be kept in mind, treat the brain as if it were only a 
 succession of motions, a succession of motions occa- 
 sioning a succession of states of consciousness ; but as 
 
34 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 a permanent something enduring through motions, and 
 the bed of permanent possibilities of states of conscious- 
 ness. It seems evident, therefore, when we consider 
 our author's emphatic rejection of the permanent soul 
 of the spiritualists as a " superfluity, ' ' and the com- 
 plete capability he ascribes to the abstract stream of 
 thoughts of remembering and knowing succession and 
 time, through direct communication of thought to 
 thought, through the thoughts clinging together "by 
 their edges,' ' that his adoption and employment of 
 the brain as the permanent and supreme organ of mem- 
 ory, are hardly superior in their method to the sur- 
 reption and sophistry by which Hume introduces the 
 extra mind and gives it in fact a place as the permanent, 
 ruling and remembering mind, over the mind of the 
 pure discontinuous succession. Professor James also 
 has his two minds; namely, the stream of conscious- 
 ness or stream-mind, and what is not a stream — the 
 permanent and retentive brain. 
 
 The course of Hume in bringing in the permanent 
 extra mind, and of James in bringing in the permanent 
 brain with its permanent and related paths, are both 
 clear and impressive revelations of the great difficulty, 
 we may say the impossibility, of remaining constant 
 to the mind of the abstract succession, in the explana- 
 tion of memory and the known relation of succession. 
 Their addition and use of these notable permanent 
 realities was but the result of the profound necessity 
 felt by them for something permanent, something en- 
 during in sameness, beside the mind of the rapid suc- 
 cession of perceptions and thoughts, to make possible 
 memory and the knowledge of succession and time; 
 and thereby each contradicts and condemns his the- 
 oretic mind as being quite insufficient. It should be 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 35 
 
 remarked furthermore, that Professor James may 
 easily and confidently dispense with the permanent soul 
 of the spiritualists and declare that the "soul-theory 
 is a complete superfluity, ' ' etc. (p. 348), if he may in- 
 troduce into its place the permanent and identical 
 brain regarded as endowed with capabilities and func- 
 tions usually ascribed to the soul. Certainly, if the 
 brain be supposed to be the permanent and unitary 
 producer, retainer, and reproducer of thought, it is 
 supposed to be a permanent soul of the greatest po- 
 tentialities. 
 
 We have been considering the possibility of the 
 stream-mind's knowing succession and remembering. 
 Now we go on to consider briefly the possibility of its 
 having the conviction of personal identity. The two 
 facts of memory and the sense of personal identity are 
 closely related; the former is necessary to the latter; 
 and much that was said of memory will apply also to 
 the other. If it is proved that memory is impossible 
 to the stream-mind, the same is proved of the sense of 
 personal identity. 
 
 According to Professor James, the sense of personal 
 identity is a feeling of resemblance, continuity, and 
 intimacy or "warmth," among the successive selves or 
 thoughts. Pie remarks : i ' The past and present selves 
 [thoughts, feelings] compared are the same just so 
 far as they are the same, and no farther. A uniform 
 feeling of i warmth,' of bodily existence (or an equally 
 uniform feeling of pure psychic energy?) pervades 
 them all; and this is what gives them a generic unity, 
 and makes them the same in kind" (p. 335). 
 
 Our author accounts for the sense of personal iden- 
 tity by the same mode of supplementation by which 
 he accounts for memory; namely, by bringing in to 
 
36 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 the side of the stream of consciousness a permanent 
 and identical reality — the brain. The supplementa- 
 tion becomes quite evident by a comparison of various 
 statements in which the experience of personal identity 
 is supposed to be fully possible to the pure succession 
 of perishing thoughts alone, with statements in which 
 the basis of conscious personality is conceived to be 
 the existence and motions of the brain or body, which 
 is not a perishing succession, but a permanent reality 
 enduring through the mental and the bodily succes- 
 sions. 
 
 The unusual supremacy attributed by Professor 
 James to cephalic and certain other bodily motions, in 
 our sense of personality, or as constituents of self, is 
 pronounced. He thinks he finds the "central nucleus 
 of the Self " in "some bodily process for the most part 
 taking place in the head" (p. 300). He says: "The 
 
 * Self of selves' when carefully examined is found to 
 consist mainly of the collection of these peculiar mo- 
 tions in the head or between the head and throat/' as 
 in breathing. "These cephalic motions are the por- 
 tions of my innermost activity of which I am most dis- 
 tinctly aware" (p. 301). "The part of the innermost 
 Self which is most vividly felt turns out to consist for 
 the most part of a collection of cephalic movements of 
 
 * adjustments ' which, for want of attention and reflec- 
 tion, usually fail to be perceived and classed as what 
 they are" (p. 305). "The nucleus of the 'me' is al- 
 ways the bodily existence felt to be present at the 
 time" (p. 400). "We feel the whole cubic mass of our 
 body all the while, it gives us an unceasing sense of 
 personal existence" (p. 333). It should be observed 
 that the body, head, encephalon, is treated in these 
 citations and elsewhere not only as having or as being 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 37 
 
 processes or a stream of motions, corresponding to 
 the stream of consciousness, but also, unequivocally, 
 as being much more than a stream of motions, namely, 
 an extended reality which possesses and supports the 
 motions and endures after them. There is here also 
 the complete confusion of the stream of consciousness, 
 sensations, with the concomitant physical processes. By 
 cephalic motions are meant, not less than the material 
 motions, the sensations that accompany them. Though 
 what Professor James here confounds, he at other 
 places clearly distinguishes, as in these propositions: 
 "Psychology . . . assumes as its data (1) thoughts 
 and feelings, and (2) a physical world in time and 
 space with which they coexist and which (3) they 
 know" (p. vi) ; "Mental and physical events are, on 
 all hands, admitted to present the strongest contrast 
 in the entire field of being. The chasm which yawns 
 between them is less easily bridged over by the mind 
 than any interval we know" (p. 134). It must spe- 
 cially be deemed a failure of the gravest sort when the 
 commonly acknowledged difference between the modes 
 of cognizing the two kinds of events is entirely ignored. 
 We have immediate knowledge of mental events; we 
 have never immediate knowledge of physical events. 1 
 This important contrast must not be disregarded. 
 
 But we shall not dwell longer upon what seems to 
 be the fundamental postulate of Professor James ' doc- 
 trine of personality, namely, that we have the convic- 
 
 i "The ordinary man is first aware of his conscious experiences, and 
 only very remotely aware of his nervous system." (Judd, Psychology, 
 p. 59.) 
 
 "The sensation of 'muskiness' is known immediately . . . The knowl- 
 edge of any object or material cause of the sensation is mediate." 
 (Huxley, Hume, p. 302.) 
 
 "Our mental states are known immediately; external things indi- 
 rectly or inferentially." (Sully, Human Mind, II., p. 369.) 
 
38 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 tion of personal identity because we have a permanent 
 and identical brain or body ; that the conviction has its 
 foundation, not in the stream of consciousness alone, 
 as sometimes seems to be supposed it might have, but 
 has its deeper and real foundation in what is not a 
 stream, that is, the permanent corporeal organism. 
 This at least appears clear, that the theory which adds 
 to the subjective stream of consciousness the permanent 
 brain, something very different from a stream and en- 
 dowed with notable soul-power, cannot have much that 
 is worthful to say against the theory which accepts 
 with the stream of consciousness the permanent soul. 
 Their employment of the permanent brain is in fact 
 the decisive testimony of the advocates of the pure 
 stream-mind or stream-self to the total inadequacy 
 of the latter to account for the conviction of personal 
 identity, and is virtually a retreat to the position of 
 the substantialists. The two parties agree in the im- 
 plicit conclusion that the pure abstract stream of con- 
 sciousness, having nothing but temporal progression, 
 is in no wise sufficient in itself for memory and the 
 sense of identity, but absolutely needs the adjunction 
 of a permanent and indentical reality. One party re- 
 gards that reality as spirit; the other supposes it to 
 be cerebral matter capable of spiritual functions. 
 
 Before concluding we should notice more fully a 
 fundamental position of Professor James, which was 
 noticed above, namely, the tacit assumption that the 
 permanent and extended brain is known more directly 
 and certainly than the soul, and therefore that it 
 should be received into the science of psychology, and 
 the soul excluded. He is full of confidence as to the 
 existence and nature of the brain, but full of doubt 
 as to the soul. He says respecting the knowledge of 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 39 
 
 the soul: "If with the Spiritualists, one contend for 
 a substantial soul . . . one can give no positive ac- 
 count of what that may be" (p. 330). The soul is sup- 
 posed to be inaccessible to direct or to any other sort 
 of knowledge. But it is presumed of the brain that 
 it is easily accessible to our knowledge, and that we 
 have clear and certain cognition of its nature — of its 
 permanence and extension, its permanent paths of mo- 
 tion — and may confidently accept the occurrence of re- 
 peated motions along the identical paths. 
 
 When we consider the extensive and apparently im- 
 mediate knowledge of the brain claimed by Professor 
 James, and the great readiness with which he admits 
 the brain into the science of psychology, it appears a 
 very grave failure in him not to have shown at the 
 same time with some fulness and minuteness, how he 
 succeeded in attaining such a knowledge, in amount 
 and certainty, of the brain; particularly, how by the 
 stream-mind, a pure succession, the perception of such 
 a different thing as a permanent material object is 
 possible; or how, since by the hypothesis mentality is 
 wholly successive, he ever happened even to think or 
 dream of such a permanent material reality as he 
 represents the brain to be. 1 The passage from mental 
 succession to corporeal permanence is quite unex- 
 plained. 
 
 We must contend that this assumption of the direct 
 and certain knowledge of the brain, of a knowledge 
 deemed altogether superior to the knowledge of the 
 
 1 It is an important point not to be lost sight of in a review of the uses 
 some make of the brain in psychology, that what may appear to be 
 the crassest cerebralism or materialism may however be, curiously enough, 
 in fact, the most refined idealism; for by brain, head, matter, may be 
 meant only a group of muscular and other sensations, or the mere in- 
 substantial permanent possibility of them. 
 
40 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 permanent soul, is a psychological error of the most 
 serious character. It must be maintained further 
 that to the stream-mind, the mind of the pure abstract 
 succession or temporal procession, the knowledge or 
 even the idea of a permanent and extended object is 
 an impossibility. It seems to be a demonstrable propo- 
 sition, that the knowledge of the permanent soul has a 
 priority over the knowledge of the permanent brain, 
 and is the foundation, the indispensable condition, of 
 the knowledge of the latter and of every other extra- 
 mental permanent reality. 
 
 The policy of "explaining mind by body" requires 
 the most careful definition and limitation. It is clear 
 and undeniable that to some extent mind must be ex- 
 plained by body. For instance, the first rise of sensa- 
 tions is dependent upon corporeal motion or stimula- 
 tion. Sensations do not spring up spontaneously in 
 mind, without the objective excitement. And it is evi- 
 dent that characteristics of sensations, feelings, per- 
 cepts — as their particular intensity, duration, exten- 
 sion — depend upon corporeal qualities and conditions. 
 But on the other hand, it cannot be said that bodily 
 substance or its vibrations generate or create con- 
 sciousness or the conscious modes. Again, knowledge 
 of the body does not precede knowledge of the conscious 
 modes, or condition knowledge of these. Knowledge 
 of the material is primitively not even concurrent with 
 the knowledge of the mental, but succeeds it; and is 
 not the same in kind or equal in directness and cer- 
 tainty. The two knowledges are separated by the 
 sharpest and most assured demarkation; we may be 
 clearly cognizant of sensation in the head, without any 
 knowledge whatever of the cerebral matter and mo- 
 tions. The cognitions are quite different in kind. We 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 41 
 
 have immediate knowledge or consciousness of the 
 mental modes. We are never conscious of the bodily 
 substance or properties, but know them only medi- 
 ately, inf erentially ; and the media of our knowledge 
 are always the previously, the immediately and inde- 
 pendently, known mental modes. As to manner of 
 knowledge, body and mind are thus separated in the 
 most thorough-going fashion. This division, as to pri- 
 ority and nearness of knowledge, may be a true indica- 
 tion of an ontological division. The question, Where 
 does the mind end and the body begin! might be an- 
 swered in general thus : at the line dividing immediate 
 from inferential knowledge. 
 
 We shall endeavor to justify these positions of the 
 priority and nearness of the soul in knowledge, espe- 
 cially the priority of the knowledge of the soul to the 
 knowledge of the body, in the attempt, to which we 
 shall now proceed, to present a positive doctrine of the 
 soul. 
 
 After so much criticism and negation the reader 
 will likely be gratified with the proposal to offer now 
 for his consideration something positive and construc- 
 tive, a substitute especially for the theory of the ab- 
 stract stream-mind; and may perhaps also anticipate 
 some entertainment for himself in the opportunity of 
 detecting the possible surreptions, paradoxes, defects, 
 of the positive theory to be outlined. Our main en- 
 deavor will be to maintain the existence, and trust- 
 worthy knowledge, of the Soul regarded as a per- 
 manent and identical reality capable of a stream of 
 processes of conscious modes. 
 
 There are two important facts pertaining to the re- 
 lation of mind or soul and body which deserve some 
 
42 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 notice at the outset. Of these facts, one is the inti- 
 macy of the relation between soul and body, or between 
 thought and nervous motion; the other is the very 
 great disparity, the very manifest incomparability, be- 
 tween thought — sensation, passion, volition — and every 
 known and imaginable mode of material motion and 
 arrangement. 
 
 The intimate relation of body and mind, and great 
 dependence of mind upon body, are indisputable. The 
 bodily conditions of development, nourishment, waste, 
 age, undoubtedly affect the mind. Drugs, fevers, 
 neural derangement, produce marked results in mind. 
 A stroke on the head, by causing some disorder of the 
 brain, may cause a suspension of consciousness. From 
 the evident influence of body upon mind, some draw 
 the grave conclusion in effect that mind or the mental 
 phenomena are but products of body. Some derive 
 the far-reaching deduction that, as a temporary de- 
 rangement of the brain may cause a temporary cessa- 
 tion of consciousness, a permanent derangement, or 
 the disintegration, of the brain may cause the per- 
 manent cessation, or may destroy the possibility, of 
 consciousness. 
 
 Because of the close association of body and mind, 
 it is common to call them in their union the "psycho- 
 physical organism. " But psychologists are seldom 
 careful and precise to tell what part of the composite 
 organism is psychical and what part physical, or what 
 either is as distinguished from the other. As was be- 
 fore remarked, great superiority is frequently given to 
 the physical portion, it being regarded as, through its 
 molecular motions and groupings, the generator of the 
 psychical. All that is permanent is physical; the 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 43 
 
 psychical is a fleeting process, with nothing perma- 
 nent. 
 
 Unquestionable as is the very considerable influence 
 of body upon mind, yet directly over against this fact 
 stands the no less evident and certain fact of the im- 
 mense disparity or the incommensurability between 
 material motion and every mode of thought or con- 
 sciousness. This thorough incommensurability, and 
 the distinguished character of the mental experiences 
 and of our knowledge of them, require the conclusion 
 that material motion and conscious mode cannot be the 
 same; that such great unlikeness of nature makes it 
 impossible for them to be but distinct phases of the 
 same fact or event, and makes it impossible for the 
 material to be the cause or generator of the conscious. 
 Cerebral elements whose sole efficiency is assumed to 
 be in their movements and changes of relative spatial 
 position can never originate the vivid modes of con- 
 sciousness. Matter in motion is not mind. These 
 facts favor the affirmative postulations, that the mental 
 phenomena have their ground and source in an entity 
 distinct from and superior to the physical; an entity 
 which has as real permanence as the physical, and 
 which combines within itself the peculiar capabilities 
 of producing presentations, conserving experiences or 
 their effects, and producing memories, — of presenta- 
 tion, retention, and reminiscence, — yet not without the 
 support and stimulation of the physical organism. 
 
 Though the disparity between the physical and men- 
 tal is very great, it cannot be maintained to be total 
 or absolute. If it were absolute, that should appar- 
 ently make any intercourse or interaction between them 
 impossible. But while the obvious disparity seems to 
 
44 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 render the generation of the mental by the physical 
 impossible, it does not require us to believe that the 
 physical cannot in some manner act on mind and ex- 
 cite it to activity and production of conscious modes; 
 or that there cannot be reciprocal excitation without 
 generation or creation of activity by either for the 
 other. Particular note may be made of some mani- 
 fest correspondences between mental activity, especially 
 sensation, and the accompanying physical process : the 
 duration of a sensation answers in many instances to 
 the duration of the physical impression; its extension 
 to the extension of the impression; and its vividness 
 and intensity to the force of the impression. It further 
 appears, however, that because of the great unlikeness 
 between the mental and physical, in essence and ac- 
 tivity, especially between mental and physical energy, 
 interaction between them must be governed by a dif- 
 ferent law from that which governs the interaction of 
 material objects — a different law which is as yet un- 
 discovered and unknown. The principle of the conser- 
 vation of physical energy as this principle regulates the 
 interaction of physical realities, does not seem to per- 
 tain to the reciprocity of mind and body. 
 
 We come now to the cardinal question, How ought 
 we to define and describe mind considered in itself, 
 without regard to its relation to the physical organism 
 or to any external reality? This question may be fitly 
 answered as follows: Mind is an entity or substance 
 that contains in itself, as original or constitutive ele- 
 ments, the permanent possibilities of the different 
 species of conscious modes — of sensations, emotions, 
 volitions. The permanent possibilities are potentiali- 
 ties ; or they are capabilities of producing the various 
 modes of consciousness. The modes of consciousness 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 45 
 
 are the realizations of the permanent constitutive po- 
 tentialities. Again, the potentialities, or the mind as 
 consisting of them, is an entity or substance; it is not 
 an undmg or an airy indescribable thing such as J. S. 
 Mill's "permanent possibility of feeling" seems to 
 be. The mind is more than abstract activity, as the 
 brain is more than abstract motion. The mind is some- 
 thing that thinks, as the brain is something that moves. 
 It is as reasonable to ask what the mind is more than 
 its activity, as to ask what a revolving wheel is after 
 it has stopped. Activity seems to require an agent, 
 as motion requires a body. In fine, consciousness is 
 not the realization of a permanent nothing, but of a 
 permanent something. The mind as a substance holds 
 in potentia all the phenomena of consciousness; and, 
 as thus understood, it is an active and living, not an 
 inert and dead, substance. It should be further re- 
 marked, that the potentialities of consciousness should 
 not be supposed to " inhere' ' in mind. They rather 
 constitute the substance of mind, they are its struc- 
 tural elements. As constantly related to each other 
 and mutually dependent, they form one single mind. 
 The mind is a real unit, consisting of the closely bound 
 and interdependent potentialities; and capable of ex- 
 periences that are various but yet unitary, or of a 
 collective consciousness. To reverse the order of 
 statement, this unity of consciousness, or "synthetic 
 unity of apperception," is certainly far more than a 
 mere appearance or abstract form; it requires and in- 
 volves a unitary reality. 
 
 Mind as the producer of the conscious affections, 
 precedes consciousness. It is not made by, or depend- 
 ent upon, consciousness; consciousness is dependent 
 upon it. When consciousness arises, it is the identical 
 
46 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 mind passing from an unconscious to a conscious state. 
 The mind may be said to precede and to produce or 
 generate consciousness, just as it is said that poten- 
 tiality precedes actualization; or as it is said by the 
 materialists that brain precedes, and by preceding, gen- 
 erates thoughts; or as is affirmed or implied by some 
 that a permanent possibility of sensation precedes sen- 
 sation. Actual consciousness is no more necessary to 
 the existence of mind than rolling or flying is necessary 
 to the existence of a billiard-ball. 
 
 The mind is the sole cause of the phenomena of con- 
 sciousness ; that is, it is the sole source of the content 
 of these phenomena. They are wholly the actualiza- 
 tion of the potential energy of the mind. The rise of 
 consciousness is the soul's transformation of itself 
 from an unconscious into a conscious entity. But the 
 self-transformation is not the spontaneous activity of 
 the mind ; it is at first excited or occasioned by the neu- 
 ral processes. Hence, in the generation of conscious- 
 ness, the mind is not only active, but is also passive. 
 It is not the sole cause, for the neural motion is also 
 a cause. But the mind is the sole cause, it is the only 
 actor, in the production of the matter of consciousness. 
 The neural motion is a cause only as a stimulant or 
 agitator; it contributes absolutely nothing to the con- 
 tent of the conscious modes which it excites the mind to 
 produce. 
 
 Eespecting the production of consciousness or 
 thoughts, we here note this remark of Professor 
 James: The bald fact is "that when the brain acts, 
 a thought occurs. The spiritualistic formulation says 
 that the brain-processes knock the thought, so to speak, 
 out of a Soul which stands there to receive their influ- 
 ence. The simpler formulation says that the thought 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 47 
 
 simply comes. But what positive meaning has the 
 Soul, when scrutinized, but the ground of possibility 
 of the thought? And what is the ' knocking' but the 
 determining of the possibility to actuality?" (p. 345.) 
 The spiritualist holds that the brain-processes excite 
 the soul to engender the thought ; that the whole activ- 
 ity or causation of the brain is stimulation, that it in 
 no way generates, as it is incapable of generating, any 
 of the matter of consciousness. He maintains also 
 that the soul has full constitutional rights to existence ; 
 that it is not the mere serf of the brain, but is greatly 
 superior to it as a cause. "The simpler formation," 
 declares Professor James, i i says that the thought sim- 
 ply comes" But no one can rest content without ask- 
 ing the question, Comes from whence 1 ? Does it come 
 from something, or from nothing! Does it come from 
 the brain, does the brain hold in itself alone the possi- 
 bility of the thought and the whole power of actualiza- 
 tion? Peradventure, it comes from a "permanent pos- 
 sibility" which is not a constitutional property of the 
 brain. Or are we expected to adopt the conception 
 of Lotze, that the soul-activity is a "new creation pro- 
 duced by the one encompassing and universally de- 
 termining Reality from its own nature as the supple- 
 ment of its physical activity"? 1 The spiritualist an- 
 swers, that the thought comes from the soul ; that it is 
 produced by the soul ; that the possibility of it, as to its 
 contents, is in the soul alone; and that the soul is a 
 permanent reality possessing in itself, as constitutional 
 attributes or elements, the possibilities or potentiali- 
 ties of all forms of consciousness. The efficiency of 
 the soul for the production of spiritual effects is unique 
 and most intimately related to the effects ; and is neces- 
 
 i Metaphysic, p. 442. 
 
48 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 sarily far superior to any efficiency that can be prop- 
 erly attributed to the motions and collocations of cere- 
 bral matter. The self -knowing, self -remembering ego, 
 carrying a constant and irrepressible conviction of per- 
 manent identity, and having as one mode or grade of 
 its energy what we are all familiar with in voluntary 
 self-control and experience, must, as a cause of thought, 
 be superior to its physical associate. 
 
 Especially as to the origination of our thoughts, Pro- 
 fessor James himself says: " Thoughts accompany 
 the brain's workings, and those thoughts are cognitive 
 of realities. The whole relation is one which we can 
 only write down empirically, confessing that no glim- 
 mer of explanation of it is yet in sight. That brains 
 should give rise to a knowing consciousness at all, this 
 is the one mystery which returns, no matter of what 
 sort the consciousness and what sort the knowledge 
 may be" (p. 687); but at another place proposes the 
 following conception: "For my own part I confess 
 that the moment I become metaphysical and try to 
 define the more, I find the notion of some sort of an 
 anima mundi thinking in all of us to be a more promis- 
 ing hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that 
 of a lot of absolutely individual souls" (p. 346). It is 
 hard to see a necessity for assuming any other soul as 
 the immediate cause of the stream of thoughts, includ- 
 ing presentations and memories, than the permanent 
 finite soul which is in most intimate relation with our 
 permanent nervous organism and entirely inside our 
 epidermis, and of which we have a knowledge certainly 
 not less direct and sure than our knowledge of an 
 anima mundi. 
 
 Eegarding the profound question of the exact rela- 
 tion of conscious affections, or thoughts, to the engen- 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 49 
 
 dering soul, realistic psychologists have made various 
 representations. They have said that thoughts, ideas, 
 "inhere" in mind; are "supported" by mind; are the 
 changing possessions of the unchanging mind that is 
 "behind" them; "point" to mind as something over 
 and above themselves. According to Locke and Kant, 
 ideas are appearances attached to an unknown mind or 
 reality. Berkeley treated the mind as if it were a re- 
 ceptacle for ideas, into which and out of which they 
 flow ; ideas being quite distinct from the mind. 
 
 Ideas cannot properly be said to inhere in, or to be 
 supported by, mind, if there is implied the assumption 
 that the mind is yet in some manner distinct from them, 
 being back of them or under them. Ideas are in the 
 mind, and the mind is in ideas; there is no sort of 
 separation, that is, when ideas are existing. Mind is 
 not an "it" to which consciousness adheres. Their 
 relation is more intimate than adherence. Conscious- 
 ness lives in the mind, and cannot live apart from 
 it; and the mind lives in consciousness. Mind is no 
 more apart from ideas than the brain is apart from its 
 processes or motions. Mind is in its ideas as the brain 
 is in its motions. 
 
 It should be repeated and emphasized, that mind has 
 no knowledge of itself outside or independently of its 
 conscious modes. They cannot exist without it, and it 
 cannot know itself without them. The unactualized po- 
 tentialities of mind are not self -known. We may here 
 use the language of Hume, and much more fitly than he 
 himself used it : " When I enter most intimately into 
 what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular 
 perception or other. ... I never can catch myself at 
 any time without a perception." A man catches him- 
 self only in his perceptions; only in his perceptions, 
 
50 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 and not behind them, or under them, or in anywise 
 apart from them. Perceptions and self are imme- 
 diately together, there is no interval or division of any 
 kind between them. Yet it remains true, that the mind 
 exists when it has no perceptions, or when perceptions 
 have ceased. The mind exists when it does not know 
 its existence. Knowledge of itself is not indispensable 
 to its existence. It subsists with its potentialities, be- 
 fore consciousness, and when consciousness is inter- 
 rupted. Consciousness is no more necessary to the 
 elementary being or substance of the mind, than motion 
 is necessary to the substance of the brain. As brain 
 may conceivably remain when motion ceases, so mind 
 remains when consciousness ceases. 
 
 From the definition and the general account of mind, 
 we may now proceed in an open pathway to particular 
 inquiries, and especially to consider the two profound- 
 est questions for us pertaining to mind ; namely, First, 
 What do we really know of mind, or what does mind 
 really know of itself? and, Secondly, What is the actual 
 character or species of this knowledge 1 is it immediate, 
 or mediate, or inferential, or a combination of different 
 modes 1 
 
 But before proceeding with these particular and 
 direct inquests, it will probably prove advantageous to 
 give brief consideration to a specific assumption, al- 
 ready taken note of, which is made by many psycholo- 
 gists; namely, the assumption that the brain or body 
 and external material objects are definite, and clearly 
 and certainly known, realities, but that the supposed 
 soul is no such reality; that the physicist deals with 
 objects of precise form and magnitude and permanence, 
 but that the psychologist deals with no analogous ob- 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 51 
 
 jeet; that a flower in the hand of a botanist, or a frag- 
 ment of rock in the hand of a geologist, or a bone in the 
 hand of an anatomist, is a thing of easy, exact and 
 continued inspection, but that the psychologist has no 
 such object in the changing and fleeting phenomena 
 which he observes. Some who emphasize the existence 
 and the clear knowledge of material objects ask sar- 
 castically, "What do we know of the essence of the 
 soul?" Already the remark of Professor James has 
 been cited: "If, with the Spiritualists, one contend 
 for a substantial soul, or transcendental principle of 
 unity, one can give no positive account of what that may 
 be." He constantly admits the possibility of giving a 
 positive account of the brain or body or other material 
 object, as a thing of definite form, size, structure, per- 
 manence, but questions and denies any analogous ac- 
 count of the soul. 
 
 We again earnestly insist that in this assumption of 
 superiority in our knowledge of the physical object 
 over the knowledge of the soul, psychologists are sub- 
 ject to a very serious delusion. When a geologist is 
 scanning a specimen of rock, unquestionably the only 
 object immediately known is his own subjective percept 
 projected upon the specimen. The color perceived is 
 altogether the color of the projected percept. The 
 only spatial extension immediately cognized is the ex- 
 tension of the percept. The color and extension are 
 coexistent subjective attributes. Of the extension of 
 the real external specimen in the hand, he has only 
 mediate knowledge through the immediately known 
 extension of the subjective percept serving as a repre- 
 sentation. The like of what is here said of color and 
 extension may be said of permanence. The perma- 
 nence originally and more directly cognized in every act 
 
52 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 of external perception is wholly that of the mind. The 
 percept itself has a quasi-permanence in being con- 
 stantly renewed by the constant impression of the ex- 
 ternal object; or the constant renewal serves as real 
 permanence. Further, there is not only apparent per- 
 manence of percept caused by continual renewal, but 
 there is real permanence which is perceived by means 
 of the renewed percept. This is the permanence and 
 identity of the mind itself revealed by memory of the 
 successive exactly similar percepts. Again, not only is 
 the permanence of the mind the first and most directly 
 perceived, but it is the necessary ground of the per- 
 ception of the permanence of any and every other 
 reality. Our cognition of the permanence of an extra- 
 mental object is in every instance an inference from the 
 mind's own permanence previously known by the re- 
 peated impressions made upon the mind by the object. 
 We conclude that the object possesses a permanence like 
 that of the mind, because of the very similar impres- 
 sions successively made by the object upon the mind, or 
 of the very similar sensations occasioned by them. The 
 impressions or sensations are both known as successive 
 and inferred to be made by a permanent object, on the 
 indispensable condition of the mind's own known per- 
 manence. In these statements we suppose we are giv- 
 ing expression to the real facts ; and therefore contend 
 that psychologists are quite wrong in the postulate that 
 we have a better knowledge of the brain, body, extra- 
 corporeal object, than of the mind. The truth is that 
 in every act of external perception, the color, extension, 
 permanence, unity, directly known are properties of the 
 mind's sensations and substance, and that we can know 
 an extra-mental object only by representation and in- 
 ference through the properties of the mind. There is 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 53 
 
 then involved, that we have a more intimate, real, cer- 
 tain and full knowledge of the mind than of any other 
 reality in existence. 
 
 From these preliminary general observations let us 
 proceed to a more direct and special ascertainment of 
 what is known of mind. 
 
 First. We know the Succession of mind; that is, the 
 succession of its conscious modes — of its thoughts, feel- 
 ings, affections. These constitute a temporal continu- 
 ous series, a stream, a process or aggregate of proc- 
 esses. As to the knowledge of the succession of mind, 
 psychologists are generally agreed. Many teach that 
 we certainly know the temporal series of thoughts, but 
 nothing more; for, as they contend, there is nothing 
 more of mind to know. 
 
 Within the knowledge of the succession of thoughts is 
 involved the knowledge of the temporal unity of the 
 mind. In apprehending the past and present thoughts, 
 in holding them together in one knowledge, the mind is 
 cognizant of unity, of its own unity in time. Further, 
 in the aggregate of present passing thoughts the mind 
 knows also simultaneity ; it is conscious of the unity of 
 the simultaneous. Here it may be noted also that, in 
 simultaneous spatially separated sensations, the mind 
 is conscious of spatial unity, of its own spatial unity. 
 Again, it is to be remarked that spatially separated sen- 
 sations are not in and of themselves the sensation of 
 spatial separation ; just as a succession of sensations is 
 not in and of itself the sensation of succession. There 
 is more involved in either case than pure abstract sen- 
 sations. Moreover, in all the cognitions of the succes- 
 sive, the simultaneous, the spatially severed, the mind 
 has a peculiar sense of the unity of possession or owner- 
 ship. It knows in the one moment, and in the one com- 
 
54 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 prehensive cognitive act, that it owns the present 
 thought and owned the past thoughts of the succession ; 
 that it owns the simultaneous thoughts, including the 
 simultaneous thoughts or sensations that have spatial 
 intervals between them. 
 
 In the discussion of the mind's knowledge of its own 
 succession and temporal unity, the most penetrating 
 question is, What is the nature of this knowledge? 
 Most psychologists hold that we have immediate knowl- 
 edge of only the present thought or thoughts. Votaries 
 of the stream-mind, the mind of the pure abstract suc- 
 cession without substrate, would maintain that the only 
 mind and the whole of mind at any moment is the pres- 
 ent passing thought. We have found Professor James 
 asserting, that "the passing Thought is itself the only 
 verifiable thinker' ' (p. 346) ; by which we suppose he 
 means the only verifiable thinker particularly as com- 
 pared with the i ' soul, ' ' and as alone known with abso- 
 lute directness and certainty. If now we have imme- 
 diate knowledge of the present thought only, if it is the 
 sole thought known with absolute immediacy and cer- 
 tainty, what then is the character of our knowledge of 
 the past thoughts of the mental succession? It is 
 answered, that we know the past thoughts by memory. 
 But there still remains the pressing inquiry, what sort 
 of knowledge is memory? It cannot be an immediate 
 knowledge of the past. Memory is rather, as Sir W. 
 Hamilton has defined it, an immediate knowledge of the 
 present and a belief of the past. The one present re- 
 membering act is known as present, and is also believed 
 to represent a past act. But what kind of knowledge is 
 the belief of the past? What is it compared with the 
 immediate knowledge of the present? How does it 
 differ from the latter? Here we are brought to face 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 55 
 
 one of the most profound problems in the epistemology 
 of mind ; namely, How does our knowledge ever get be- 
 yond the immediately known present thought? or how 
 come we ever to know a past thought, since it is outside 
 the sphere of immediate knowledge ! We shall pursue 
 this problem farther in the discussion of the second 
 great fact in our knowledge of mind, to which we now 
 pass. 
 
 Secondly. We know the Permanence of the mind. 
 This we know simultaneously, and in the closest asso- 
 ciation, with its succession. But here we enter upon 
 disputed territory, and come into direct conflict with the 
 votaries of the mind of the pure succession. They ad- 
 mit the knowledge of the mind's succession, as they 
 hold that the mind itself is only the pure succession of 
 the perishing thoughts; but deny the knowledge and 
 reality of permanence. Many of them explicitly assert 
 that "Modern psychology knows nothing of a perma- 
 nent mind"; and that "Psychology deals only with 
 processes." "Mind is pure activity." To these dec- 
 larations we would make the prefatory reply, that if 
 modern psychology knows nothing of a permanent 
 mind, this lack of knowledge is decisive proof of the 
 defectiveness of modern psychology; if it deals only 
 with the processes or succession of mind, it is far from 
 dealing with mind in the fulness of its real and known 
 character. Psychology must find place for the perma- 
 nence of mind as well as for its succession, or it is de- 
 ficient and false. 
 
 For, in the first place, permanence is as well, as 
 clearly and certainly, known as succession. The knowl- 
 edge is essentially the same in both cases. It is a mix- 
 ture of immediate knowledge and belief. As already 
 remarked, we have not immediate knowledge of a sue- 
 
56 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 cession — of a succession of thoughts. We have im- 
 mediate knowledge of only the present term of the suc- 
 cession, the present thought ; of the past terms, the past 
 thoughts, we have not immediate knowledge ; we cannot 
 have, for they have died away, they are gone. We have 
 only the memory or the belief of their existence. Our 
 knowledge then of the succession of thoughts is a fusion 
 of immediate knowledge and belief. The same is true 
 of our knowledge of the permanence of the mind. By 
 permanence, we mean continued existence from the past 
 to the present ; the mind did not perish in the past as 
 its thoughts did, but has endured, has been maintained 
 in existence, to the present. But as we cannot have im- 
 mediate knowledge of anything outside the present, we 
 cannot have immediate knowledge of the past and per- 
 manence of the mind. We have immediate knowledge 
 only of its present existence as the one owner of the 
 momentary simultaneous affections which are different 
 in quality and in some instances spatially separated. 
 The past existence of the mind we know only by mem- 
 ory, by belief. Our knowledge of the permanence of 
 the mind, therefore, like that of the succession of its 
 experiences, is a combination of immediate knowledge 
 and belief. But the belief of the permanence is as dis- 
 tinct, certain, constant, persistent, as that of the suc- 
 cession; we have the very strongest conviction that we 
 existed in past days and past years and have endured to 
 the present time ; and for that reason the permanence 
 of the mind is as well entitled to recognition and place 
 in psychology as the succession. To exclude it is quite 
 unscientific and arbitrary. It is shutting out a part of 
 the mental data which is as verifiable, as well attested, 
 as the succession. 
 Again. Not only is the permanence of the mind as 
 
THE SUBJECT OK SOUL 57 
 
 well known as the succession, but it is itself necessary 
 to the knowledge of the succession. Without the 
 knowledge of the permanence, the knowledge of the suc- 
 cession would be impossible. I have already dwelt 
 upon the important fact, very widely admitted, that a 
 succession of thoughts is not in itself the thought of 
 succession. A permanent element is necessary in mind, 
 or a permanent something, as is generally maintained, 
 by means of which, by association and comparison with 
 which, the succession of thoughts is known as a suc- 
 cession. Kant's well known declaration has been 
 quoted, that the permanent is always coexistent with 
 succession. 
 
 We have before contended that a knowledge of suc- 
 cession, or a knowledge of the past, is certainly im- 
 possible to the stream-mind, the mind of the pure tem- 
 poral series. For the whole of this mind at any mo- 
 ment, the only thinker, is the present fleeting thought. 
 But how is it possible for this thinker to know any- 
 thing that preceded itself? How can it grasp anything 
 beyond its momentary self, or know dead thoughts as 
 having been in the past? It was never in the past itself, 
 how then can it have any knowledge of the past, or 
 know anything as having existed in the past, or know 
 anything as an effect of the past? We must insist that 
 it cannot know anything outside the present, and 
 cannot know the present else than as present, else 
 than as without any relation to the past ; that memory, 
 the knowledge of succession and of the past, is mani- 
 festly impossible to it. We have observed how the 
 devotees of the mind of the pure succession get on in 
 the absence of the permanence in mind necessary for 
 the knowledge of succession. Hume makes the out- 
 rageous surreption of an extra mind which he treats as 
 
58 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 the permanent surveyor, possessor and controller of 
 the bundle of successive perceptions constituting his 
 original and only avowed mind. By this permanent 
 extra mind he would show how the relation of succes- 
 sion is known. Also we have seen Professor James, 
 after excluding in so facile a manner the permanent 
 soul as a superfluity in the science of psychology, bring- 
 ing in the permanent and extended brain, and making 
 a soul of it, or spiritualizing it at least to the degree of 
 imputing to it alone the mnemonic function of reten- 
 tion and the possibility of recollection. What is im- 
 possible to the pure stream-mind is at last made pos- 
 sible by introducing the permanent brain which is 
 adopted as the sole foundation of memory and then 
 implicitly of all knowledge of succession and time. 
 
 Thus the succession and the permanence of the mind 
 are known together. But, as was above noted, the 
 knowledge of either is not an immediate knowledge, but 
 a belief. What account now can be given of this belief? 
 How may we suppose it to originate? Upon this pro- 
 found matter we may contend for this much, that the 
 thought and belief in both cases are the manifestation, 
 the expression, of the reality ; that is, if there were not 
 real succession and real permanence, there could never 
 be the thought or belief of them. This is our alterna- 
 tive against the groundless hypothesis, that a dura- 
 tionless mind, or a mere passing thought, can know 
 permanence. Such a mind could not know mental per- 
 manence, for there would be none to know. It could 
 not even imagine or surmise its existence. Such a mind 
 cannot create permanence for itself, or know it by cre- 
 ating it; for there is no evidence whatever that finite 
 mind possesses a power of so great creative efficiency. 
 Eejecting for this reason the hypothesis of creation, we 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 59 
 
 are justified in the view that the best course for us, in- 
 deed the only course, is to take these beliefs as they are 
 and for what they are, until they are proved to be 
 fictitious. We may conclude, at any rate, that our sense 
 of the time or permanence of the mind has its neces- 
 sary source and support in the mind's real time. The 
 thought is the revelation of the reality; if it were not 
 for the reality there would be no thought. Memory and 
 all conviction of the mind's time, all belief of its suc- 
 cessive experiences and permanence of existence, have 
 their indispensable basis in the actual permanence of 
 the mind. The mind existed in the past and has en- 
 dured to the present, and for that reason alone it can 
 think of the past. 
 
 Above we have accepted the principle that the suc- 
 cession of our thoughts can be known as a succession 
 only in association with permanence; and have been 
 making the specific assumption that the primary per- 
 manence necessary to the knowledge of the succession 
 of thoughts is the permanence, not of the brain or any 
 material or external object, but of the mind itself. This 
 latter proposition undoubtedly runs counter to the doc- 
 trine advanced by many psychologists. Kant held that 
 the mental succession can be known only in association 
 with permanence, but apparently teaches that the per- 
 manence must be, not that of the mind itself, but of mat- 
 ter; and his teaching has had a very potent influence 
 on the later psychology. In the notable section of his 
 Kritik d. r. Vernunft entitled "The Refutation of 
 Idealism,' * he says: "I am conscious of my existence 
 as determined in time. All time-determination pre- 
 supposes something permanent in perception. But this 
 permanent something cannot be anything in me; just 
 for the reason that my existence in time can itself be 
 
60 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 determined only through this permanent something. 
 Therefore is the perception of this permanent some- 
 thing possible only through a thing outside of me and 
 not through the mere representation of a thing outside 
 of me. . . . Consciousness in time is necessarily com- 
 bined with the consciousness of the possibility of this 
 time-determination; therefore is it also necessarily 
 combined with the existence of things outside of me, 
 as the condition of time-determination. That is, the 
 consciousness of my own existence is at the same 
 time an immediate consciousness of the existence 
 of other things outside of me. ' ' 1 At another place he 
 observes: "All change, in order to be perceived as 
 change, presupposes something permanent in percep- 
 tion; but in the inner sense no permanent perception 
 is to be found. ' ' 2 In the following statement, he refers 
 especially to "matter" as an external something pos- 
 sessing the required permanence: "If, for example, 
 we take the pure notions of relation, we find (1) that in 
 order to give to the notion of substance something per- 
 manent in perception corresponding to it (and thereby 
 to demonstrate the objective reality of this notion), we 
 need a perception in space (of matter), because space 
 alone determines with permanence, while time (with 
 all, consequently, that is in the inner sense) constantly 
 flows." 3 
 
 But we must hold that Kant 's dogma, if here rightly 
 understood, is an error of the first significance ; it seems 
 just the reverse of the truth. The mind knows itself as 
 in time, or knows the succession of its states, first by 
 means of its own permanence. Both mental succession 
 
 iKritik d. r. V., p. 198. 
 2/6., 207. 
 3/6., 207. 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 61 
 
 and mental permanence are cognized by the inner sense, 
 and are cognized with equal directness and certainty. 
 Moreover, instead of the mind being known by external 
 permanence, the permanence of every external object 
 is known primitively by the permanence of the mind. 
 The latter is known first and most directly, and is the 
 necessary provision for any knowledge of external per- 
 manence. No doubt, the knowledge of the permanence 
 and other properties of the not-self help to our ad- 
 vanced knowledge of self ; but it seems incontrovertible 
 that we have an original empirical knowledge of self 
 and its attributes which precedes and is entirely inde- 
 pendent of any external knowledge, upon which external 
 knowledge itself is entirely dependent. We should 
 maintain the general principle, that in our knowledge 
 we move out from the mind. The mind is our starting- 
 place, our centre and necessary basis and object of im- 
 mediate knowledge. The knowledge of things distinct 
 from the mind is mediate, and the indispensable ground 
 of the mediate knowledge, the indispensable medium, is 
 the immediate knowledge of the mind itself or its 
 properties. Accordingly, we must know a permanent 
 mind, before we can know a permanent brain or a per- 
 manent anything else. We must know subjective per- 
 manence, before we can know objective permanence or 
 even be able to form any conception of it. We must 
 find permanence within mind, before we can ever find 
 it without. 1 
 
 i It should be remarked that the external permanence, the permanence 
 of space or matter, which Kant affirms as necessary to the knowledge 
 of the mind's succession or time, is, according to the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of his epistemology, really not external, but internal, — the per- 
 manence of the mind itself. For, in his central conception, space and all 
 its contents, including matter, are entirely of the mind and within the 
 mind. Their permanence must therefore necessarily be the permanence 
 of the mind that produces and contains them. If any permanent thing 
 
62 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 When considering above the particular character of 
 the mind's knowledge of its past and permanence, it 
 was affirmed that this knowledge is a belief. Memory, 
 it was said, is a union of the immediate knowledge of 
 the present with a belief of the past ; and it was noted 
 that one of the most urgent and important questions 
 pertaining to our subject is, What sort of knowledge is 
 this belief? We return to this question. Some have 
 answered, that the belief is inferential knowledge. For 
 instance, Mr. F. H. Bradley writes: "My past self is 
 arrived at only by a process of inference, and by a proc- 
 ess which also itself is fallible." * He says again: A 
 direct experience "can supply us with no reality beyond 
 that of the moment" (p. 248). 
 
 We have already admitted that the mind 's knowledge 
 of its past is not immediate. Memory is not immediate 
 knowledge of the past, because an immediate knowledge 
 is possible only of what is present. The mind's 
 knowledge of its past is then necessarily a mode of me- 
 diate or indirect knowledge. But it cannot be prop- 
 erly called inferential. For there is in it neither in- 
 duction nor deduction, neither reasoning from particu- 
 lar facts nor from a general principle. There is no 
 discoverable logical process of any kind. There is cer- 
 tainly no conscious inference, and not the slightest 
 evidence of unconscious. 
 
 Our knowledge of all external things is inferential. 
 My knowledge of this solid rubber ball is of that charac- 
 ter. The ball impresses my sense, and I infer the ex- 
 istence of the ball as a cause. I reason from internal 
 effect to external cause. But the mind's knowledge of 
 
 exist outside the mind, it is, at any rate, unknowable; and hence 
 cannot help to the knowledge of the time of the mind, 
 i Appearance and Reality, p. 255. 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 63 
 
 its past, though, like that of external realities, not an 
 immediate knowledge, is not of the same sort of in- 
 direct knowledge, it is not inferential. The severance 
 between the present mind and its past experience is 
 quite different from the severance between the mind 
 and an external object. The two breaches are entirely 
 unlike, and they are spanned by modes of knowledge 
 that must be unlike. The past event pertained to the 
 mind, belonged to the mind; it belonged to the same 
 mind to which the present recollection belongs ; the past 
 experience and the present remembrance are affections 
 of the one permanent and identical mind. But there is 
 nothing like this true of an external object and the mind. 
 This rubber ball which I am perceiving does not belong 
 to my mind now, and never did. It has always been 
 outside. The ball then being outside the mind, and so 
 outside the range of immediate knowledge or conscious- 
 ness, can be known only by inference. But the past 
 event of mind, because it was an event of mind, was 
 once thus an internal possession of mind, while it can- 
 not be known immediately since it is outside the pres- 
 ent, is not known by any act that can be called infer- 
 ential. 
 
 The mind's knowledge of its past and permanence is 
 a unique conviction or belief. It is the belief in the 
 present experience that it represents a past experience. 
 We can give no further account of it than the fact that 
 the mind itself was in the past and has endured from the 
 past experience to the present. The past experience, 
 which we know, is gone, and therefore cannot be known 
 directly. But the mind which had the experience is not 
 gone, it abides; and the abiding, permanent, identical 
 mind, because it is such a mind, introduces into con- 
 sciousness, by a distinctive and extraordinary means 
 
64 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 and process quite unknown to us, the belief of the past 
 — makes a present thought also a recollection. The 
 knowledge of our past experience is a more certain 
 knowledge than the knowledge of external objects, be- 
 cause of the intimate relation the past experience had 
 to us, in being our internal possession. The mind had 
 a closer hold on its past than it ever has on any external 
 object; and because of this closer hold, it continues to 
 maintain by memory a closer enduring hold on its past 
 than is its inferential hold on any outside object. 
 
 It is the common opinion respecting memory that 
 thoughts do not remain stored up in the subconscious 
 repertories of the mind, and that recollections are not 
 the rise of the identical thoughts again into conscious- 
 ness. All thoughts are supposed to perish; but in 
 perishing to leave vestiges or residual effects of them- 
 selves which have the potency of recollections. These 
 produce recollections upon the stimulation of neural 
 processes, just as the original experiences were pro- 
 duced upon excitation by like processes. Becollections 
 are new productions representing former experiences. 
 But very many psychologists hold that the only vestiges 
 or residua left by our thoughts are physical, modifica- 
 tions of the brain; that there are not any of a mental 
 nature. It is usual to assert: "In all ideation, in 
 every process of thought, the record of the conscious 
 stream may be registered and conserved in the corre- 
 lated neural process. ' ' * Such declarations are often 
 made without any surmise whatever of a possible men- 
 tal registration of thoughts. Sometimes a mental 
 registration is expressly denied ; retention, it is said, is 
 "not a fact of the mental order at all," but is wholly 
 physical. 
 
 i Prince, The Subconscious, p. 121. 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 65 
 
 But we may well inquire, why should it be supposed 
 that retention is incompatible with the nature of a soul 
 or impossible to it ; that thoughts cannot produce in the 
 mind itself modifications which should be permanent 
 registers and the necessary grounds of reminiscences? 
 Physiologists ask us to believe too much when they 
 affirm that a modification of cerebral matter alone con- 
 tains the possibility of the conscious vision of a past 
 event. The product seems altogether too unlike and 
 too great for the conditions. Surely more of a cause is 
 needed for recollections, as more is needed for presen- 
 tations. 
 
 It appears to be tacitly assumed that the brain is the 
 necessary and sole basis of memories because of the 
 extraordinary multiplicity of its elements and their 
 interconnections. The millions of the cells and fibres 
 and their conjunctions are thought to correspond to the 
 countless memories and their associations, and to be 
 the proper permanent grounds for them. It is sup- 
 posed that a soul or mental substance must be of a 
 chaotic character, undifferentiated, without minuteness 
 and definiteness of organization, unfit as a basis for our 
 numberless distinct and discriminated memories or ex- 
 periences ; that it has no such perceptible multifarious- 
 ness and fineness and completeness of structure as the 
 brain is known to have. We would reply, that modern 
 psychology is burdened with too many such gratuitous 
 postulates. The mind cannot have less wealth of at- 
 tributes and a less varied and perfect structure than 
 any material object which it knows. All things, includ- 
 ing the brain, are to us what we know them to be ; and 
 we know them only representatively by the attributes 
 of our own mind and by abstractions and inferences 
 from these. In looking at a brain all one sees imme- 
 
66 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 diately of its diverse parts and of its whole formation 
 is in one's own imaging percepts. The perceiving 
 mind cannot be less rich and complete in its properties 
 and functions than the brain it perceives. By the 
 variety of its own properties and experiences the mind 
 is capable of thus knowing all sorts of material objects ; 
 and is capable of more than this — it has experiences, 
 as those of pleasure and pain, over and above what it 
 ever perceives in or imputes to material objects. Giv- 
 ing precedence to brain or body over mind as to or- 
 ganization and in knowledge, is but an instance of one 
 of the most powerful and habitual of human tendencies, 
 namely, the disposition, which begins in the earliest 
 years, to forget or disregard self when cognizing the 
 not-self or the external. For the above reasons it 
 should be maintained that mind is not primarily ex- 
 plained by nervous organism, but nervous organism by 
 mind. To reverse this order is to deny the real order 
 of knowledge. We hold it then further to be a reason 
 able proposition, that our thoughts may leave traces or 
 residual effects in the richly endowed and organized 
 mind itself, as really as they may occasion correspond- 
 ing effects in the brain; that the persistent mental ef- 
 fects may be an indispensable condition of memories; 
 and such facts as that repetition of experience strength- 
 ens recollection, and the near is remembered better than 
 the remote, may result in part at least from the charac- 
 ter of the mind and its permanent changes. The mind 
 may be regarded as the prime agent in retention or 
 prime holder of the potentialities of memories. The 
 mind should produce memories as well as presentations. 
 It should reproduce because it retains. It should com- 
 bine in itself the possibilities and functions of presen- 
 tation, retention and reproduction. 
 
THE SUBJECT OE SOUL 67 
 
 Furthermore. If there is a soul, and if it has the 
 capability of retention, it may be supposed to have also 
 the capabilities of habit and heredity. Why should not 
 the soul be able to acquire and possess habits! Why 
 should it not be capable of inheriting and of bequeath- 
 ing characteristics, including possibly the effects of 
 use? Some psychologists there are who seemingly do 
 not deny the existence of the soul, yet impute to it little 
 or nothing of these capabilities. They tacitly assume 
 that a spiritual substance must be lacking in them, or 
 that it cannot have a real and indispensable and neces- 
 sarily recognized share in habit and heredity with the 
 body. 
 
 But in what has just been said of the mind as possess- 
 ing the capabilities of retention, habit and heredity, 
 we have not desired to disregard or deny the offices of 
 the physical organism in relation to these possibilities 
 and functions. The influence upon retention and re- 
 production, for instance, of bodily circumstances of nu- 
 trition, waste, excitation by diseases and drugs, and 
 age, we hold to be indisputable. What we would main- 
 tain is, that the mind is the primary, the innermost, 
 nearest and perpetual, ground of memory, habit and 
 heredity. The body is a basis or support for the mind, 
 and influences its processes; but the processes have 
 their primary, their nearest and by far most important 
 ground and cause in the mind, not in the body. 
 
 With the knowledge of the permanence of the mind 
 is closely associated the knowledge of its sameness. 
 These properties may indeed be said to be one and in- 
 separable. We are cognizant of them together in our 
 sense of " personal identity." Our conviction of per- 
 manent and identical existence, of being the same to-day 
 that we were yesterday, and last month, and last year, 
 
68 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 is one of the most constant and potent convictions of 
 the soul. How should we account for the existence of 
 this conviction? The conviction must arise from the 
 reality, that is, from the fact of the mind's actual iden- 
 tity. We are convinced of permanent sameness be- 
 cause the mind in its being is in truth the same from day 
 to day and from year to year. The conviction arises 
 from, is produced by, is the revelation of, real identical 
 self -hood. It can not arise from, or be attached to, a 
 stream or pure succession of dying thoughts, or to a 
 momentary thought or group of thoughts. 
 
 Perhaps the most important question for us at the 
 present regarding the permanent identity of the mind, 
 is the question of its extent or degree. Is the identity 
 of the mind entire or partial! Is the mind in its suc- 
 cessive and varying experiences the same always? 
 Some have spoken of the changing experiences of the 
 changeless mind. Some have supposed that mind 
 must be changeless to be immortal. There are various 
 curious facts regarding what has been called split-con- 
 sciousness, divided self, or divided identity and ex- 
 perience, that have drawn much recent attention. 
 
 Respecting the above question, we may hold that the 
 mind perserves sameness, but not absolute sameness. 
 The constitutional potentialities which in their union 
 form the one mind having normally one stream of ex- 
 periences, maintain much identity throughout the whole 
 course of life. But the potentialities cannot be sup- 
 posed to remain in themselves entirely unchanged. 
 They change by their own exercises or realizations. 
 They produce effects within themselves. They produce 
 effects which afterwards continually influence them and 
 affect their actualizations. They may be supposed to 
 undergo an evolution. Every stage contains what was 
 
THE SUBJECT OB SOUL 69 
 
 in the preceding; but yet there is change. There is 
 sameness ; but there is also difference. It may be diffi- 
 cult to draw the line in mind between change and con- 
 tinuous sameness ; but there are yet decisive proofs of a 
 considerable extent of sameness. These proofs are 
 chiefly in the identity in character of the conscious prod- 
 ucts — of the sensations, emotions, and volitions. Many 
 of our sensations remain much the same through life. 
 The same permanent external objects excite in us the 
 same sensations. The face of a friend is readily recog- 
 nized after years of absence. Likewise many of our 
 emotions continue nearly the same — the same in them- 
 selves and in their physical expression. The anger of 
 the man is very much like the anger of the boy. There 
 is constant sameness in the character of volition, and in 
 its relation to preceding thought and feeling. Further, 
 every man's memory carries an identical store from 
 youth to age. These identities in our experiences prove 
 identity in the permanent capabilities or potentialities 
 of the mind. 
 
 There is a phase of. personal identity deserving 
 notice, which may be called our moral identity. It is 
 manifested in the feeling of guilt or responsibility for 
 past intentions and actions. The sense of blame for a 
 blunder or act of meanness or wrong, committed in 
 youth, will cling to a man like a burr to the last days of 
 his life. Here is the clear experience of life-long moral 
 identity. With the approval of the whole community a 
 man is hanged for a crime committed many years be- 
 fore. This is a clear recognition of his personal same- 
 ness enduring from the far past to the present. The 
 present conviction or self -imputation of responsibility 
 for past purposes, volitions and overt actions, is a dis- 
 tinct and positive knowledge of the permanence and 
 
70 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 identity of the mind. It is possible only to a mind of 
 such attributes. The past guilty designs and volitions 
 are gone, are extinct ; but the agent that had them is not 
 extinct, he survives, he has continued to the present; 
 and in his permanent substance and permanent dis- 
 positions and potentialities, is the bearer of guilt from 
 the past down to the present. A mind consisting of a 
 pure succession of thoughts, or of a present fleeting 
 thought, would seem to be entirely incapable of such 
 moral experiences. It is incredible that a dying 
 thought should pass on its guilt to its successor, or that 
 a present thought should feel responsible for a past 
 thought that has perished. As there could be no con- 
 viction at all of the past, there could be none of past 
 wrong-doing. The descent of guilt seems impossible 
 for the abstract stream of thoughts; unless the asso- 
 ciate brain, by the permanence and identity of its sub- 
 stance, should bear guilt along for the mental stream. 
 
 Thirdly. Another primary property known of mind 
 is Power. We are cognizant of this, for example, in 
 the voluntary direction of the attention, and in striving 
 to moderate or suppress a passion. Thus by volition 
 the mind knowingly acts upon itself, or produces effects 
 in itself. 
 
 One of the great principles of Hume's scepticism, and 
 one of his most flagrant misrepresentations of mind, is 
 the denial of mental power. He holds, as we have al- 
 ready noted, that our conception of mental power or 
 causal connection in mind is quite fictitious ; that what 
 we take for causal connection is a pure succession of 
 perceptions with absolutely no power, but yet a suc- 
 cession of a special sort, namely, a customary succes- 
 sion. Our sense of power is but the feeling arising 
 from a constant or invariable succession. He denies 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 71 
 
 the existence of power or real causation as well inside 
 the mind as outside. The advocates of the process- 
 mind or stream-mind in many instances give very in- 
 adequate recognition to the real character of volition 
 and the exertion of mental power in it. They consider 
 attentively the succession of our thoughts, but often 
 bestow little or no consideration upon the actual causal 
 relation within mind, upon the power of the mind in- 
 volved in the action of thought upon thought. Among 
 our primary and most certain experiences are indis- 
 putably both succession and succession with power. 
 The consciousness of power in volition is the revelation 
 and representation of a real power in the mind. The 
 thought of power has its source and basis in the reality, 
 and has a likeness to the reality. 
 
 We have claimed a direct knowledge of mind, — of its 
 unity, ownership, power, amidst its varied simultaneous 
 affections; and also a knowledge of the permanence 
 and sameness of mind, which is not entirely a direct 
 knowledge (for it involves a knowledge of the past), 
 but is in part a belief, a mediate or indirect knowledge. 
 But a very important question is here to be considered : 
 Is the knowledge we thus have of mind a complete 
 knowledge? is this knowledge coextensive with the 
 mind's being! We cannot maintain that it is so; but 
 must admit that there are elements, structure, proc- 
 esses, of mind which are not reached by it, are uncon- 
 scious, subliminal, and which, so far as they are known, 
 are known only by obscure inference. For instance, 
 we know nothing, save by conjecture, of the elements 
 and structure in the mind which are the ground of the 
 mnemonic functions of retention and reproduction. 
 Some, as observed before, suppose that we have much 
 more full and certain knowledge of the corporeal con- 
 
72 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 ditions of memory — of the elements and motion-paths 
 of the brain. But this seems to be a fundamental error. 
 It is opposed to the priority and greater nearness and 
 certainty of the knowledge of the mind over the knowl- 
 edge of everything else. 
 
 Our knowledge of mind may be compared with our 
 ordinary knowledge of a material object — as this rubber 
 ball ; but, as preliminary to the comparison, a question 
 of the first consequence to be considered is, What do we 
 really know of such an object? We certainly know the 
 magnitude and shape of the ball. We certainly know 
 its permanence and sameness. But we have very little 
 knowledge indeed of its ultimate elements and inner- 
 most structure. If the ball were divided to its last 
 particles, we know not what these particles would be 
 found in essence to be, whether ethereal, or electrical, or 
 of some other sort. Something like this is true also of 
 our knowledge of mind. We know the succession, per- 
 manent identity, power, unity and ownership, of the 
 mind, — very much more than could ever be known of 
 the mind of the pure succession of thoughts, the stream- 
 mind, or than the stream-mind could ever know of itself, 
 and very much more than mere abstract activity, — but 
 we cognize not the lowest depths of mind, its final es- 
 sence, its innermost formation. But this ignorance no 
 more proves that we do not know the permanent iden- 
 tity and power of the mind, than ignorance of the final 
 elements of a material object proves that we do not 
 know the object's permanence and extension. 
 
 We remark in general, and in conclusion, that the 
 knowledge the mind has of itself is its supreme knowl- 
 edge ; supreme in the sense of being its most direct and 
 certain knowledge, and the ground and the means of the 
 
THE SUBJECT OR SOUL 73 
 
 knowledge of all other reality. The only immediate 
 knowledge the mind has is its knowledge of itself. 
 It certainly has much other knowledge ; it knows many 
 things which are not present in time and space ; it has 
 knowledge of objects that are greater than itself, — 
 objects of longer duration, larger extension, and of 
 superiority in every attribute ; — but only by a mode of 
 cognition less direct and less certain. The mind has 
 immediate and most certain knowledge of itself because 
 the thing known and the knowing are in the closest pos- 
 sible relationship ; the thing known is in the knowing ; 
 the knowing is in the thing known. But such knowl- 
 edge the mind has solely of itself; all other things are 
 known only mediately, by inference and representation. 
 No other thing whatever has so close relation to the 
 knowing act or state as the mind itself ; everything ex- 
 cept the mind is severed from the cognition of itself by 
 an ontological breach, or by separation in time and 
 space. The division, which is of the highest signifi- 
 cance, of immediate and mediate knowledge, corre- 
 sponds to and indicates a division of reality — a division 
 between soul and body, or between soul and every other 
 object animate and inanimate. It may be remarked 
 further explicitly, that the mind always, if not neces- 
 sarily, knows itself in comparison and contrast with 
 other realities, especially other finite realities. But 
 the comparison in every instance is based upon, or 
 made possible by, the combination of two modes of 
 knowledge — the immediate knowledge of self, and the 
 mediate or inferential knowledge of the not-self. 
 
 The means of our knowledge of outer realities, it 
 should be expressly noted, are not media distinct from 
 the mind, are not third things coming in between the 
 mind and the outer objects, but the pure conscious 
 
74 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 modes of the mind itself. These modes are the grounds 
 for inference ; they are the means of representation and 
 depicture. Therefore the mind has, in the same cog- 
 nitive modes, both an immediate knowledge of itself and 
 a mediate knowledge of other things; just as, but in a 
 different manner, it has, in the same present mode, a 
 knowledge of both the present and the past. Our me- 
 diate or inferential knowledge, which constitutes the 
 great bulk of our knowledge, thus stands upon the nar- 
 row foundation of our immediate knowledge of mind. 
 This foundation is indeed narrow; but it is yet alto- 
 gether firm, safe and sufficient, because it is a direct 
 knowledge and therefore also certain, and because, 
 though contracted, it is still in itself rich. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN THEIR RELATION 
 
 One of the most common and important topics in psy- 
 chology is that of the correlation in existence and 
 knowledge of Subject and Object. Subject is usually 
 defined as the thinker, the knower; and Object, as the 
 thing thought of, the thing known. But, unfortunately, 
 many discussions of this great topic are notable for in- 
 definiteness and vagueness. This is true especially of 
 the discussions of idealists. There is frequent failure 
 to describe clearly the characters of Subject and Object; 
 to show what either is as distinguished from the other, 
 and the real nature of their relation to one another. 
 
 In treating of subject and object it is of the first 
 moment to consider that there are two primary kinds 
 of objects, and that these kinds are very different. The 
 one kind is of objects that are internal, within the mind 
 or consciousness, mental objects, very properly called 
 subject-objects. The other is of objects outside the 
 mind and independent of it, quite fitly called object- 
 objects. In their treatment of the objects of thought, 
 idealists altogether neglect and ignore object-objects. 
 This is consistent for them ; since their greatest denial 
 is, that objects external to and independent of the mind 
 or consciousness do not exist. 
 
 Many distinguish subject and object in this wise: 
 object is the aggregate of the vivid states of conscious- 
 ness; and subject the aggregate of the faint states. 
 The difference between the vivid and the faint states 
 
 75 
 
76 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 of consciousness, between presentations and represen- 
 tations, is manifest and permanent ; but while the two 
 sorts of states generally differ clearly in vivacity, they 
 are yet, at the same time, alike in being entirely sub- 
 jective, pure subject-objects, pure states of the one 
 real subject. A percept in itself is no more objective, 
 and no less subjective, than a memory or any faint 
 state of consciousness. To divide them as if they were 
 not both alike wholly subjective, and as if the one was 
 objective as the other was not, is a great error in dis- 
 crimination, and a grave misuse of language. 
 
 Subject and object are distinguished by many others 
 as coordinates resulting from the differentiation of a 
 unit — of one idea or thought or experience. Object is, 
 by a mode of negativity, set over in opposition to sub- 
 ject. But the antithesis is yet really only appearance. 
 Subject and object are both in fact absolutely subjec- 
 tive. There is but an apparent division of what is al- 
 ways really one and indivisible; or an apparent ob- 
 jectivization of what is never else than subjective. 1 
 
 i Here follow from several authors illustrative passages ; which will 
 serve also for reflection hereafter : 
 
 "That though, within certain limits, we oppose the subject to the 
 object, the consciousness to that of which it is conscious, yet that from 
 a higher point of view this antagonism is within consciousness," etc. 
 "The self exists as one self only as it opposes itself, as object, to itself, 
 as subject, and immediately denies and transcends that opposition." 
 (Oaird, Hegel, p. 123 and p. 169.) 
 
 "Since subject and object only exist in the unity of experience, the 
 one is not determined by the other, but with the other." (Baillie, 
 Idealistic Construction of Experience, p. 198.) 
 
 "All is indeed one life, one being, one thought, which only exists as it 
 opposes itself within itself, sets itself apart from itself . . . and yet 
 retains and carries out the power of reuniting itself." (Wallace, Logic 
 of Hegel, 2nd ed., p. 165.) 
 
 "The reality of everything lies in its pointing beyond itself to some- 
 thing else; in other words, the real is always something which is itself 
 and not itself in one, a unity in difference, or differentiated unity." 
 (Nettleship for T. H. Green, Memoir, p. 110.) 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 77 
 
 1. We proceed to consider, first, the true nature, but 
 more especially the correlation, of Subject and Sub- 
 ject-Object. Subject is the permanent and indentical 
 Ego, Self, Soul. It is not an idea or thought, or a 
 phase or division of thought; it is not a current of 
 thoughts ; but an entity which exists with, and yet may 
 exist without, thought or consciousness, and is known 
 as identical and enduring. 
 
 Subject-objects are all properties or modes of the 
 subject — its sensations, percepts, images, memories. 
 The more conspicuous and frequently considered sub- 
 ject-objects are percepts, that is, our ideas of external 
 things. Subject-objects are entirely subjective or men- 
 tal in their nature; they are pure conscious modes of 
 the subject or mind, having no element or property 
 from any source outside or different from the mind; 
 they are one with mind. For illustration, take the 
 percept of an apple. This percept includes color and 
 extension. Color is reckoned among the "secondary" 
 qualities of objects; extension, among the ''primary." 
 But both the color and extension of the percept, both 
 the secondary and primary qualities, are purely men- 
 tal. The color is not alone mental, and the extension 
 non-mental or extra-mental. The extension is not 
 communicated to the mind from without and then by 
 the mind combined with the subjective color. Both 
 color and extension are in the mind and of the mind, 
 are equally and altogether mental. In fact, the color 
 
 "We start then with this duality of subject and object in the unity 
 of experience. What a subject without objects, or what objects without 
 a subject, would be, is indeed, as we are often told, unknowable; for 
 in truth the knowledge of either apart is a contradiction." (Ward, 
 Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. p. 112.) 
 
 "What we find is not a dualism of mind and matter, but a duality of 
 subject and object in the unity of experience." (lb., p. 97.) 
 
78 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 and extension are not two, but one; that is, they are 
 the inseparable original properties of one sensation. 
 Color is in itself extended; extension is its constitu- 
 tional attribute. Therefore, as forming a unitary and 
 indivisible sensation, both properties must be in the 
 same place; the extension must be in and of the mind as 
 much and as certainly as the color. 
 
 As to subject-object and subject in their relation 
 and contrast, it should be expressly remarked, that 
 they are not alike in nature or in function, they are not 
 coordinate relatives or opposites, they are not equals 
 in antithesis and synthesis. The subject-object is the 
 transitory mode of the permanent subject, and may be 
 either "vivid" or "faint." It is the pure product of 
 the subject, generated from a permanent potentiality 
 in the subject. Thus it is dependent upon the sub- 
 ject, and the subject independent of it. But the rela- 
 tion of the two is of the closest from first to last. The 
 subject produces subject-objects, but never actually 
 separates itself from them, or them from itself; it is 
 one with them and knows itself in them. They are 
 the conscious modes or states of the subject, mysteri- 
 ously produced by the subject, always ontologically 
 inseparable from, and always embracing the knowl- 
 edge of, the subject. Subject-object cannot exist with- 
 out and apart from subject; subject does not know 
 itself apart from and independently of subject-object. 
 They are together in existence and inseparable in 
 knowledge. 
 
 Subject-objects are known immediately or in con- 
 sciousness; and are the only objects so known by the 
 mind. They are known immediately, because they are 
 immediate to the mind, "given," present; present in 
 the sense of existing within the mind and being modes 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 79 
 
 of mind. For the same reason we are properly said 
 to be conscious of subject-objects only. The light of 
 consciousness is wholly produced by the mind and is 
 wholly within the mind; and therefore only objects 
 that are in the mind are in that light, all other objects 
 are outside of it. If, and so far as, other objects are 
 known, they are known without the light of conscious- 
 ness, or, so to speak, in the dark. 
 
 Subject-objects form a distinct procession and sys- 
 tem, we may say a distinct world — the colored and 
 luminous world, the internal conscious world. This 
 world, in its whole content and structure, is formed by 
 the mind, or by the constructive power of the mind, 
 the intellect. It is quite distinct from the objective or 
 external world, and owes not the least of its content 
 to the latter. It is entirely the result of the produc- 
 tive and constructive processes of the mind; although 
 in these functions the mind may owe much to the ex- 
 citation of external things. Unquestionably, subjective 
 objects come to appear as if outside of us, of our mind 
 and body, and far away, as also entirely independent 
 of us. In other words, we objectivize them. In this 
 manner, it may be truly said, "the mind sets itself in 
 antithesis to itself.' ' But this very remarkable fact 
 of objectivization or projection is appearance alto- 
 gether. All the colors and light which so certainly 
 seem to be outside of us and to be attributes of ex- 
 ternal things, are really within the mind, are pure in- 
 ternal sensations, attributes of subject-objects; in no 
 wise the real, but only the apparent, attributes of ex- 
 ternal objects. Eeal subjectivity, and phenomenal ob- 
 jectivity, have been generally understood and admitted 
 of the colors and other " secondary' ' qualities of sub- 
 ject-objects ; but they are as true of their primary qual- 
 
80 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 ity of extension. As above remarked, color is itself 
 extended, extension is its inseparable attribute; and 
 when color is projected, its extension must go with it. 
 
 It should be further observed that the procession 
 and world of subject-objects, this mental world, this in- 
 ternal Nature, has its remarkable character and laws 
 as a system. It has its regular coexistences, sequences, 
 and causal connections. Its various and multitudinous 
 objects occur together, and succeed one another, many 
 successions being causal or consisting of cause and 
 effect, with multiplied uniformities. These facts all 
 manifest the wonderful productivity and constructive- 
 ness of the subject. So much for the relation of sub- 
 ject and subject-objects in existence and in knowledge. 
 
 2. Let us go on to consider next the relation, alike 
 interesting and important, of object-objects to subject 
 and subject-objects. Already we have denned object- 
 objects as things outside the mind and independent of 
 it or its thinking or consciousness. That such things 
 exist is the fundamental doctrine of the dualistic real- 
 ists. It is believed and defended by them as ardently 
 as it is denied and derided by idealists. The latter 
 contend that the existence of objects out of mind or 
 thought and independent is altogether impossible ; that 
 the real is the rational ; that to exist is to be thought ; 
 that a division or cleft or space between mind and ob- 
 jects, which puts objects over against mind as inde- 
 pendent realities, is not to be considered. It is all 
 self-contradictory and absurd. The realists main- 
 tain in opposition that, however they may have come 
 to exist, there are certainly objects external to and 
 independent of our mind or thought. They adduce the 
 existence of other men as a capital instance. The fact 
 of other men, and their invincible antagonism to being 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 81 
 
 regarded as our pure subject-objects, or as only prod- 
 ucts or modes of our mind, they maintain, doom ideal- 
 istic monism to an eternal overthrow. Eealists hold 
 that what idealists say of objects is indeed largely 
 true of subject-objects ; but flagrantly untrue of object- 
 objects. 
 
 In asserting that there are objects external to and in- 
 pendent of mind or thought, we have meant the finite, 
 the human, mind or thought. But when idealistic 
 monists deny the possibility of objects existing outside 
 and independent of mind, they mean, or often mean, 
 "all mind"; not the human only, but both the human 
 and the Divine. This is in consequence of their iden- 
 tifying the human and Divine minds. They declare 
 that the human mind, self, consciousness, experience, 
 is but a "fragment" or "limited mode" of the Divine 
 mind, self, consciousness, experience. There is unity 
 or identity, not duality. But there appear to be the 
 strongest reasons for rejecting the hypothesis of iden- 
 tity, and for maintaining that the human and Divine 
 are two minds. The human and the Divine are evi- 
 dently divided in this wise: that there is immediate 
 knowledge of the human, and nothing but an inferential 
 knowledge of the Divine. This clear difference of 
 knowledge must be supposed to be dependent upon a 
 separation or duality of existence. But the great ques- 
 tion of the relation of the human and Divine minds 
 cannot be fully discussed here. There seems, however, 
 to be warrant for believing in a genuine duality, and 
 therefore for holding in regard to the relation of ob- 
 ject-objects to mind, that there are two distinct ques- 
 tions which may and should be treated separately; 
 namely, the question of their relation to the human 
 mind, and that of their relation to the Divine mind. 
 
82 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 Of the former relation we may claim to have some 
 definite knowledge; of the latter we have very little 
 knowledge. We may suppose that, in respect to ob- 
 ject-objects and also all other reality, God is both im- 
 manent and transcendent; but we must admit that these 
 contradictories are not easily reconciled or held to- 
 gether. In our further discussion of the relation of 
 object-objects to mind, we shall have in view the human 
 mind alone. 
 
 We have been contending that there are objects ex- 
 ternal to and independent of the mind or conscious- 
 ness ; and also that they are knowable. It must be ac- 
 knowledged that the question of the knowableness of 
 such objects possesses a priority; since we can claim 
 existence only for what we know. 
 
 How idealists confidently and persistently declaim 
 against the possibility of cognizing external objects, is 
 well known and need not be dwelt upon here. As be- 
 fore in part noted, they argue that such knowledge is 
 self-contradictory and impossible ; that to know a thing 
 is necessarily to have it within mind or consciousness ; 
 that an object exists for the subject only in being ap- 
 prehended by it, and that "thought can never go be- 
 yond itself "; that the "physical thing and our idea of it 
 are one object, " a creation of the mind; etc., etc. Vig- 
 orously opposed to the positions of the idealists have 
 been various sects of realists who have sought to main- 
 tain such directly antagonistic positions as the fol- 
 lowing : that, with the consciousness of an act of knowl- 
 edge, there goes the consciousness of the external ob- 
 ject to which the act is relative; that there is a native 
 or necessary and certain belief of external realities, 
 which is universal in men; that our knowledge of the 
 external is a belief of which the negative is incon- 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 83 
 
 ceivable; that with the consciousness of muscular sen- 
 sations of resistance, or of voluntary energy opposed, 
 there is combined the consciousness of external resist- 
 ing objects ; that, in thinking of its own limits, the mind 
 inevitably transcends them, and becomes cognizant of 
 other finite beings, even of the Infinite. 
 
 The Scottish school of philosophy, in their theory 
 of external perception, contend for an immediate knowl- 
 edge of extra-mental objects. This knowledge they 
 define as an invincible and certain belief which is con- 
 stitutional or natural to men. 1 But this school, for- 
 merly so numerous and influential in this country, un- 
 doubtedly failed to maintain their theory, and have 
 suffered a great loss of prestige. Their theory has 
 been largely displaced in our institutions of learning 
 by hypotheses composed of English and German ideal- 
 ism — the idealism of Berkeley and Hume and that of 
 Kant and his followers. The Scottish philosophers 
 failed in not exhibiting a scientific warrant or justifica- 
 tion for the avowed necessary belief in external things. 
 They did not sufficiently consider that the belief must 
 have evidence or a basis in knowledge. As to the per- 
 ception of the external, we cannot rightly stop with 
 
 i "That our sensations of touch indicate something external, extended, 
 figured, hard and soft, is not a deduction of reason, but a natural prin- 
 ciple. The belief of it, and the very conception of it, are equally parts 
 of our constitution." (Reid, Works, Hamilton's edition, p. 130.) 
 
 "If asked . . . how we know that what we apprehend in sensible per- 
 ception is, as consciousness assures us, an object, external, extended, and 
 numerically different from the conscious subject? — how we know that 
 this object is not a mere mode of mind, illusively presented to us as a 
 mode of matter? — then indeed we must reply that we do not in pro- 
 priety know that what we are compelled to perceive as not-self, is not a 
 perception of self, and that we can only on reflection believe such to 
 be the ease, in reliance on the original necessity of so believing, imposed 
 on us by our nature." (Sir W. Hamilton, lb., p. 750.) According 
 to these philosophers, then, the perception of an external object is 
 essentially a natural and necessary belief. 
 
84 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 belief however potent or self-assured it may be; but 
 must yet ascertain some ground for the belief in our 
 possibilities of perception, or find that the belief in- 
 volves, or is supported by, a genuine process of empiri- 
 cal cognition. 
 
 Object-objects, we have been saying, are knowable; 
 and it should be further said that they are knowable by 
 a knowledge that must be something more than a nat- 
 ural or innate or necessary belief. The next step for 
 us, then, is to ascertain the mode and process of this 
 knowledge. In attempting this we shall here study 
 brevity and confine ourselves to the more general facts ; 
 reserving a somewhat more detailed treatment for the 
 next chapter, in which will be considered the cognition 
 of a particular object-object, namely, matter. 
 
 First, it is to be remarked that our knowledge of 
 object-objects cannot be immediate as is that of sub- 
 ject-objects ; because they are not present to the mind 
 as are the latter. It must be some mode of mediate 
 or representative or inferential knowledge. We have 
 immediate knowledge of our percepts of external ob- 
 jects, since they are pure modes of mind, and there- 
 fore one with and inseparable from mind ; but not of the 
 objects themselves. Our knowledge of the percepts is 
 immediate; that of the objects mediate. Again, in 
 other words, we cannot be said to be conscious of ob- 
 ject-objects as we are of subject-objects; since they do 
 not come into the bright sphere of consciousness as do 
 the others, but subsist in outer darkness. We may be 
 conscious of an act of knowledge without being con- 
 scious of the external object to which the act is relative. 
 Many realists, in claiming an immediate knowledge or 
 consciousness of external realities, are certainly in 
 error. They mistakingly pretend to what in fact they 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 85 
 
 do not have and what is impossible; and by so doing 
 weaken the case of realism. 
 
 If our knowledge of object-objects is wholly inferen- 
 tial or mediate, the first move is to endeavor to show 
 what are the media of the knowledge, i. e. f the means 
 by which the object comes into relation to the subject, 
 and the subject to the object and apprehends it. 
 
 These media are not tertia quaedam, numerically 
 different from both the mind and the objects, and en- 
 tering between them; but are pure subject-objects, the 
 pure internal sensations and percepts. By these 
 media, modes of the subject itself and immediately 
 known, we attain a knowledge of objects not immedi- 
 ately known. By modes of consciousness, as the indis- 
 pensable means or ground, we acquire a knowledge of 
 things outside of consciousness. According to these 
 statements, the relation of the media to the subject 
 knowing obviously must be very different from their 
 relation to the objects known. The media are modes 
 of the subject, are immediate to it, are one with it. 
 But they are quite distinct and apart from the ob- 
 jects ; they can be at best only distant representations, 
 to some extent copies, of the objects. They may be 
 said then to stand between us and objects; but the 
 conclusion cannot be rightly deduced that they hide 
 objects from us, or that a true knowledge of objects, 
 of objects as they are in themselves, is not possible 
 through them as distant representations. Berkeley's 
 reasoning against the possibility of a representative 
 knowledge of external sensible things is in no wise de- 
 cisive or final. 
 
 We have been all along speaking of and postulating 
 spatial outsidedness or externality. We are bound be- 
 fore proceeding farther to give some account of it and 
 
86 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 of our assumption. The first and fundamental cogni- 
 tion of spatial externality is of the externality of one 
 point in an extended sensation to another, and of the 
 externality of one sensation to another. This experi- 
 ence of reciprocal externality within the sphere of the 
 pure subjective sensibility, seems to be an indispen- 
 sable condition of our cognition of the reciprocal ex- 
 ternality of mind and the extra-mental. 
 
 Our knowledge of external objects is, primitively 
 and fundamentally, our inference of them as the causes 
 or occasions of our sensations and percepts. But how 
 does the subjective thought make the inference of the 
 external cause? What excites and guides it to this 
 remarkable leap? We have first, in the interaction of 
 our sensitive organs, as hands and arms, and of our 
 moving organs and trunk, experience of their recipro- 
 cal production in themselves of sensations. One organ 
 excites sensation in another, and has sensation ex- 
 cited in itself by that other. When, after some ex- 
 perience, though it be yet vague, of this reciprocity of 
 our sensitive parts and organs, we have experience 
 in one organ of such tactual and muscular sensations 
 as we have felt when the organ was impressed or re- 
 sisted by another organ, but have not concurrent sim- 
 ilar sensations in another organ, — i. e. y when we have 
 a single set of sensations and not a double, or sensations 
 only on the one side, — we jump to the inference of an 
 external resisting object as the cause of the sensations, 
 as a cause operating like the resisting sensitive organ 
 and cause we have known. We conclude in particular 
 that the external resisting object is extended, from the 
 extension of the sensations it excites. In such a man- 
 ner as this, stated thus with much brevity and general- 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 87 
 
 ity, we infer external objects as causes ; so we pass from 
 the internal known to the external unknown. 
 
 Accordingly, our knowledge of external objects is en- 
 tirely inferential. They are never immediately known, 
 they are never directly seen, they never really appear. 
 The only objects immediately known, or directly seen, 
 or really appearing, are subject-objects. By means of 
 these latter, however, as indispensable media, we reach 
 object-objects through inference alone, but through in- 
 ference that is true ; we represent them as they are in 
 themselves, in their most important properties and re- 
 lations, namely, their real durations, spatial extensions, 
 motions, interactions, successions. The general result 
 therefore is a doctrine directly contrary to that of the 
 Scottish school. They contend that our perception of 
 external extended things is "not a deduction of rea- 
 son,' ' but a natural and necessary belief. Here it is 
 maintained that the perception is a deduction of reason 
 or an inference, and is not a natural and necessary be- 
 lief. 
 
 It will probably contribute to distinctness, if we shall 
 compare the above theory of the perception of external 
 objects with what is called the " window " theory of per- 
 ception and so often ridiculed by idealists. In the 
 " window' ' theory, which in important elements is 
 Locke's theory, the mind is thought of as an empty 
 room into which outside things introduce a knowledge 
 of themselves through the senses which are likened to 
 windows. The mind is represented, not as productive 
 and synthetic, but as passive and receptive only. 
 Knowledge, as if ready-made, is presented by objects, 
 and received into itself by the mind. 
 
 The "window" hypothesis mistakes fatally in con- 
 
88 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 ceiving the mind as only passive and receptive in the 
 knowledge of the external, and in quite overlooking its 
 generative and constructive activity. All our cognitive 
 states or modes referring to the external — our sensa- 
 tions, percepts, images — are products of the mind itself 
 and are wholly internal and mental. The mind sup- 
 plies from within itself all the materials of percepts, 
 and is their sole architect. External objects communi- 
 cate nothing like ready-made knowledge of themselves 
 to the entirely passive mind ; they impart not the least 
 portion of the materials that enter into a knowledge of 
 themselves. They are indeed not entirely inactive re- 
 specting our knowledge of them; but their activity is 
 particular and limited — it is only stimulation and a 
 certain amount of regulation. They stir the mind to 
 produce sensations and percepts representative of 
 themselves, and exercise some control over the produc- 
 tion ; but the mind yet furnishes from within itself all 
 the materials of percepts, and is the sole framer of 
 them. 
 
 But though the activity of external things respecting 
 our perception of them is of this simple and restricted 
 character, still the importance of it must be recognized 
 as being very considerable. We notice particularly the 
 importance of its regulative influence upon the activity 
 of the mind. In the production of inferences and rep- 
 resentations of external objects, the mind does not act 
 capriciously, irregularly, and arbitrarily, in total inde- 
 pendence of the external objects ; but is in a degree gov- 
 erned by the objects. Objects impart no cognitions or 
 materials of cognitions to the mind ; these, as just said, 
 are wholly produced by the mind itself; but they to an 
 extent determine the mind in its productivity. For in- 
 stance, the intensity, duration, and extension of sensa- 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 89 
 
 tions and percepts are not the result entirely of the 
 spontaneous, wholly independent and wayward purpose 
 and action of mind; but are determined in a measure 
 by the force, duration, and extension of the impressions 
 made by particular objects on our sense-organs. The 
 duration and extension of a sensation or percept are 
 thus made like those of the impressing face of an ex- 
 ternal object. Therefore while the mind is so fully 
 active and productive in its perceptions of outer ob- 
 jects, it is yet to this important degree passive and de- 
 pendent; and while objects are so fully passive in our 
 cognition of them, they are yet at the same time, to a 
 significant degree, regulatively active. 
 
 The most peculiar and remarkable fact pertaining to 
 our knowledge of the external world is the involuntary 
 projection into it of our sensations, percepts, subject- 
 objects. So potent becomes the tendency, so com- 
 pletely established the habit, even in the earliest life 
 (on account to some extent probably of inherited incli- 
 nation), of projecting the mental modifications or 
 states, that they do not at all seem to belong to us, but 
 to be distinct and remote objects or qualities of them. 
 For example, colors appear to be the properties of dis- 
 tant and independent objects. Sound appears to inhere 
 in or to be at a distant object, as a bell. My percept 
 of a tree seems to be a tree far off. Certainly, then, 
 we ordinarily conceive ourselves clearly to see colored 
 material objects and illuminated space, as if outside the 
 mind. There are indeed outside extended objects and 
 space, but we do not really see them, that is, we are not 
 immediately cognizant, or conscious, of them. We only 
 see, or are immediately cognizant of, our pure internal 
 colored percepts which we project upon the external 
 colorless realities. Our conscious percepts are thrown 
 
90 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 out upon the extended objects which are inferred, and 
 serve as representations of them. The really internal 
 and small percept, as a visual image, serves as a sign 
 and representation of vastly extended external reality, 
 and appears as externalized. Accordingly, knowledge, 
 instead of being received into the mind from the outside 
 world, is rather projected from the mind upon the out- 
 side world. As a painter depicts his ideal upon the 
 canvas, so the mind projects and overspreads its light 
 and percepts upon the external extended world as its 
 canvas or screen. 
 
 We must not, however, fail duly to recognize the im- 
 portance of the stimulation from the actual external 
 extended reality in the rise of sensations and percep- 
 tual material and the production and projection of per- 
 cepts. If there were no external extended objects to 
 occasion the production of the pure subjective percepts, 
 there would be no apparent projection of percepts from 
 the mind. If external realities made upon the sense 
 no impressions of definite extensions, definite dura- 
 tions, and definite strengths, there would not arise, as 
 far as we can know, any definite percepts and any 
 thought of existence outside of mind. The mind would 
 not, of its pure spontaneity, produce such percepts, or 
 dream of anything as external to itself. 
 
 The greatest aberrations of idealists have relation to 
 this phenomenon of projection. They suppose that the 
 only objects in existence are the projected subject-ob- 
 jects. When they speak of Subject and Object, they 
 mean by outer object the externalized subject-object. 
 According to the Hegelian idealism, as before indicated, 
 the mind or thought is at first entirely subjective, or 
 neither subjective nor objective. It proceeds from its 
 own initiation to differentiate itself into subject and 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 91 
 
 projected object; and then again identifies subject and 
 object. There is first antithesis, which is followed by 
 synthesis ; but the procedure and results are yet wholly 
 within and of the unitary consciousness or thought. 
 The Hegelian idealism may be described briefly, in its 
 totality, as the hypothesis of the single world-thought 
 developing by triadic self-evolution — evolution, wholly 
 self-originated and self -continued, by thesis, antithesis, 
 and synthesis. 
 
 It is a supreme error of idealism, that the mind pro- 
 jects subject-objects by its own self -originated motion. 
 No doubt, projection is wholly the activity, the invol- 
 untary activity, of the mind; but not of its self -initi- 
 ated, or self-occasioned, or internally originated, activ- 
 ity. There never would be the phenomenal projection 
 of subject-objects, if there were not object-objects, real 
 external and independent things, to move the mind to 
 the action. Before externalization takes place and is 
 possible to mind, the mind must have some knowledge, 
 some inferential knowledge, of real external objects. 
 This knowledge it acquires by means of the tactual and 
 muscular sensations primarily, in such a manner as was 
 above summarily described. The mind then first pro- 
 jects sensations to particular places, because of its pre- 
 vious knowledge of real external objects existing at 
 those places and occasioning the sensations. If there 
 were not the previous knowledge of external objects as 
 causes of sensations, there would never be the projec- 
 tion of sensations. 
 
 In our external perception, there is a singular com- 
 bination or fusion, so to speak, of projected subject- 
 objects and object-objects — of what is in consciousness, 
 with what is outside — of what we know immediately, 
 with what we know only inferentially and representa- 
 
92 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 tively — which epistemologists have not considered. 
 For example, in my cognition of a man standing near 
 me on the street, there is embraced my colored and ex- 
 tended percept projected npon him, and his own ex- 
 tended body which is truly external to and independent 
 of me. I have immediate knowledge, I am conscious, 
 of the percept, for it is a pure subject-object, a pure 
 mode of mind ; but I am not immediately cognizant, or 
 conscious, of the body of the man. I only infer its ex- 
 istence at the place whither I project my percept. I 
 am conscious of the reference of my percept to the 
 body, or I am conscious of my inference of the body; 
 but not of the body itself. The latter I know only by 
 inference and representation through the percept of 
 which I am conscious. In other words, in seeing an- 
 other person we have both mediate and immediate 
 sight. Our vision of the person is only and altogether 
 mediate sight, and the medium is our own pure visual 
 percept. But of the percept itself we have immediate 
 sight. The person is altogether outside our conscious- 
 ness, and is not and cannot be immediately seen. He is 
 seen only by representation in our conscious, or imme- 
 diately known, or immediately experienced, percept. 
 But the representative knowledge is genuine knowl- 
 edge ; it is true to the real external and extended body. 
 Not merely the bare existence of the body is known, 
 but also the primary qualities of size and figure. Only 
 the hardihood of idealism that hath no fear of solip- 
 sism before its eyes can assert that there is no other 
 object cognized than our percept, the pure subject- 
 object; and that the supposed body of the man, or the 
 whole man, is identical with the subject-object, is there- 
 fore a pure mode of our consciousness, or has no exist- 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 93 
 
 ence whatever as a reality outside and independently 
 of our mind. 
 
 The same statements are applicable in general to 
 the cognition of any other external object. In my per- 
 ception of the tree I was viewing through my window 
 a moment ago, there were combined in the same single 
 cognition the immediate knowledge of my green and 
 extended percept and the representative knowledge of 
 the extended and permanent tree which is really ex- 
 ternal to and independent of me, and upon which I pro- 
 jected the percept. The perception unites the con- 
 sciousness of the percept and the consciousness of the 
 percept as a representation of an object outside of con- 
 sciousness; it unites the knowledge of what is really 
 inside of mind with the knowledge of what is really 
 outside; just as memory unites in the same mode of 
 mind an immediate knowledge of the present and a 
 representative knowledge of the past. Our eye illu- 
 minates and adorns outer objects with its extended col- 
 ors ; or it may be said in general that the mind, in its 
 cognition of the external world, floods it with its own 
 internal light, — as the head lamp of a railroad engine, 
 the iron cyclops, pours its light far along the track 
 in front, or as the search-light of a war-ship (to em- 
 ploy again an illustration used before) illumines a 
 wide expanse of sea. 
 
 An important conclusion involved in the facts and 
 principles just enunciated is, that all the materials im- 
 mediately dealt with by all the sciences, both mental 
 and physical, are identical, namely, the pure subject- 
 objects or the pure phenomena of mind. 1 But the 
 
 i Similar assertions are made by idealistic psychologists : "The 
 phases of experience dealt with in the natural sciences and in psychology 
 
94 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 modes of handling the common materials are clearly 
 different. Psychology treats the materials, the sub- 
 ject-objects, especially as they are in themselves, or 
 in their relation to the mind and their relations to one 
 another. Physical science treats them in their rela- 
 tion to external material objects, or as representations 
 of such objects ; or, what comes to the same, it treats 
 external objects as represented by the pure sub- 
 jective experiences. The main concern of physical 
 science is with external material objects, its proper ob- 
 jects. These objects, however, are not, and cannot be, 
 immediately known; they are known only mediately 
 through the pure modes of the mind. Physics then, 
 like psychology, deals directly only with the subjective 
 modes; while its primary interest is not, like that of 
 psychology, in the directly known internal experiences, 
 but in the external realities mediately known through 
 them. 
 
 In correspondence with the above view, it must be 
 admitted that there is a certain measure of truth in 
 such general declarations of idealists as, that "the 
 field of science is the contents of the mind"; for, un- 
 doubtedly, the only immediate facts or contents in 
 every sort of scientific thought and research are the 
 pure mental percepts or experiences. But while in 
 science we deal immediately only with mental con- 
 tents, yet, at the same time, we deal also mediately, 
 
 are nothing but phases of one experience regarded from different points 
 of view." (Wundt, Psychology (Judd), p. 361.) 
 
 "If it is true that all the sciences have the same sort of subject- 
 matter, there can be no essential difference between the raw materials of 
 physics and the raw materials of psychology." "Physics and psychology 
 deal with the same stuff, the same material." (Titchener, Text-Book of 
 Psychology, p. 6 and p. 8.) 
 
 These declarations indubitably express important truth; still they 
 do not by any means sustain the idealistic premise of the writers. 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 95 
 
 through the mental contents, with realities that are not 
 contained in the mind but are distinct and apart from 
 it; as our fellow-men, material objects, and others. 
 In the scientific treatment of matter, we handle di- 
 rectly only the pure mental percept; but at the same 
 time mediately, through the percept as a representa- 
 tion, we truly deal with real external matter or its 
 properties — its real extension, permanence, and mo- 
 tion or activity. The remark has been made, that 
 "when we classify plants by their resemblances, we 
 classify the plants and not the impressions.' ' This is 
 true; yet it must be acknowledged that the only re- 
 semblances immediately known and dealt with are the 
 resemblances of the impressions or percepts. The re- 
 semblances of the external plants which are indeed the 
 primary concern, are yet cognized only through those 
 of the percepts. We may observe further upon the 
 notable declaration with which Schopenhauer begins 
 his principal work, and which is of similar import to 
 the assertion respecting the field of science just quoted 
 above, — Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung, — that this 
 declaration includes and excludes the same measure 
 of truth as the other. The world we immediately know 
 is, doubtless, the internal world of our representations ; 
 but we also mediately know, by these representations, 
 an external world of extended and permanent realities. 
 Schopenhauer 's saying would be much nearer the truth 
 if it could be rendered, My knowledge of the world is 
 my representation. 
 
 It is necessary to recognize the existence of two 
 worlds or two Natures, the internal and the external, 
 the subjective and the objective. Each of these, as we 
 have been postulating, is a system or cosmos, possess- 
 ing its own great multitude and variety of peculiar ob- 
 
96 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 jects with their laws — their regular coexistences, se- 
 quences, and causal connections. First, there is the 
 internal world of our thoughts, feelings and volitions — 
 subject-objects — with the laws of their occurrence. 
 Secondly, there is the world of animate and inanimate 
 realities — of extended, enduring and moving reali- 
 ties — wholly outside and independent of the world 
 of subject-objects, ruled by their own laws, or corre- 
 lated in uniform sequences, spatial coexistences, and 
 interactions. But while the objective world is wholly 
 independent, in its objects and laws, of the subjective, 
 it is wholly dependent upon the latter in making itself 
 known. The objective, in its individuals, laws, and 
 systemic oneness, is known only mediately through the 
 subjective. The properties of its objects and the co- 
 existences, successions, and causal connections, are 
 known by like properties and relations of the sub- 
 jective objects ; and known truly, known as they are in 
 themselves. Without such internal representative 
 properties and relations, the properties and relations 
 of external realities would not be known. 1 Both sorts 
 of objects are known by the same identical cognitive 
 mode, the one immediately, the other mediately. Still, 
 though the mind wholly of itself furnishes the materi- 
 als, and all the constructive labor, in its cognition of the 
 external world, it is not active only, but is to some de- 
 gree passive and dependent upon the outside realities. 
 The constant and habitual relations of subject-objects 
 are dependent to some extent upon the uniform rela- 
 tions of external objects as these impress themselves 
 
 i In that sense, we may accept the declaration, that "in self -conscious- 
 ness are implicitly contained all the categories by which science and 
 philosophy attempt to make the world intelligible." (Caird, Hegel, p. 
 150.) 
 
 In that sense, but only in it, is the mind "legislative" over nature. 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 97 
 
 upon the mind. The external objects and their rela- 
 tions in no manner generate the internal ; for the mind 
 generates them itself; hut they certainly influence the 
 mind in the production of its representative objects 
 and relations. 
 
 These several principles, it may be briefly observed 
 further and finally, are exemplified by the action of the 
 mind in every science. The science of astronomy is 
 indisputably a systematic construction of the human 
 intellect; but, we may contend, there would not be a 
 science of astronomy, if there were not a great system 
 of external celestial moving realities, and if these had 
 not influenced the constructive processes, and deter- 
 mined the product, of the intellect. The intellect em- 
 braces both the internal and external worlds simul- 
 taneously, in the same science ; a result of the fact that 
 both worlds are known by the same cognitions, though 
 differently. The two worlds are indeed distinct; but 
 they are combined by the unity of knowledge — by the 
 unity of knowledge that is both immediate and medi- 
 ate. The same cognitive mode is in itself both a sub- 
 ject-object and the representation of an object-object. 
 Hence both subject-objects and object-objects can be 
 handled by the intellect in scientific thought, and are 
 comprehended by it in the same science. 
 
 We may now fitly turn to consider the specific doc- 
 trines of many psychologists, that the knowledge of 
 subject or self requires the knowledge of other selves ; 
 and that our knowledge of external inanimate nature 
 depends upon our knowledge of other persons. They 
 say that we know self in knowing other people ; * and 
 
 K "The Self of any man comes to consciousness only in contact with 
 other selves." (Koyce, Psychology, p. 297.) "A vague belief in the ex- 
 istence of our fellows seems to antedate, to a considerable extent, the 
 
98 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 know outer physical things because we know that other 
 people know them. 1 Some define the subjective as that 
 which is "special to me"; and the objective, as that 
 which is "common to all." 
 
 This teaching appears extravagant and unwarrant- 
 able. No doubt it comes to pass that the knowledge 
 of the self is always united with or involves the knowl- 
 edge of other selves ; for the reason, that we are always 
 closely associated in life with others. Constantly with 
 us and constantly affecting us, they are constantly rec- 
 ognized with our knowledge of self. But there is a 
 primitive, a first, it may be only an inchoate or rudi- 
 mentary, knowledge of self which precedes our knowl- 
 edge of other selves and is wholly independent of it. 
 This view is in agreement with important principles 
 expounded above. Our knowledge of self is immedi- 
 ate and it is our sole immediate knowledge; (all other 
 
 definite formation of any consciousness of ourselves." {The World and 
 the Individual, II. 170.) 
 
 "The existence of a spirit in pure individuality apart from other spirits 
 is not conceivable, for a spiritual being is one that finds itself only in 
 what is other than itself." (J. Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 199.) 
 
 "A self-conscious being is one which in being conscious of itself is also 
 conscious of another than itself." ( Nettleship, Memoir of Green, p. 196.) 
 
 i "The reason why we all believe that the objects of our thoughts have 
 a duplicate existence outside, is that there are many human thoughts, 
 each with the same objects, as we cannot help supposing. The judg- 
 ment that my thought has the same object as his thought is what 
 makes the psychologist call my thought cognitive of an outer reality." 
 (James, Psychology, I. 271, 2.) 
 
 "Our belief in the reality of Nature, when Nature is taken to mean 
 the realm of physical phenomena known to common sense and to science, 
 is inseparably bound up with our belief in the existence of our fellow- 
 men." (Royce, The World and the Individual, II. 165, 6.) 
 
 "There must be correspondence of what I believe with the beliefs of 
 other men about what their senses tell them." (Haldane, Pathway to 
 Reality, I. 71.) 
 
 "That which other people become aware of when, and on the same 
 grounds as I do, seems more real to me than that which they do not 
 know of unless I tell them," etc. (Mill, Exam. Hamilton, I. 242.) 
 What other people perceive with me, is outside me. 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 99 
 
 realities are known only mediately). As being imme- 
 diate and the only immediate knowledge, it is inde- 
 pendent, first, and the indispensable condition and 
 basis for the knowledge of other realities including 
 other selves. Upon these just positions we should 
 maintain the very opposite of the assertions of ideal- 
 ists above cited : that the belief in the existence of our 
 fellows antedates the consciousness of ourselves; that 
 a spiritual being finds itself only in another ; that in the 
 consciousness of itself there must be the consciousness 
 of another. Instead of the knowledge of our fellow- 
 men antedating the knowledge of ourselves, some ex- 
 tent of the knowledge of ourselves must antedate, as 
 being the necessary ground of, any the least knowledge 
 of them. Again, it is not reasonable to suppose that 
 the self must go entirely away from home in order to 
 find itself. Further, to assume that we have ever as 
 direct and indubitable a knowledge of others as we have 
 of self is a contradiction of the truth. Idealists make 
 the grave mistake of exalting what is accidental or only 
 concomitant into the place of the paramount and neces- 
 sary antecedent; and of giving superiority to mediate 
 knowledge over immediate, or giving superiority over 
 self, respecting knowledge, to what can be known only 
 through the medium of self. It may be added, that the 
 idealistic contention is an exhibition of a certain tend- 
 ency, of which Kant is a chief exemplar; namely, the 
 tendency to rob the empirical self or ego of real attri- 
 butes and potentialities and to degrade it. 
 
 The mind in cognizing itself must be taken as an ex- 
 ception to the rule, that "the thing known is always 
 other than the self that knows.' ' In self-knowledge 
 the mind is knower and known, subject and object, in 
 one, and there is not required the discrimination be- 
 
100 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 tween the mind and a collateral coordinate or inde- 
 pendent object. The mind is a unique eye ; it sees not 
 other things only, but sees also itself. Because of its 
 distinctive nature, it can be its own object, or be both 
 subject and object; it is a living bright reality per- 
 ceiving itself in its own light. There is of course a 
 species of discrimination. The mind always distin- 
 guishes its permanent self from its transient affections 
 or modes which are absolutely dependent upon and ab- 
 solutely inseparable from itself ; and also distinguishes 
 the modes from one another. There is an initial 
 knowledge of self, which is possible with this peculiar 
 discrimination that is wholly subjective, and requires 
 not the contrasting of self with a coordinate or inde- 
 pendent or outside and different object, such as an- 
 other self. 
 
 But while it seems certain that a first knowledge or a 
 beginning of knowledge is possible of the mind with- 
 out its discriminating itself from other minds, and 
 without a known relation to them, yet it is just as cer- 
 tain that soon the knowledge of self comes to be insep- 
 arably associated with the knowledge of others or one 
 cannot think of one 's self without thinking of one 's fel- 
 lows. This results, as was above suggested, from the 
 intimate relations of men and the incessant influencing 
 of one by another. Though men are discrete and inde- 
 pendent beings and constitute a plurality which con- 
 tradicts manifestly and decisively the visionary unity 
 or identity of men, or fusion of personalities, contended 
 for by monists, yet they are closely related in the same 
 society, nation, world-system ; and that, too, not by ac- 
 cident or insignificant bonds only, but by permanent 
 conditions and laws of the first importance. It neces- 
 sarily follows from this constant and intimate associa- 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 101 
 
 tion that a man's thought of himself begins before long 
 invariably to involve, or to have as its concomitant, 
 the thought of other men. 
 
 Because of close and enduring consociation, men not 
 only acquire the habit of invariably thinking of others 
 with themselves, but they also continually and know- 
 ingly affect one another in respect to all their inter- 
 ests; especially by reciprocal influence they occasion 
 for each other the fullest self-consciousness or self- 
 knowledge. Without any knowledge of others, one 
 may attain to a grade of self-knowledge ; but not to a 
 large and complete self-knowledge. "As our ac- 
 quaintance with other selves extends the better we 
 know our own self. ' ' The presence of others, by caus- 
 ing us to make comparisons of ourselves with them, 
 and by their constant and varied influence upon us, is 
 indispensable for our fullest self-realization. Knowl- 
 edge of the ideals, beliefs, conduct, achievements, of 
 our fellows necessarily promotes the development and 
 education of all our faculties or of our entire inherited 
 nature. In fine, we must admit the truth of the general 
 declaration, that the "human can only attain to full and 
 proper life in a community of minds.'' So far we 
 should readily grant the claims of idealists, while 
 firmly maintaining the position, that a first knowledge 
 of self is possible without previous, and without simul- 
 taneous and equal, knowledge of other selves. 
 
 It deserves yet to be noted that a man's self -con- 
 sciousness rises from the substance or capabilities of 
 his own individual soul, and is not produced by an outer 
 or another person or reality. Hence the knowledge 
 of other men is not necessary, as being the only ade- 
 quate means, for exciting the individual's potential- 
 ities of consciousness to realization; but the impres- 
 
102 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 sions and characters of material realities, and of low 
 animate beings, are sufficient, in themselves, to occa- 
 sion a considerable advancement of the realization of 
 consciousness. The disputable proposition has been 
 avouched, that ' * could a child grow up with lifeless na- 
 tures, there is nothing to indicate that he would become 
 as self-conscious as is now a fairly educated cat." But 
 it is certain that a cat, because of the inferior possibili- 
 ties of its nature, never becomes more than a cat though 
 domiciled within the most cultivated and consummate 
 human environment; and a child, because of the su- 
 perior possibilities of its nature, would not be less than 
 human if it had only a feline or lifeless environment ; 
 its conscious mentality would surely develop to some- 
 thing much higher than that ever possessed by a cat. 
 
 As regards the second particular doctrine spoken of 
 above, it must be denied that our knowledge of ex- 
 ternal realities which are not persons has a necessary 
 dependence upon or association with our knowledge of 
 other people; but we must yet grant that it is often 
 much influenced by the latter knowledge. This influ- 
 encing, however, is mostly of a confirmatory nature. 
 It certainly does not give reality to physical objects, 
 or contribute truth to our perceptions of them; but it 
 increases and completes our assurance of the truth- 
 fulness of our perceptions of the objects. We are lia- 
 ble to illusions and hallucinations ; we mistake subjec- 
 tive phantoms for objective realities; but when other 
 people perceive the same objects we perceive we are es- 
 tablished in our belief that the objects are real, that our 
 perceptions are not illusory. As Mr. Spencer says: 
 "What is perceived by many or all as an external ob- 
 ject cannot be reasonably regarded as a subjective 
 state." Though we are liable to hallucinations, yet 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 103 
 
 our perceptions are not all likely to be hallucinations ; 
 the fact is, they are very generally not so, but are true 
 to realities. Accordingly, one might have a true per- 
 ception of a physical object, if there were not another 
 human or perceiving being on earth. "What appears 
 to all exists ' ' ; but it seems certain that what appears to 
 one may be as really existent as what appears to many 
 or all. The hidden treasure of a miser has not less 
 reality in itself and for him because it is unknown to 
 others. The truth of a percept depends chiefly upon 
 the individual's subjective capabilities and process of 
 knowledge, not upon the fact that other persons also 
 know or are known ; and while his perception of objects 
 is often confirmed by the knowledge that other men 
 perceive the same, it is not produced, or determined, or 
 rendered genuine solely, by that knowledge. 
 
 The doctrine that our perceptions of external things 
 are necessarily dependent upon or bound up with our 
 perceptions of our fellow-men appears, when duly con- 
 sidered, to be but a petitio principii. It may be well 
 asked, how do we come to know our fellow-men? how 
 do we get possession of the presumed previous knowl- 
 edge of them? The same principles and process of in- 
 ferential knowledge by which we perceive other men, 
 at any rate as psycho-physical organisms, are sufficient 
 to secure for us an entirely independent knowledge of 
 the lifeless objects of nature; they enable us easily 
 and readily to acquire a knowledge of such objects with- 
 out any necessary help at all from our knowledge of 
 other men. In presupposing knowledge of our fel- 
 lows, there is evidently included this possibility. 
 
 Idealistic monists, in maintaining and emphasizing 
 the productive and constructive activity of the mind in 
 
104 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 cognition, against the ' 'window' ' theory of knowl- 
 edge, and against every theory of entire mental pas- 
 sivity, have performed, it must be admitted, a very 
 valuable service for epistemology. They exhibit and 
 sustain a truth of the foremost importance in knowl- 
 edge, which all schools of the science of knowledge must 
 accept. They express much truth even in such ag- 
 gressive assertions of theirs as the following: "All 
 perception is but an unfolding of the inner mental na- 
 ture '■' ; " The world of knowledge is a revelation of our 
 own nature as sentient beings"; "All knowledge is 
 making explicit what is implicit in mind. ' ' * These 
 statements are true of the world of our immediate per- 
 ception or knowledge; for our immediate knowledge, 
 as was above urged, is wholly of the modes of the mind, 
 of the possibilities of the mind made actual, of what is 
 implicit in mind made explicit; it embraces nothing 
 outside of mind. But in this there is involved no sup- 
 port for the momentous idealistic assumption that the 
 unf oldings or revelations of our mental nature are the 
 only facts or objects of knowledge, and that there are no 
 objects of knowledge and science outside and inde- 
 pendent of the unf oldings of our mind, or that external 
 nature, including our fellow-men, is a "constituent 
 part of our consciousness"; that there is never com- 
 
 i "What science finds in Nature is not something foreign to mind, but 
 that which, as essentially rational, is a discovery to mind of its own 
 latent wealth. It is not only a revelation of the world to the observ- 
 ing mind, but of the observing mind to itself." (J. Caird, Philosophy 
 of Religion, p. 123.) 
 
 The sciences "are the best up-to-date account which mind can give 
 of itself." (Muirhead, Ethics, p. 219.) 
 
 "Our experience of the world is our experience of ourselves/' (E. 
 Caird, Problems of Philosophy, p. 16.) 
 
 "What is all science, if not the existence of things in you, in your 
 reason ? What is all art and culture, if not your existence in the things 
 to which you give measure, form and order?" ( Schleiermacher. ) 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 105 
 
 bined with the immediate knowledge of the facts of 
 mind a representative knowledge of real extra-mental 
 objects. 
 
 There is also a certain truth in such idealistic dec- 
 larations of mental productivity as this : ' ' As the depth 
 and intensity of the intellect increases, the limits of the 
 external world extend also. . . . The mind of the sav- 
 age is exactly measured by the world he has around 
 him. ... In the course of history we can see the intel- 
 lect growing deeper and broader, and the limits of the 
 world recede simultaneously with the advance of the 
 mind. ' ' 1 The external world not only expands or 
 grows for us with the growth of our intellect, but even 
 exists for us by means of our intellect. It exists for us 
 by our intellect, certainly not because it is created by, 
 but because it is known to us only by, our intellect. 
 The knowledge of the external world is entirely in the 
 representations made of it for us by our intellect. 
 Therefore, though the external world exists altogether 
 independently of us and our faculty, yet it exists for us 
 by our faculty, on the principle that only that really ex- 
 ists for us which is known to us. The external world 
 grows for us with the growth of our intellect. The 
 world of the man is vastly larger and richer than that 
 of the child ; that of the savant, than that of the savage ; 
 and that of the modern intellect, than that of the an- 
 
 i Wallace, Proleg. to Hegel's Logic, 2nd ed., pp. 269, 270. 
 
 The following are examples of the strongest utterances: 
 
 "It is just in the effort to understand the world that the intelligence 
 grows and comes into possession of itself; and, conversely, its under- 
 standing of the world is conditioned by its own growth. The world 
 cannot answer unless the mind question it, and the nature of the ques- 
 tions is at every step determined by the stage of development which the 
 mind has attained/' (E. Caird, Evolution of Religion, I. p. 11.) 
 
 "The external world is the means by which our own nature ('or the 
 divine nature') is progressively communicated to us." 
 
 "Intelligence creates and sustains our real world." 
 
106 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 dent. But this is so. not because the growing intellect 
 creates the growth of the external world: but because 
 it produces the growth of our knowledge of the external 
 world. Our intellect does not progressively create ex- 
 ternal nature, but progressively cognizes it. Nature, 
 in its externality and independence of the human mind, 
 is precisely the same however little the savage, and 
 however much the philosopher, may know of it : but the 
 extent of it for each yet depends upon the development 
 of his intellect, because the extent of his knowledge of 
 it so depends. Further, the remarkable variety in ele- 
 ments and associations and structures of the inner 
 world of the intellect corresponds, as it gradually de- 
 velops, to the remarkable variety, in extensions, mo- 
 tions, and connections, of things in the outer world; 
 but may never, in the most advanced, multifarious 
 and extensive knowledge, be fully equal to the latter. 
 It may then be said finally, that there is an implicit uni- 
 versality in our mind, because of its capability of form- 
 ing representative notions of a limitless multitude of 
 external objects and of their sequences, coexistences 
 and interactions. 1 
 
 Dualistic realism has made some progress, we trust, 
 since the time of Locke, and has got beyond the con- 
 ception of mind as a tabula rasa, or "white paper void 
 of all characters,'' or a ik dark room"; and, in general, 
 beyond the " window " or scribbler theory of knowledge 
 — the theory which, as was observed before, maintains 
 that external objects communicate all knowledge of 
 themselves to the mind, and that the mind in the recep- 
 tion of the knowledge is as passive as an empty room 
 
 i ■•Psychical causality is an inexhaustible process ever bringing forth 
 new psychical products." 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT 107 
 
 in receiving light or as a sheet of paper in receiving 
 marks. 
 
 It has become evident that the mind is not only 
 passive in perception, bnt is also active ; that its activ- 
 ity is far too important to be ignored or questioned; 
 that it receives no knowledge of external things from 
 them, but produces its knowledge of them by its own 
 action; that it supplies from its own internal sources 
 alone all the materials of percepts, and constructs per- 
 cepts by its own unifying efficiency. But in the recog- 
 nition of the generative and constructive activity of 
 mind in the formation of percepts or the cognitive 
 modes, there should be the most decided shunning of 
 the prime aberration of the idealists in their postula- 
 tion that the activity of the mind in perception is 
 wholly uninfluenced by outside objects, as there are no 
 outside objects to influence it; that the only objects are 
 the internal percepts or subject-objects, which have no 
 possible relation with real external things and can in 
 no degree or manner represent them. Realism con- 
 tends, on the contrary, that though the mind is to so 
 considerable an extent active in perception, it is also 
 to a very real extent dependent and passive; that 
 while percepts, or representations of external reali- 
 ties, are entirely constructed by the mind from ma- 
 terials furnished by the mind itself, yet the construc- 
 tion is initiated and controlled by the influence of the 
 realities; that percepts represent objects of particu- 
 lar shapes, sizes, times, motions, forces, not of its own 
 arbitrary purpose and perfectly self-originated and 
 independent activity, but because real outer objects 
 possessing these particular qualities influence the mind 
 by them in the formation of the percepts. Thus it is 
 
108 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 held that while the mind is so largely active in know- 
 ing external objects, the objects also are active upon 
 the mind in being known. 
 
 Again, realism has come to see itself under the ne- 
 cessity of admitting that it is not a satisfactory and 
 sufficient theory and proof of the existence of extra- 
 mental objects, to claim a belief in the existence of 
 such objects that is natural and necessary, that will 
 not permit the negation of itself, that cannot be ex- 
 pelled. This proof is conceived to be in itself inade- 
 quate, and has been abandoned by many. But cer- 
 tainly an irresistible belief in external objects uni- 
 versally exists, and is a very remarkable fact. Ideal- 
 ists are compelled to consider it; but their attempts 
 to account for it have been ignominious failures. The 
 belief always demands capabilities and processes of 
 knowledge which they do not recognize. Eealists 
 however feel that they cannot stop with an appeal to 
 this belief, certain and potent as it is; but are under 
 obligation to go on and give some account of the rise, 
 development and worth of the belief; or to show, in 
 the character and processes of our senses and the or- 
 dinary operations of our intellect, the possibility of 
 apprehending, or forming true and binding inferences 
 and representations of, external realities. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NATURE AND OUR PERCEPTION OF MATTER 
 
 In the preceding chapter we have given some consid- 
 eration to Object-Objects in general; now we come to 
 treat of a particular Object-Object, that is, Matter. 
 According to the more common understanding, matter 
 is an extended, inanimate, inert and permanent reality 
 entirely independent of onr mind or thought. 
 
 The scientific discussions of the nature of matter 
 have long had particular regard to the questions of the 
 divisibility of matter and the character and relation 
 of its ultimate elements. Metaphysicians have ar- 
 dently debated whether matter is infinitely divisible 
 or whether there is a limit to division. They have 
 agreed that though both alternatives are inconceiva- 
 ble, yet one of them must be true. 
 
 We are perfectly familiar with the divisibility of 
 the tangible material objects that we constantly en- 
 counter, as pieces of wood, lumps of earth, stone. We 
 may break a stone into pieces, and then break any one 
 of these pieces into smaller, and so on, until we can 
 divide no farther or not into perceivable fragments. 
 When partition ceases to be practicable, we may carry 
 it on many stages mentally and by aid of mathematical 
 symbols. The ideal division of matter is related to 
 what is called the "theoretical construction ' ' of mat- 
 ter. It is common to postulate the ideal division as 
 continued down to very minute particles called atoms. 
 
 109 
 
110 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 These are conceived to be separated from one another 
 by empty spaces, and to be held in equilibrium (even 
 with changing collocation) by their inherent attractive 
 and repulsive forces. By elements so related, it is 
 supposed, are constituted the tangible masses, the or- 
 dinary material objects, we meet with. The objects 
 seem to us to be perfectly continuous and solid because 
 our senses are not acute enough to discriminate the 
 constituent elements and the void spaces that separate 
 them. 
 
 What the substance or nature is of the so called 
 atoms, or of the conjectured atoms of atoms, is a 
 subject concerning which physicists confess the great- 
 est uncertainty. It is generally believed to be impos- 
 sible to tell whether they are electrical, or ethereal, 
 or of some other character; but future research may 
 solve the mystery. It is strange to be compelled to 
 admit that objects, which seem so well known and so 
 real, are thus as to their constituents unknown. 
 
 Respecting the question whether matter is infinitely 
 divisible, whether the atoms themselves are divisible 
 into subordinate atoms, and these again divisible into 
 fragments, and so on, some metaphysicians seem to 
 hold that, as we can think, or speak understandingly, 
 of the infinite divisibility of matter, therefore it must 
 be possible, or it could be effected if a sufficient force 
 could be applied. This would seem to involve the 
 possibility of dividing matter to nothingness, or to 
 unextended elements. Something similar to this 
 wholly unfounded and perverse presumption of a real 
 divisibility corresponding to a divisibility verbally 
 predicable, metaphysicians have endeavored to main- 
 tain respecting space. It seems unreasonable to sup- 
 pose that the last elements of matter are unextended; 
 
NATUEE OF MATTER 111 
 
 because of the manifest impossibility of unextended 
 elements constituting the extended objects we certainly 
 know. Any number of unextended units cannot make 
 up an extended thing. 
 
 The theory has been deliberately propounded that 
 the ultimate units of matter are unextended, or but 
 punctual, centres of force — of pure force free from 
 any substance or substratum. But the impossibility 
 of any multitude of such unextended centres compos- 
 ing any of the masses of matter which we are con- 
 stantly and clearly perceiving, is fatal to the theory. 
 The theory is entitled to consideration only upon the 
 supposition that the conjectural centres of force are 
 separated from one another by real void spaces, and 
 are maintained in equilibrium by their mutual attrac- 
 tions and repulsions. According to this view, a piece 
 of matter is a multitudinous group of centres of force 
 severed from one another, and firmly balanced, in real 
 space, and thus as a group possessing real and per- 
 ceivable extension and offering resistance. 
 
 The ideal division of matter into infinitesimal, ab- 
 solutely imperceivable particles, has led to some scep- 
 tical surmisings and assumptions as to the reality 
 and cognizability of any sort or form of matter. Some 
 have doubted and denied the reality of atoms, declar- 
 ing them to be only ideal. 1 Some have been led by 
 
 1 "These supposed actualities [mass-points, atoms], behind what can 
 possibly be seen or felt, are not only not absolute realities, they are 
 not even phenomenal realities; they are simply conceptions which the 
 physicist has reached by idealizing what he can see and feel; . . . 
 thoughts not things, ideas existing solely for the minds of physicists." 
 (Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. 102.) 
 
 "Natural science considers the world as a mechanism, and for that 
 purpose transforms the reality in a most complicated and ingenious 
 way. It puts in the place of the perceivable objects unperceivable 
 atoms which are merely products of mathematical construction quite 
 unlike any known thing." ( Miinsterberg, Psychology and Life, p. 20.) 
 
112 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 the conceptual divisibility of tangible masses, the 
 masses with which division is supposed to begin, to 
 doubt and deny the reality of the masses themselves; 
 and to consider them as wholly ideal, or as only ap- 
 pearances, or as things that vanish by partition. It 
 has been said that matter is entirely "unknowable,' ' 
 that "matter however conceived by us cannot be mat- 
 ter as it actually is. ' ' 1 An eminent physicist has as- 
 serted that "we do not know and are probably incapa- 
 ble of discovering what matter is." 
 
 Atoms may be held to be real, and not only ideal, 
 because they are attained by a division of tangible 
 and perceivable masses. They are reached by the 
 mental continuation of a division which may be actu- 
 ally carried to a distance unto fragments that are per- 
 ceivable. We come to them by a justifiable process of 
 inference from real and definitely knowable masses. 
 Then, though they are ideal, they are in this wise also 
 real. 
 
 The declarations, that we know not what matter is, 
 that it is quite incognizable, that matter as conceived 
 by us cannot be matter as it exists, and the like, are 
 far too sweeping and indiscriminating. It must be 
 conceded at once that we know not the ultimate con- 
 stituents of matter, whether they are electrical cor- 
 puscles, whirls of ether, or something else; in respect 
 to these, matter is certainly unknown. But matter as 
 composed of the conjectural constituents, that is, the 
 common material objects of our perception, — sticks of 
 wood, stone, rods and balls of metal, — are indisputably 
 known as to their extension, extension including figure 
 and magnitude. The material object, entirely un- 
 known as respects its ultimate elements and structure, 
 
 i Spencer, First Principles, p. 94. 
 
NATUEE OF MATTER 113 
 
 is yet clearly and certainly known as respects the form 
 and size of its mass. 
 
 The object may be compounded of elements whose 
 distances from one another are very many times longer 
 than the diameter of the elements themselves; but the 
 distances are yet very short for us, being undiscernible 
 by our sharpest sensibility. As consisting of a collec- 
 tion of such severed, but for us very close, elements, 
 held strongly in equipoise, the object has real exten- 
 sion, real stable figure and size, which are known by 
 us as they are. To this extent matter is truly knowa- 
 ble, is represented by us as it exists. In such a manner 
 we would contend for the duty of holding on to the 
 knowableness and reality of the ordinary material ob- 
 jects of our perceptions, against every mode of the 
 "theoretical construction" of matter that denies or is 
 inclined to deny these facts. We must not allow our- 
 selves to be beguiled out of them by any sort of meta- 
 physical sophistication. The ideal construction of the 
 interior of matter, so to speak, must always maintain 
 itself in consistency with matter as we perceive it in 
 its extension or in its shape and magnitude. The ex- 
 tended perceivable objects carry in themselves, in their 
 own being, the decisive proof that their ultimate con- 
 stituents cannot be unextended. Finally, it should be 
 remarked and accentuated that the knowledge of the 
 figure and magnitude of material objects is not an in- 
 significant knowledge, but forms a very large and im- 
 portant part of all the knowledge of matter contended 
 for by any sect of metaphysicians. 
 
 These considerations bring us directly to the supreme 
 question, How do we come to know especially the ex- 
 tension of material realities? Let us then, dismissing 
 
114 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 now every other question, proceed to wrestle with this 
 paramount problem. It is proposed to treat this great 
 problem of cognition with particular reference to the 
 Berkeleian immaterialism. This mode of procedure 
 seems advisable, because the great influence of Berkeley 
 upon present-day idealism and monism is unmistaka- 
 ble. The strongest argumentation in our time against 
 the matter of dualistic or natural realism is largely 
 drawn from Berkeley. We meet in current idealistic 
 literature frequent echoes of Berkeley such as these: 
 "All matter is given to us only as idea in our conscious- 
 ness" — "To talk about knowing the external world 
 through ideas which are merely within us, is to talk 
 of an inherent self-contradiction" — "A world external 
 to and independent of the mind would for us be for- 
 ever inaccessible" — "It would be impossible to com- 
 pare the internal idea with the external object." 
 
 But, first, since the theory of Berkeley took its start 
 from Locke's philosophy of the reality and cogniza- 
 bility of external bodies, and was developed in opposi- 
 tion to its main tenets, brief preliminary attention to 
 the doctrine of Locke will furnish important help to 
 the understanding of the teaching of Berkeley, will get 
 valuable light upon its course and conclusions. 
 
 Locke was a dualistic realist of the Cartesian type, 
 holding to matter as an extended substance distinct 
 from and independent of the substance of mind. As 
 to knowledge, and first as to knowledge in general, he 
 maintained that the only objects of immediate knowl- 
 edge are our ideas; that of matter and all external 
 things our knowledge is only inferential or mediate. 
 The media of the knowledge of external realities are 
 our immediately or intuitively known ideas. He says : 
 "The mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath 
 
PEECEPTION OF MATTER 115 
 
 no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it 
 alone does or can contemplate ' ' (Essay, IV. i. 1) ; and 
 then, as involved in this fundamental principle, he drew 
 the primary conclusion, that we can know external 
 things only by the "intervention" of the ideas we have 
 of them (IV. iv. 3). He says again emphatically, that 
 a man has "no notion of anything without him, but 
 by the idea he has of it in his mind" (II. xxxii. 25). 
 
 Ideas lead to a knowledge of external things by their 
 intervention, or by serving as media, in two respects 
 mainly: first, as being effects of external objects, and, 
 secondly, because of their conformity or agreement with 
 external objects; or, in other words, first, on account 
 of the causal relation between them and objects, and, 
 secondly, on account of the conformity between them 
 and objects. 
 
 As to the causation of ideas, Locke distinguishes and 
 compares the ideas that are produced in the mind by 
 the mind's own volition, as, for example in many in- 
 stances, memories and images, and the ideas that are 
 not produced by volition, but are forced into the mind 
 "whether we will or no," as sensations. He remarks 
 upon this important difference : ' ' There can be noth- 
 ing more certain than that the idea we receive from an 
 external object is in our minds : this is intuitive knowl- 
 edge. But whether there be anything more than barely 
 that idea in our minds, whether we can thence certainly 
 infer the existence of anything without us which cor- 
 responds to that idea, is that whereof some men think 
 there may be a question made ; because men may have 
 such ideas in their minds when no such thing exists, 
 no such object affects their senses. But yet here I 
 think we are provided with an evidence that puts us 
 past doubting: for I ask any one, whether he be not 
 
116 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 invincibly conscious to himself of a different percep- 
 tion when he looks on the sun by day, and thinks on it 
 by night ; when he actually tastes wormwood, or smells 
 a rose, or only thinks on that savour or odour! We 
 as plainly find the difference there is between an idea 
 revived in our minds by our memory, and [an idea] 
 actually coming into our minds by our senses, as we do 
 between any two distinct ideas' 9 (IV. ii. 14). He re- 
 marks again : ' ' There is a manifest difference between 
 the ideas laid up in my memory . . . and those which 
 force themselves upon me, and I cannot avoid having. 
 And therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, 
 and the brisk acting of some objects without me, whose 
 efficacy I cannot resist, that produces those ideas in 
 my mind, whether I will orno" (IV. xi. 5). 
 
 Here Locke obviously teaches that we infer the ex- 
 istence of external objects from the ideas they produce 
 in the mind. The mind produces some of its ideas by 
 its own volition, and knows itself as a cause ; when ideas 
 come to it without its own agency it is impelled by 
 them to infer outside causes. In his own words, we 
 have a knowledge "of the existence of particular ex- 
 ternal objects by that perception and consciousness we 
 have of the actual entrance of ideas from them." So 
 much for the cognition of outer things by the interven- 
 tion of ideas as effects. 
 
 We go on to consider Locke's doctrine of the cogni- 
 tion of external objects through the conformity of 
 ideas to the objects, or through the intervention of 
 ideas which as effects have a particular conformity 
 or agreement with the objects or with their qualities. 
 As to the conformity or agreement of ideas with ex- 
 ternal things or their qualities, Locke asserts first, that 
 there are "two sorts of ideas that we may be assured 
 
PEECEPTION OF MATTER 117 
 
 agree with things/ ' He means our ideas of the pri- 
 mary, and our ideas of the secondary, qualities of 
 things. He holds further that there are not only two 
 sorts of ideas that agree with things, but that there are 
 also two sorts of agreement of ideas with things. 
 First, the ideas of the primary qualities of bodies, 
 namely, of their extension, solidity, figure, motion, 
 agree with them by a distinct and peculiar mode of con- 
 formity; that is, the ideas are resemblances of the ex- 
 ternal qualities, or represent them to us as they really 
 exist. Secondly, the ideas of the secondary qualities 
 of external things, namely, our sensations of color, 
 sound, odor, are conformed to the external qualities, 
 but also by a distinct and special mode of conformity. 
 It should be remarked that colors, sounds, odors, etc., 
 which are mistakingly supposed to be properties of 
 external things, are, however, Locke is careful defi- 
 nitely to aver, entirely within us, are our sensations. 
 The only real secondary qualities of external bodies are 
 the " operations " or " motions' ' of their minute or in- 
 sensible particles, which excite in the mind the subjec- 
 tive secondary qualities. But the subjective secondary 
 qualities, the colors, sounds, have their specific type 
 of conformity to the external secondary. They con- 
 form to them not as resemblances, or true representa- 
 tions, but merely as having a regular or constant con- 
 nection with them, or as being constant effects but quite 
 unlike them. Locke explicitly says: "The ideas of 
 primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, 
 and their patterns do really exist in the bodies them- 
 selves ; but the ideas produced in us by these secondary 
 qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is 
 nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies them- 
 selves' ' (II. viii. 15). It deserves to be noticed here 
 
118 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 that how external objects "produce" or " excite' ' in 
 us ideas, either those that resemble, or those that do 
 not resemble, qualities of the objects, is said by Locke 
 to be wholly incomprehensible by us. He rests with 
 the general declaration, that the production results 
 from the will and power of God. 
 
 The weakest part of Locke's theory of external per- 
 ception is his exposition of the alleged conformity of 
 some of our ideas, by resemblance, to the primary quali- 
 ties of bodies. This principle he never explained or 
 established. He never gave a sufficient reason for as- 
 serting or conjecturing such a mode of conformity. 
 He even maintained a principle that would appear to 
 render resemblance of internal idea to external quality 
 impossible. For he seems to have given full assent to 
 the Cartesian view, that matter is extended, and mind 
 or thought is not extended. The most important ques- 
 tion then for him to answer respecting perception by 
 resemblance was, How can an unextended thought or 
 idea copy or truly represent external extension? Ap- 
 parently the only answer that could be given was, it is 
 impossible. 
 
 This very important inquiry did not escape the per- 
 spicacity of Locke, as is evident from the following re- 
 marks of his on a statement of P. Malebranche : ' - The 
 reason that he gives why material things cannot be 
 united to our souls after a manner that is necessary to 
 the soul's perceiving them, is this, viz., 'That material 
 things being extended, and the soul not, there is no 
 proportion between them. ' This, if it shows anything, 
 shows only that a soul and a body cannot be united, 
 because one has surface to be united by, and the other 
 none." (Exam. P. Malebranche' 's Opinion, sect. 5.) 
 He says again: "I shall here only take notice how 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 119 
 
 inconceivable it is to me, that a spiritual, i. e., an un- 
 extended, substance should represent to the mind an 
 extended figure. . . . Next, supposing I could conceive 
 an unextended substance to represent a figure, or be 
 the idea of a [an external] figure, the difficulty still re- 
 mains to conceive how it is my soul sees it" (18). And 
 again: " Impressions made on the retina by rays of 
 light, I think I understand; and motions from thence 
 continued to the brain may be conceived, and that these 
 produce ideas in our minds, I am persuaded, but in a 
 manner to me incomprehensible. This I can resolve 
 only into the good pleasure of God, whose ways are 
 past finding out" (10). It is therefore clear that 
 Locke had before his mind the central problem, How 
 can an unextended idea represent an external extended 
 thing? For his part he postulated such representa- 
 tion; but treated it as a miracle or mystery to be re- 
 ferred to the agency of God. 
 
 The very superior principle of his doctrine of ex- 
 ternal perception, namely, the assumed conformity by 
 resemblance of the internal idea to the external exten- 
 sion and figure, is thus left altogether without support, 
 indeed without any sufficient occasion for surmising it. 
 Locke's views, that we have immediate knowledge of 
 ideas, but no immediate knowledge of things outside 
 the mind, and that we can know outside things only by 
 the "intervention" or "mediation" of ideas, or by 
 conformity of ideas to the things, may be true enough ; 
 but his total failure to demonstrate the actuality or 
 possibility of intervention and of conformity espe- 
 cially by resemblance, further than simply ascribing 
 it to the good pleasure and unsearchable ways of God, 
 left a fundamental principle of his theory of the cogni- 
 tion of the external entirely unsustained and entirely 
 
120 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 incapable of withstanding assaults such as those of the 
 Berkeleian immaterialism. 
 
 Berkeley, to whom we now turn, fully accepts, in his 
 theory of knowledge and of existence, Locke's prin- 
 ciple, that we have immediate knowledge of ideas, but 
 not of any sort of objects external to the mind. Says 
 Philonous in the Third Dialogue: "The things im- 
 mediately perceived are ideas which exist only in the 
 mind. ' ' But though thus starting with a primary prin- 
 ciple of Locke, he soon abruptly departed from his 
 philosophy, especially from his theory of the cognition 
 and existence of material objects, and thenceforth an- 
 tagonized it with all his power. Locke held, as was 
 noted above, that though we have no immediate knowl- 
 edge of material objects, we have yet mediate knowl- 
 edge of them, by means of ideas as effects that the 
 objects produce in the mind, and also by means of the 
 correspondence of ideas to the objects, particularly 
 their resemblance to the primary qualities of the ob- 
 jects. In emphatic opposition to this view, Berkeley 
 holds that material substance, as commonly under- 
 stood, could not cause ideas in our mind; again, that 
 ideas could not resemble the primary qualities of ma- 
 terial substance; and, further, that granting that the 
 supposed external material substance existed, and 
 granting also even that our ideas resembled its primary 
 qualities, yet the fact of that resemblance could never 
 be known by us. He then draws the momentous con- 
 clusion that material substance does not exist and is 
 impossible. 
 
 1. Against Locke's view that material objects pro- 
 duce or excite ideas in the mind, Berkeley argues that 
 material objects, taken according to the usual definition, 
 as "passive," "inert," "senseless," "unthinking," 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 121 
 
 "unperceiving" things without the mind, could not be 
 the supporters of ideas and could not cause ideas in 
 the mind, or imprint or introduce them; and contends 
 that only an active being, a spirit, a spirit as possessing 
 especially volition, can be the cause or imparter of 
 ideas. He allows that from ideas as effects we can 
 infer a spirit as a cause, but never material substance. 
 "How," Philonous asks (Second Dialogue), "can that 
 which is inactive be a cause ; or that which is unthink- 
 ing be a cause of thought!" Again: "How can any 
 idea or sensation exist in, or be produced by, anything 
 but a mind or spirit! This indeed is inconceivable." 
 He says further (Third Dial.): "That a being en- 
 dowed with knowledge and will should produce or ex- 
 hibit ideas, is easily understood. But that a being 
 which is utterly destitute of these faculties should be 
 able to produce ideas, or in any sort to affect an in- 
 telligence, this I can never understand." He then 
 firmly asserts (Principles, lxxiii) "that we have no 
 longer any reason to suppose the being of matter ; nay, 
 that it is utterly impossible there should be any such 
 thing, so long as that word is taken to denote an un- 
 thinking substratum of qualities or accidents wherein 
 they exist without the mind." Again he says (vii) : 
 ' ' To have an idea is all one as to perceive ; that there- 
 fore wherein colour, figure and the like qualities exist, 
 must perceive them; hence it is clear there can be no 
 unthinking substance or substratum of those ideas. 
 Further of the objective existence of matter Philonous 
 affirms (Third Dial.) : "The question between the ma- 
 terialists and me is not whether things have a real ex- 
 istence out of the mind of this or that person, but 
 whether they have an absolute existence distinct from 
 being perceived by God, and exterior to all minds." 
 
122 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 He makes also the interesting remark (Prin., xxxv) : 
 ' ' The only thing whose existence we deny, is that which 
 philosophers call matter or corporeal substance. And 
 in doing of this, there is no damage done to the rest 
 of mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss it." 
 
 Berkeley's reasoning against the possibility of ideas 
 existing in or being produced by material objects pro- 
 ceeds upon two significant assumptions, one of which 
 regards the nature of ideas, and the other the nature 
 of matter. With these assumptions his argument is 
 made the more plausible. First, as to the nature of 
 ideas, he supposes that ideas are not modes, modifica- 
 tions, attributes, of mind, but are realities distinct from 
 mind. Though he says that ideas cannot exist exterior 
 to and independently of mind, that their existence con- 
 sists in being perceived, that esse is percipi, yet he 
 plainly declares that they are quite distinct and differ- 
 ent from mind. Spirits and ideas, he maintains, are 
 two kinds of being that "are entirely distinct and 
 heterogeneous" (Prin., lxxxiv). He treats ideas as 
 if they can pass or be conveyed from one mind to 
 another or be introduced and exhibited by one mind 
 to another, can at different times be the possession of 
 different minds. "When I deny sensible things an ex- 
 istence out of the mind," says Philonous in the Third 
 Dial., "I do not mean my mind in particular, but all 
 minds. Now it is plain they have an existence ex- 
 terior to my mind, since I find them by experience to 
 be independent of it. There is therefore some other 
 mind wherein they exist during the intervals between 
 the times of my perceiving them; as likewise they did 
 before my birth, and would do after my supposed an- 
 nihilation." If ideas are to be thus regarded as in- 
 separable from mind, and yet also entirely distinct 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 123 
 
 from mind and of a heterogeneous nature, then it is 
 indeed difficult to understand how they can exist in 
 unthinking material substance and be produced by it in 
 minds or in any wise imparted. But it is quite another 
 case, and favors quite a different conclusion from 
 Berkeley's, if ideas are to be regarded not as per- 
 manent realities distinct from mind, but as the mind's 
 transient modes, which so long as they exist are al- 
 ways and entirely inseparable from mind. This theory 
 of the relation of ideas to mind does not forbid the 
 possibility of material objects occasioning ideas in the 
 mind, and is not open to the strictures of Berkeley. 
 
 Respecting the nature of matter, Berkeley thought 
 the current view made matter entirely inert. If that 
 were really maintained to be the true character of 
 matter, then his theory that matter of such a character 
 could not contain ideas or cause or produce ideas in a 
 mind, would be indisputable. But science has long 
 taught that, though masses of matter may be said to 
 be inert, yet all are seats of swift activities, of notable 
 molecular forces and motions. This view makes possi- 
 ble a contrary conclusion from Berkeley's. Material 
 things as being, though senseless and unthinking, yet 
 not without activities within, may be supposed capa- 
 ble, by these motions of their particles, and also by 
 molar motions, to excite directly and indirectly the 
 mind to produce of itself ideas, that is to say, its own 
 peculiar and inseparable modes. It is therefore ob- 
 vious that Berkeley's erroneous doctrine of the on- 
 tological severance of ideas from mind, and his mis- 
 taken conception of the teaching of the " philosophers " 
 respecting the activities of matter, very greatly reduce 
 the cogency of his reasoning regarding the rise of 
 ideas and the incapability of matter to cause them. 
 
124 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 2. Berkeley again contends vigorously against 
 Locke's doctrine that ideas resemble the qualities of 
 material substance. He holds that an idea may re- 
 semble another idea, and one spirit resemble another 
 spirit; but that idea or spirit can in no wise resemble 
 a material object. On this point he remarks: "But 
 say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist with- 
 out the mind, yet there may be things like them whereof 
 they are copies or resemblances, which things exist 
 without the mind in an unthinking substance. I an- 
 swer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea ; a colour 
 or figure can be like nothing but another colour or 
 figure. If we look but ever so little into our thoughts, 
 we shall find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness 
 except only between our ideas. Again, I ask whether 
 those supposed originals or external things, of which 
 our ideas are the pictures or representations, be them- 
 selves perceivable or no? if they are, then they are 
 ideas, and we have gained our point; but if you say 
 they are not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense 
 to assert a colour is like something which is invisible; 
 hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and 
 so of the rest." (Prin. } viii.) Again: "It is evi- 
 dent . . . that extension, figure, and motion are only 
 ideas existing in the mind, and that an idea can be like 
 nothing but another idea" (ix). Further: "The 
 very being of an idea implies passiveness and inert- 
 ness in it, insomuch that it is impossible for an idea 
 to do anything, or, strictly speaking, to be the cause of 
 anything ; neither can it be the resemblance or pattern 
 of any active being" (xxv). 
 
 3. A third, and much stronger, argument of Berkeley 
 against the Lockian theory of the perception and re- 
 ality of external matter runs thus: Granting for the 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 125 
 
 moment that the supposed external matter exists, and 
 granting even that our ideas resemble it or its quali- 
 ties, yet the fact of the resemblance could not at all be 
 known by us. For to cognize the resemblance we must 
 be able to compare ideas with external objects; but to 
 compare an idea with an unknown external object is 
 impossible. He observes: "So long as men thought 
 that real things subsisted without the mind, and that 
 their knowledge was only so far forth real as it was 
 conformable to real things, it follows, that they could 
 not be certain that they had any real knowledge at all. 
 For how can it be known, that the things which are 
 perceived are conformable to those which are not per- 
 ceived, or exist without the mind." (Prin., lxxxvi.) 
 Says Philonous in the Third Dial.: "It is your opin- 
 ion the ideas we perceive by our senses are not real 
 things, but images or copies of them. Our knowledge 
 therefore is no further real, than as our ideas are the 
 true representations of those originals. But as these 
 supposed originals are in themselves unknown, it is 
 impossible to know how far our ideas resemble them; 
 or whether they resemble them at all. We cannot 
 therefore be sure we have any real knowledge.' ' 1 
 
 This is Berkeley's most forcible argument against 
 the knowableness and existence of material substance ; 
 and it is confidently held to this day by idealists gener- 
 ally to admit of no reply. It must be granted that in 
 any real refutation of Berkeley the argument must be 
 squarely met and answered. We may observe in pass- 
 ing that the thought is not original to Berkeley. It 
 
 1 Hume thus repeats Berkeley's deduction : "The mind has never any- 
 thing present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any 
 experience of their connection with objects. The supposition of such a 
 connection is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning." {Works, 
 IV. p. 174.) 
 
126 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 had suggested itself to Locke, as is obvious from the 
 following query: "How shall the mind, when it per- 
 ceives nothing but its ideas, know that they agree with 
 things themselves f ' ' (Essay, IV. iv. 3.) Locke how- 
 ever holds, as was above noted, that we do know the 
 agreement. Berkeley in direct opposition contends that 
 we could never know it. 
 
 To this reasoning against the possibility of a knowl- 
 edge of material objects by means of the resemblance 
 of our ideas to the objects, Berkeley adds the follow- 
 ing against a knowledge of the external objects by 
 means of their causal relation to our ideas : " I do not 
 see what reason can induce us to believe the existence 
 of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, 
 since the very patrons of matter themselves do not 
 pretend there is any necessary connection betwixt them 
 and our ideas. I say, it is granted on all hands (and 
 what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the like, puts 
 it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be af- 
 fected with all the ideas we have now, though no bodies 
 existed without resembling them. Hence it is evident 
 the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for 
 the producing our ideas; since it is granted they are 
 produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced 
 always, in the same order we see them in at present, 
 without their concurrence. ' ' (Prin., xviii.) 
 
 4. A very important part of Berkeley's argumenta- 
 tion in opposition to the cognizability and reality of 
 external matter is his contention that the so-called 
 primary and indispensable qualities of the supposed 
 matter are really mental or are really in the mind, and 
 not at all outside of mind ; that to hold that extension, 
 figure and magnitude, are exterior to mind is an en- 
 tirely false localization. He reasons in this wise: 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 127 
 
 All admit that the secondary qualities, sounds, colors, 
 etc., exist in the mind alone. Now the primary quali- 
 ties, extension, figure, are from the first so closely 
 united with the secondary qualities that they cannot be 
 severed from them even in thought. Hence, if the 
 secondary qualities are in the mind, so must be the pri- 
 mary. The fact of mental extension, the extension of 
 sensations, then, he regards as complete proof against 
 the hypothesis of extra-mental extension. He supposes 
 that in his recognition of the subjective extension he 
 scores decisively against the " patrons of matter/ ' 
 They are left nothing to stand on. Every material 
 quality has been drawn into, or shown to exist in, the 
 mind. None of them is outside ; and matter is an im- 
 possible substratum. "They who assert," says Berke- 
 ley, "that figure, motion and the rest of the primary 
 or original qualities, do exist without the mind, in un- 
 thinking substances, do at the same time acknowledge 
 that colours, sounds, heat, cold, and such like secondary 
 qualities, do not, which they tell us are sensations ex- 
 isting in the mind alone, that depend on and are occa- 
 sioned by the different size, texture, and motion of the 
 minute particles of matter. This they take for an un- 
 doubted truth, which they can demonstrate beyond all 
 exception. Now if it be certain that those original 
 [the primary] qualities are inseparably united with the 
 other sensible qualities, and not, even in thought, capa- 
 ble of being abstracted from them, it plainly follows 
 that they exist only in the mind. . . . For my own part 
 I see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an 
 idea of a body extended and moved, but I must withal 
 give it some colour or other sensible quality which is 
 acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, ex- 
 tension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other 
 
128 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 qualities are inconceivable. Where therefore the other 
 sensible qualities are, there must these be also, to wit, 
 in the mind and nowhere else." (Prin., x.) He as- 
 serts also: "It is evident . . . that extension, figure, 
 and motion, are only ideas existing in the mind, and 
 that an idea can be like nothing but another idea, and 
 that consequently neither they nor their archetypes 
 can exist in an unperceiving substance. Hence it is 
 plain that the very notion of what is called matter, or 
 corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it" 
 (ix). And again: "All (place or) extension exists 
 only in the mind" (lxvii). He says in the New 
 Theory of Vision, sect, xliii: "I appeal to any man's 
 experience, whether the visible extension of any object 
 doth not appear as near to him, as the colour of that 
 object ; nay, whether they do not both seem to be in the 
 very same place. Is not the extension we see coloured, 
 and is it possible for us, so much as in thought, to 
 separate and abstract colour from extension? Now 
 where the extension is, there surely is the figure, and 
 there the motion too. ' ' x 
 
 To a certain length Berkeley's reasoning regarding 
 
 i Hume thus restates Berkeley's doctrine of the subjectivity of spatial 
 extension: "It is universally allowed by modern inquirers, that all the 
 sensible qualities of objects, such as hard, soft, hot, cold, white, black, 
 etc., are merely secondary, and exist not in the objects themselves, but 
 are perceptions of the mind, without any external archetype or model 
 which they represent. If this be allowed with regard to secondary 
 qualities, it must also follow with regard to the supposed primary 
 qualities of extension and solidity; nor can the latter be any more 
 entitled to that denomination than the former. The idea of extension 
 is entirely acquired from the senses of sight and feeling; and if all 
 the qualities, perceived by the senses, be in the mind, not in the object, 
 the same conclusion must reach the idea of extension, which is wholly 
 dependent on the sensible ideas, or the ideas of secondary qualities. . . . 
 Extension that is neither tangible nor visible cannot possibly be con- 
 ceived." Hume yet adds the striking remark, in speaking of Berkeley's 
 sceptical arguments in general: "They admit of no answer, and pro- 
 duce no conviction." (Works, IV. pp. 175, 176.) 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 129 
 
 the reality of mental or internal extension is cogent; 
 his conclusion is sustained by many respectable psy- 
 chologists and by indisputable facts. The primary 
 quality of extension is as certainly in the mind as the 
 secondary qualities of color and sound. Our sensa- 
 tions and percepts as really possess extension as an 
 attribute, as they possess color. Extension and color 
 in fact are inseparably bound together as the proper- 
 ties of the same unitary sensation. But in one im- 
 portant respect Berkeley pushes his reasoning in this 
 instance to an illogical extreme. To prove that exten- 
 sion is in the mind as a property of sensations and 
 percepts, does not prove, what he assumes it does, 
 namely, that extension cannot be also a quality of 
 things outside the mind. To demonstrate that exten- 
 sion and figure are in the mind, does not demonstrate 
 that they are "in the mind alone' ' or "nowhere else." 
 
 This conception of Berkeley, that extension is a 
 property of sensations or ideas, was a very notable 
 move in one respect beyond the doctrine that prevailed 
 in his day, the doctrine of Descartes and Locke, namely, 
 that matter is extended, but thoughts, ideas, percepts, 
 are unextended. And it may be added that, though di- 
 rectly contrary to all Berkeley himself meditated and 
 designed and expected, it constitutes one of the most 
 considerable advances ever made in the development 
 of the philosophy of external perception. 
 
 But it must be acknowledged that Berkeley's theory 
 of mental extension is far from being complete, ma- 
 ture and self-consistent. He promulgated opinions 
 that seem irreconcilable with it. For instance, he 
 plainly asserts that the mind is unextended. Philonous 
 says in the Third Dialogue: "The mind, spirit, or 
 soul, is that indivisible, unextended thing, which thinks, 
 
130 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 acts and perceives. I say indivisible because unex- 
 tended; and unextended, because extended, figured, 
 moveable things are ideas.' ' This inevitably raises 
 the grave question, How can an unextended mind con- 
 tain extended, figured, moveable things or ideas, or how 
 can extended ideas find place in an unextended mind? 
 Further on in the same Dialogue the antagonist Hylas 
 directly presses this same question, as follows: " Ex- 
 plain to me now, O Philonous ! how it is possible there 
 should be room for all those trees and houses to exist 
 in your mind. Can extended things be contained in 
 that which is unextended V ' Philonous replies: 
 "When I speak of objects as existing in the mind or 
 imprinted on the senses, I would not be understood in 
 the gross literal sense, as when bodies are said to 
 exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression upon 
 wax. My meaning is only that the mind comprehends 
 or perceives them ; and that it is affected from without, 
 or by some being distinct from itself." But the reply 
 is certainly very inadequate and unsatisfactory. 
 
 Again, in his discussion of extension in the mind, 
 Berkeley propounds the peculiar distinction of exten- 
 sion as idea and extension as attribute. Speaking of 
 the primary qualities of extension and figure, he says : 
 "Those qualities are in the mind only as they are per- 
 ceived by it, that is, not by way of mode or attribute, 
 but only by way of idea; and it no more follows that 
 the soul or mind is extended because extension exists 
 in it alone, than it does that it is red or blue because 
 those colours are on all hands acknowledged to exist 
 in it, and nowhere else." (Prin., xlix.) This view 
 of extension existing in the mind as idea and not as 
 mode or attribute, is somewhat in accord with the doc- 
 trine of Berkeley already noticed, that ideas are not 
 
PEECEPTION OF MATTER 131 
 
 modes of mind, but distinct and separable realities in 
 our mind. Further, there seems to be involved in 
 these teachings the doctrine which was more expressly 
 and fully set forth afterwards by Kant, that the idea 
 or appearance of extension can subsist in the mind as a 
 form of sense where there is not the attribute of exten- 
 sion, or can arise and exist entirely without and apart 
 from real extension. We would here avouch, before 
 going any farther, that this doctrine appears to be ab- 
 solutely unfounded and improbable. Eather it should 
 be maintained, that real extension is the indispensable 
 condition of the appearance or idea of extension; that 
 if real extension were not present there would not be 
 the idea ; that the idea must have a foundation in the 
 attribute or reality; that, as Berkeley in fact seems at 
 times to hold, the idea has the real attribute of exten- 
 sion or is itself actually extended. The conception that 
 the idea and the attribute of extension are inseparable, 
 that the idea cannot exist without the attribute, would 
 render Berkeley's theory of extension of ideas more 
 certain and finished than it can be on the supposition 
 that idea exists apart from or independently of the 
 attribute or of real extension. 1 
 
 Further, though Berkeley plainly affirms, as in pas- 
 sages already quoted, that color and extension are in- 
 separably united, and must subsist together in the 
 
 i Both the general forms of our sensibility, extension and time, be- 
 cause of their universality and necessity, must be supposed to differ, in 
 relation to the structure and productivity of the mind, from the par- 
 ticular matter or content of sensations, the particular colors, sounds, 
 etc.- The ideas of the general forms have their foundation in, and are 
 but revelations of, real attributes of mind, real extension and time. 
 The ideas are produced by, or are produced from, the attributes; though 
 they are never empty of or divorced from particular sense-matter. We 
 cannot reasonably ascribe to the mind a creative potency equal to the 
 genesis of the ideas of extension and time from the extensionless and 
 timeless. Extended colors are produced by the extended. 
 
132 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 mind, yet in other places lie appears to contradict him- 
 self by asserting that color is not extended and may 
 be known as without extension. In the New Theory of 
 Vision, when comparing and contrasting the two kinds 
 of extension, namely, "tangible extension' ' and "visi- 
 ble extension," and affirming their entire heterogeneity 
 and disparity, he appears to hold that we may perceive 
 color without extension; and, in general, that by sight 
 we have original knowledge of light and colors, but not 
 of extension in any dimension, not depth, nor trans- 
 versal extension either lineal or superficial. Colors, 
 without real extension in themselves, he seems to mean, 
 become by association signs of the original and imme- 
 diate experiences of extension, that is, the tactual and 
 muscular experiences, and thus afford us a symbolized 
 or mediate cognition of extension and space. 
 
 The most faulty part of Berkeley's speculation on 
 spatial extension is his confused, uncertain and errone- 
 ous conception of the nature of extension, distance and 
 space. According to his notion apparently, space has 
 no existence apart from the muscular sensations ac- 
 companying the movements of our bodily organs. His 
 teaching seems to involve in embryo what may be called 
 the muscular-sense theory of the nature and cognition 
 of space, which has been so elaborately developed by 
 psychologists in later days. He remarks: "When I 
 excite a motion in some part of my body, if it be free 
 or without resistance, I say there is space ; but if I find 
 resistance, then I say there is body ; and in proportion 
 as the resistance to motion is lesser or greater, I say 
 the space is more or less pure. So that when I speak 
 of pure or empty space, it is not to be supposed that 
 the word space stands for an idea distinct from, or con- 
 ceivable without body and motion [and for something 
 
PEECEPTION OF MATTER 133 
 
 existing outside the mind]. . . . When therefore sup- 
 posing all the world to be annihilated besides my own 
 body, I say there still remains pure space, thereby noth- 
 ing else is meant but only that I conceive it possible for 
 the limbs of my body to be moved on all sides without 
 the least resistance; but if that too were annihilated, 
 then there could be no motion, and consequently no 
 space.' ' (Prin.y cxvi.) The outcome of this doc- 
 trine is, that the idea of space and space itself consist 
 of certain pure temporal series of sensations. But 
 it would seem that pure temporal series of sensations, 
 muscular, or both tactual and muscular howsoever com- 
 bined, could never of themselves constitute or originally 
 reveal and measure extension or space. 1 
 
 Notwithstanding the apparently very considerable 
 lack of correctness, completeness and consistency in 
 Berkeley's doctrine of mental extension, he evidently 
 taught at times that extension is a property of ideas, 
 or sensations and percepts, and that we have immediate 
 knowledge of extension in them; as also, that there is 
 no extension, or no other extension, outside ideas and 
 mind. We have asserted above that, when and so far 
 as Berkeley taught the extension of sensations and 
 percepts, he promulgated a true doctrine, and took a 
 
 i As maintaining extension to be an original property of color, and 
 as opposing incisively the Berkeleian and muscular-sense hypothesis of 
 spatial extension, I quote briefly from two eminent psychologists of our 
 time: — 
 
 Professor James: "Retinal sensations are spatial; and were they 
 not, no amount of 'synthesis' with equally spaceless motor sensations 
 could intelligibly make them so." {Psychology, II. 277.) 
 
 Professor Ktilpe: "The most original space determination, that of 
 which the eye is capable, altogether independently of movement, is ex- 
 tension. The field of vision first seen by the congenitally blind after 
 operation, — seen, i.e., before the patient has learned to put a definite 
 spatial interpretation upon his eye movements, — is extended." (Out- 
 lines of Psychology (Titchener tr.), p. 369.) 
 
134 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 very definite and manifest step beyond Descartes and 
 Locke. We have also ventured to affirm that, though 
 entirely contrary to the thought and purpose of Berke- 
 ley, it is one of the most significant forward strides 
 ever made in the science of the perception of the ex- 
 ternal. It has this importance because it exhibits one 
 of the primary conditions of the perception of the ex- 
 ternal more expressly and positively than it was ever 
 exhibited before. 
 
 The cognition of material objects, considered as ex- 
 tended, figured and solid realities outside and inde- 
 pendent of the mind, depends upon two principal condi- 
 tions supplied by the mind itself; namely, mental ex- 
 tension, extension of sensations and percepts, and men- 
 tal causation; or extension within the mind, and the 
 causal relation within the mind. These provisions be- 
 ing in the mind, and therefore immediately and cer- 
 tainly known, are the means, the sufficient but indis- 
 pensable media, for the perception of the outer material 
 objects. Both conditions are consciously treated of and 
 maintained by Berkeley; the former imperfectly and 
 faultily, as we have just noted; and the latter more 
 truly and fully, as will be seen hereafter. 
 
 As to extension and the other primary qualities of 
 the supposed external matter, he earnestly upholds, 
 as we have seen, the doctrine that they are as really 
 in the mind as are the secondary qualities ; and in rec- 
 ognizing and maintaining the subjectivity of the pri- 
 mary qualities, he thought he was effectually "scoop- 
 ing" the materialists or those who contested for the 
 existence and the mediate perceptibility of external 
 matter. 
 
 In contending for mental extension or the extension 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 135 
 
 of ideas, Berkeley wrought one very important result ; 
 namely, he made provision, yet altogether contrary to 
 his own desire and intention, against the gravest flaw in 
 Locke's doctrine of external perception. As already 
 observed, one of the primary principles in Locke 's the- 
 ory of the mediate perception of material objects is, 
 that there is a resemblance between our ideas and the 
 primary qualities of the objects. But Locke never rec- 
 ommended this doctrine of resemblance by any scien- 
 tific proof. Nay, in the advocacy of it he seems to have 
 involved himself in helpless inconsistency. For he 
 believed that ideas or sensations are unextended; and 
 obviously an unextended sensation cannot resemble or 
 copy, or be a true representation of, an extended thing. 
 It can afford no basis for inferring or imagining such 
 an external thing. So far Locke's theory of mediate 
 perception of the extended external by " agreement' ' 
 or "conformity" was untenable and came to naught. 
 
 But at this juncture Berkeley comes forward with 
 what is a most important contribution to the theory. 
 He maintains that sensations are not unextended, but 
 extended. He indeed insists, on the ground of the ex- 
 tension of sensations and percepts, that the so-called 
 primary qualities of matter are really within the mind, 
 and not at all outside ; that external matter has no ex- 
 istence; and that consequently Locke's theory of the 
 representative perception of matter is inept and nuga- 
 tory. However, instead of disproving the existence 
 of matter and overthrowing Locke's theory of the per- 
 ception of it, as he expected and designed, he is in fact, 
 as already noted, laboring for the very opposite end. 
 In the extension of sensations he recognizes and af- 
 firms a property by which sensations may copy or truly 
 represent material objects as really as one extended 
 
136 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 idea or percept may represent or be like another; and 
 supplies to Locke's theory what enables it to contend, 
 if for nothing more, at least certainly for this, that the 
 mediate perception of matter and the reality of matter 
 are possibilities. 
 
 Sensations, it may be held, are resemblances, by 
 their actual and original extension, of the extension of 
 external bodies. A tactual sensation may be as to 
 extension a true copy of the surface of an impressing 
 body. The sensations of compressed limbs or parts, 
 associated with the muscular and with the ocular sen- 
 sations, may come to mirror the tri-dimensional ex- 
 tension of bodies. Ketinal sensations, colors, origi- 
 nally or in themselves extended in two dimensions, to- 
 gether with the ocular muscular sensations, becoming 
 associated and correlated with the larger extensions of 
 the tactual and motor sensations of the larger organs, 
 become symbols and representations of these larger ex- 
 tensions, then, besides, of the extensions of external 
 objects small and large which the organs apprehend, 
 and, farther, of the largest extensions and spaces. In 
 this manner, to use Berkeley's language, " there are 
 two sorts of objects apprehended by the eye, the one 
 primarily and immediately, the other secondarily and 
 by intervention of the former.' ' (New Theory of 
 Vision, L.) 
 
 But the immediately and certainly known internal 
 or mental extension, while indispensable, is yet not suf- 
 ficient of itself for the perception, inference or even 
 surmise, of extended reality outside the mind. Sub- 
 jective extension does not prove Berkeley's conclusion 
 that there is not objective extension; but still it does 
 not in itself alone prove, or form the basis of proof, that 
 there is. Extension of percepts, and possibility of re- 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 137 
 
 semblance to external extended objects, do not evince 
 actual resemblance, or the actual existence of such ob- 
 jects. Something more is required for the mind to 
 know that there really are external extended things. 
 Some further means is necessary to enable the mind 
 to accomplish that unique and most wonderful feat, 
 namely, the passage by thought or perception to the 
 apprehension of objects entirely beyond itself; — a feat 
 deemed indeed so extraordinary by idealists that for 
 their part they forever declaim it to be impossible. 
 
 The second and conjoint means necessary for the 
 cognition of external objects, is mental causation, the 
 conscious relation of cause and effect within mind. 
 For the perception or even imagination of extended 
 external realities, there must be, beside subjective ex- 
 tension, subjective causation. There must be con- 
 sciousness of both extension and causation as within 
 the mind, before there can be the perception of them 
 as without the mind. The immediate knowledge of the 
 internal is the necessary foundation, medium or means 
 for trustworthy mediate knowledge of the like external. 
 With the possession and union of these two subjective 
 conditions, the mind can pass in perception entirely 
 beyond itself, it can empirically cognize truly what is 
 wholly outside and independent. 
 
 Both Locke and Berkeley fully recognize and main- 
 tain subjective causation, in their express statements 
 of the mind's production and control of its ideas or 
 operations. Locke holds that our clearest idea of 
 power is derived from the activity of mind; not only 
 from its activity in causing motions of the body, but 
 from its effort in producing and reflecting on its own 
 "operations." He says: "We find in ourselves a 
 power to begin or forbear, continue or end several 
 
138 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 actions of our minds, and motions of our bodies, barely 
 by a thought or preference of the mind ordering, or, as 
 it were, commanding the doing or not doing such or 
 such a particular action.' ' And: "I thought it worth 
 while to consider . . . whether the mind doth not re- 
 ceive its idea of active power clearer from reflection on 
 its own operations, than it doth from any external sen- 
 sation [perception]. (Essay, II, xxi, 4.) He consid- 
 ers, as already observed, also, though somewhat indef- 
 initely, the very significant contrast between ideas pro- 
 duced or controlled by our will, and ideas which we can- 
 not avoid entertaining or which are forced upon us; 
 and asserts that the latter ideas compel the supposition 
 of external causes. I repeat his remark: "There is a 
 manifest difference between the ideas laid up in my 
 memory (over which, if they were there only, I should 
 have constantly the same power to dispose of them, 
 and lay them by at pleasure), and those which force 
 themselves upon me and I cannot avoid having. And 
 therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, and 
 the brisk acting of some objects without me, whose effi- 
 cacy I cannot resist, that produces those ideas in my 
 mind, whether I will or no" (IV, xi, 5.) The princi- 
 ple of subjective causation, with the contrast between 
 ideas produced, and ideas not produced, by our own 
 will, is the main principle, beside the principle of re- 
 semblance, in Locke's theory of the perception of ex- 
 ternal bodies. 
 
 Berkeley accepted and taught the chief tenets of 
 Locke's doctrine of mental causation, but with more 
 explicitness and fulness. He frequently dwells on the 
 contrast in every man's experience between ideas 
 "caused," "excited" by himself, "dependent" upon 
 himself, and ideas "independent" of himself; and as 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 139 
 
 frequently affirms that from his ideas which are inde- 
 pendent of himself, a man deduces the existence of 
 causes distinct from himself. He dwells also on the 
 difference between the ideas in the two instances with 
 respect to vividness, regularity, etc. "The ideas 
 formed by the imagination, ' ' says Berkeley, ' ' are faint 
 and indistinct ; they have besides an entire dependence 
 on the will. But the ideas perceived by sense, that is, 
 real things, are more vivid and clear, and . . . have 
 not a like dependence on our will. There is therefore 
 no danger of confounding these with the foregoing; 
 and there is as little of confounding them with the vi- 
 sions of a dream, which are dim, irregular, and con- 
 fused. And though they should happen to be never 
 so lively and natural, yet by their not being connected, 
 and of a piece with the preceding and subsequent trans- 
 actions of our lives, they might easily be distinguished 
 from realities." (Third Dial.) In this manner ideas 
 are clearly distinguished, by Berkeley, both as to their 
 causes and their qualities. 
 
 As was remarked above, Berkeley agreed entirely 
 with Locke in holding that we have no immediate 
 knowledge of realities external to ourselves or dis- 
 tinct, but only a mediate knowledge through ideas 
 caused in us by them. Locke asserted that thus we 
 have a mediate knowledge of material objects. But 
 such mediate knowledge of material objects Berkeley 
 specifically and emphatically denies; for the reasons, 
 already noticed, that matter "in the common accepta- 
 tion of the word" signifies an "unthinking, inactive 
 substance"; that an "inactive thing cannot be a cause, 
 and an unthinking thing cannot be the cause of 
 thought"; that "spirit alone can act." He argues 
 more forcibly, that we cannot have a representative 
 
140 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 knowledge of matter by our ideas, or know that its 
 qualities are copied by our ideas. "You neither per- 
 ceive matter objectively," he observes generally, "as 
 you do an inactive being or idea, nor know it as you 
 do yourselves, by a reflex act ; neither do you mediately 
 apprehend it by similitude of the one to the other; nor 
 yet collect it by reasoning from that which you know 
 immediately." (Third Dial.) He holds therefore 
 that we have no means or medium of knowing matter ; 
 and concludes finally that in truth matter cannot exist. 
 But while we can have no mediate knowledge of matter 
 as a cause through ideas as effects, we still can thus 
 have a mediate knowledge of other spirits ; for spirits, 
 unlike matter, can contain or possess ideas, and, unlike 
 matter again, are active and can produce ideas in us. 
 "We cannot," avers Berkeley, "know the existence of 
 other spirits otherwise than by their operations, or the 
 ideas by them excited in us. . . . The knowledge I have 
 of other spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge 
 of my ideas ; but depending on the intervention of ideas 
 by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from my- 
 self, as effects or concomitant signs." (Prin., cxlv.) 
 He says again: "It is evident that the things I per- 
 ceive are my own ideas, and that no idea can exist un- 
 less it be in a mind. Nor is it less plain that these 
 ideas, or things by me perceived, either themselves or 
 their archetypes, exist independently of my mind, since 
 I know myself not to be their author, it being out of 
 my power to determine at pleasure what particular 
 ideas I shall be affected with upon opening my eyes or 
 ears. They must therefore exist in some other mind, 
 whose will it is they should be exhibited to me." (Sec- 
 ond Dial.) In this fashion, according to Berkeley, we 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 141 
 
 have an entirely trustworthy mediate knowledge of 
 spirits — of other human spirits, but particularly of the 
 Supreme Spirit, God. Says Philonous of the eternal 
 Mind: "When I deny sensible things an existence out 
 of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but 
 all minds. Now it is plain they have an existence ex- 
 terior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be 
 independent of it. There is therefore some other mind 
 wherein they exist, during the intervals between the 
 times of my perceiving them; as likewise they did be- 
 fore my birth and would do after my supposed annihi- 
 lation. And as the same is true of all other finite cre- 
 ated spirits, it necessarily follows there is an omnipres- 
 ent, eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all 
 things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, 
 and according to such rules as he himself hath ordained, 
 and are by us termed the laws of nature." (Third 
 Dial.) 
 
 In arguing for the mediate knowledge of other spir- 
 its, Berkeley employs not only in this manner the prin- 
 ciple of causation, with the contrast of ideas caused 
 and ideas not caused by our own will, but also the prin- 
 ciple of resemblance or similitude. We reason from 
 our own spirit to other causes like it ; from our own ex- 
 perience as a spirit in causation, we infer that all 
 causes distinct from ourselves, all other causes, are 
 spirits. He asserts: "I have . . . in myself some sort 
 of an active thinking image of the Deity . . . My own 
 mind and my own ideas I have an immediate knowledge 
 of; and by the help of these, do mediately apprehend 
 the possibility of the existence of other spirits and 
 ideas. Further, from my own being, and from the de- 
 pendency I find in myself and my ideas, I do by an act 
 
142 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 of reason necessarily infer the existence of a God, and 
 of all created things in the mind of God." (Third 
 Dial.) 
 
 In our cognition we discriminate between finite spir- 
 its and the Infinite Spirit by the difference of the ideas 
 they excite in or convey to ns. The ideas conveyed to 
 us by the Infinite Spirit are superior in number, order, 
 connection, greatness, splendor, perfection. "If we 
 attentively consider, ' ' remarks Berkeley, ' ' the constant 
 regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, 
 the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of 
 the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller 
 parts of creation, together with the exact harmony and 
 correspondence of the whole, but, above all, the never 
 enough admired laws of pain and pleasure, and the in- 
 stincts or natural inclinations, appetites, and passions 
 of animals ; I say if we consider all these things, and at 
 the same time attend to the meaning and import of the 
 attributes, one, eternal, infinitely wise, good, and per- 
 fect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the 
 aforesaid spirit, who works all in all, and by whom all 
 things consist." (Prin., cxlvi.) Again: "I conclude 
 there is a mind which affects me every moment 
 with all the sensible impressions I perceive. And 
 from the variety, order, and manner of these, I con- 
 clude the author of them to be wise, powerful, and 
 good, beyond comprehension. . . . The things by me 
 perceived are known by the understanding, and pro- 
 duced by the will, of an Infinite Spirit." A practical 
 result, of supreme moment in the conception of Berke- 
 ley, in thus disproving the existence of matter, and 
 proving the existence of spirits, follows: "Both scep- 
 tics and atheists are forever silenced upon supposing 
 only spirits and ideas." 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 143 
 
 The principle of subjective causation, with the con- 
 trast of ideas caused and ideas not caused by our own 
 volition, reproduced from Locke, and in this manner 
 employed by Berkeley in the demonstration of the ex- 
 istence of other spirits, but also held, in the most pos- 
 itive opposition to Locke, to possess not the slightest 
 validity as proof of the existence of external matter, 
 warrants much more than Berkeley grants. The truth 
 seems to be that, contrary to Berkeley, the principle is 
 as logically and cogently applicable in proof of the 
 existence of matter as of the existence of spirits; or 
 that his argument for objective spirit as a cause, may 
 be as fairly and rightly used to prove objective matter 
 as a cause. It is indeed not so applicable with Berke- 
 ley's erroneous notions of the nature of ideas and the 
 nature of matter. But when these notions are cor- 
 rected; when ideas are taken in their true nature and 
 true relation to the mind, not as realities distinct from 
 mind, now imparted to it, now withdrawn, but as modes 
 of mind, existentially inseparable from it; and when 
 matter is taken in its real character, not as an 
 inactive, but as a resisting and active, substance, 
 the case is quite different. With this understand- 
 ing of the nature of ideas and of matter, there appears 
 no sufficient reason for denying that material ob- 
 jects may occasion, by their resistance, impressions, 
 activity, the rise of ideas in the mind, and that 
 their existence as causes, as certainly as the existence 
 of spirits, may be logically inferred from ideas as 
 effects. With the very important aid furnished by ex- 
 periences of causality, there can be formed a worthy 
 theory of the mediate knowledge both of other spirits 
 and matter; a theory which affords us, in agreement 
 with Berkeley's conviction, a trustworthy cognition 
 
144 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 of spirits, and, contrary to his conviction, a trust- 
 worthy perception of matter. 
 
 It may he observed in general, respecting the great 
 importance, even the indispensableness, of subjective 
 causality and the contrast of sensations and affections 
 caused, and not caused, by conscious effort, in external 
 perception, first, that if there were no experience of 
 causation within the mind, within the sphere of con- 
 sciousness or immediate knowledge ; that if there were 
 no experience of the mind's production of sensations, 
 of its control of emotions, and determination of reso- 
 lutions ; there would be nothing to suggest or occasion 
 the thought of causation outside the mind, there would 
 be no means by which to imagine, or form any sort of 
 conception of, a distinct cause or power. The mind 
 might have sensations produced by external causes; 
 but, in the total lack of experience of causation within 
 itself, it would be quite destitute of the means or ma- 
 terials for the thought or conjecture of causes distinct 
 from itself. Yet psychologists have often argued for 
 the perception of external causes, in disregard of this 
 principle or on assumption of the contrary. The con- 
 ception or inference of a separate cause, power, or ex- 
 ertion, could then be only the creation of a mind which 
 had no experience of causation or of production and 
 control. But there is no sufficient ground for holding 
 that the mind is capable of such a creation; it can at 
 most only know immediately and mediately what is. 
 In the immediate knowledge of its own causation, it 
 has the indispensable medium for the knowledge of 
 causes distinct from itself. Mental causation is the 
 necessary platform from which thought reaches extra- 
 mental causation. 
 
 Above, in the discussion of the causation of ideas, 
 
PEECEPTION OF MATTER 145 
 
 note has several times been made of the conscious con- 
 trast, clearly marked by both Locke and Berkeley, be- 
 tween ideas produced by our own volition and ideas not 
 so produced. This contrast seems yet to deserve a 
 moment's distinct and special attention. We have, 
 first, as in the interactions of our organs, sensations 
 produced by the effort or exertion of self. Then we 
 have sensations which we know occur without the effort 
 of self. It is particularly by this antithesis that the 
 mind has the prompting and stimulus to conjecture a 
 cause beyond or other than itself. Having had sensa- 
 tions that were known to be occasioned by self-exertion, 
 and then having the same or similar sensations with- 
 out conscious self-exertion, the mind infers another 
 cause, a cause distinct from itself, for them. In brief, 
 the conscious action of self upon self is a necessary 
 ground for the inference of the action of the not-self 
 upon self. 
 
 We have now considered the two primary and indis- 
 pensable conditions of external perception, namely, 
 subjective extension and subjective causation. It is 
 important yet attentively to observe that they must 
 serve in conjunction. Neither is sufficient by itself. 
 Each is a necessary coefficient for the other. As, ac- 
 cording to a former remark, subjective extension is not 
 adequate in itself as a basis for the inference of a cause 
 or any reality distinct from and external to the mind; 
 so subjective causation is not adequate for the infer- 
 ence of an extended cause external to the mind. We 
 could never infer a cause distinct from the mind ex- 
 cept through the immediate knowledge of cause and 
 effect within the mind; and could never infer a cause 
 that is external to the mind and extended except on the 
 basis of the immediate experience of subjective exten- 
 
146 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 sion. In other words (1) the immediate knowledge of 
 sensation out of sensation, and the duality or relation of 
 cause and effect, within the unity of the mind, are the 
 necessary foundation for the inference of a reality 
 or cause separate from the mind; and (2) the immedi- 
 ate knowledge of extended sensation — an extended in- 
 ternal effect — is the necessary foundation for the infer- 
 ence of an extended external cause. The mind could 
 never infer an extended cause from an unextended ef- 
 fect. 
 
 In this wise through the union of these two great 
 provisions, we have an adequate means for the percep- 
 tion of spiritual objects, and of material objects as well, 
 — of realities that are distinct from self, and external 
 and extended. We have therefore impliedly the means 
 of disproving the Berkeleian immaterialism. These 
 two paramount conditions Berkeley himself recognized 
 and adopted as facts ; and in doing so supplied the in- 
 struments of his own refutation. By them we are able 
 successfully to meet particularly such special chal- 
 lenges as the following made by Berkeley and his dis- 
 ciples : How can an idea be like anything else than an- 
 other idea? Is it " sense to assert that a colour is like 
 something which is invisible"? How can it be known 
 that the things perceived, that is, our ideas, "are con- 
 formable to those which are not perceived"? Must 
 not a world external to the mind and independent be 
 forever inaccessible? These questions were asked 
 with the belief that an answer to them was absolutely 
 impossible. 
 
 But the mental properties noted and maintained 
 by Berkeley himself furnish a fair reply to these de- 
 mands. The extension which Berkeley positively 
 claims for sensations can be and is like the extension 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 147 
 
 of external material objects that excite them by im- 
 pressions. Again, by a visual extended copy, by a 
 color, we do mediately perceive a thing, as to its exten- 
 sion, that in itself is invisible or not immediately seen. 
 The extended color is a representation and sign of what 
 in itself is unseen. That proposition cannot be unin- 
 telligible to a Berkeleian. And by a tactual sense-copy 
 we feel what in itself cannot be felt; or we perceive 
 mediately what is unperceivable directly in itself ; or we 
 know mediately what we do not know immediately. 
 Further, we know that our internal sensation or per- 
 cept is, as to the primary qualities of extension and fig- 
 ure, like the extension and figure of the external ob- 
 ject and cause. This knowledge is involved in, or per- 
 haps it should rather be said, is identical with the infer- 
 ence we make of extra-mental objects on the basis, as 
 was above considered, of immediate experience of sub- 
 jective causality and of subjective extension. This in- 
 ference is cogent. In it there is included a genuine 
 comparison, as to extension, of the internal percept 
 immediately known with the external object. Our per- 
 cept or representation is known to conform to the ex- 
 ternal object, because the object is cognized not inde- 
 pendently of, but through, the representation. There 
 is no imperative need of a previous comparison of idea 
 and object, or of a previous and independent knowl- 
 edge of the object. Comparison is in the inference of 
 the object. The inference comprehends or is identical 
 with comparison. Finally, by this inferential process, 
 it becomes intelligible in general how mind and object 
 "get together," or how object becomes "accessible" 
 to mind. 
 
 There are other questions and facts, additional to 
 those we have treated of, which, though not of primary 
 
148 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 importance, well deserve attention in the discussion of 
 the perception of matter, but which we must here pass 
 over. For instance, this question : As we have imme- 
 diate knowledge of a mental cause only, how come we 
 thereby to the mediate knowledge or inference of a 
 non-mental or material cause; and the question as to 
 the discrimination of our body from external objects, 
 or other bodies from ours; and also the question, how 
 we arrive at the conclusion that the primary qualities 
 of our percepts represent external properties, but the 
 secondary qualities not. 1 Eespecting the first question 
 it may be observed casually, that there is no sufficient 
 basis for maintaining that the mind, the mind of a 
 child, must find it a long and difficult procedure to dis- 
 criminate between external extended animate, and ex- 
 ternal extended inanimate, causes, or between mental 
 and non-mental. 2 
 
 We proceed, finally, to review, but in the briefest 
 manner, Berkeley's place in the historical development 
 of the philosophy of the perception of the external, espe- 
 cially of matter. And first of him as a successor of 
 Locke. It might seem unreasonable to speak of Berke- 
 ley as a successor of Locke in any other sense than as 
 simply following him in time with no doctrinal relation- 
 ship. Certainly Berkeley is not a follower, but a deter- 
 mined antagonist, of Locke's teachings respecting the 
 cognizability and reality of the material world. He re- 
 jected absolutely Locke's dualism of spirit and matter. 
 
 i These questions receive considerable attention in the author's earlier 
 work, The Principles of Knowledge. 
 
 2 Dreams' are cited by Berkeley and his followers as evidence that 
 ideas are entirely independent of bodies outside the mind and require not 
 the existence of such bodies. But the proof is inconclusive; since 
 dreams are but derivative and secondary phenomena, and can never 
 have importance in the discussion of external perception like that of 
 the original phenomena, presentations. 
 
PERCEPTION OF MATTER 149 
 
 Nevertheless, in some of the most important principles 
 of Locke 's philosophy, he is obviously a close follower. 
 He accepts fully Locke's doctrine that we have imme- 
 diate knowledge of our mind and ideas only; that we 
 can have nothing but mediate knowledge of any reality 
 outside our mind or distinct. Again, he accepts fully 
 Locke's teaching respecting subjective power and caus- 
 ation, and the contrast between ideas caused by our 
 conscious effort, and ideas not so caused. Further, 
 he agrees with Locke as to the existence of other dis- 
 tinct spirits, or the plurality of spirits. And it may 
 be claimed that, even in respect to Locke's doctrine of 
 the representative perception of matter, which is so 
 nearly related to these other teachings of his, Berkeley 
 is in a mode a follower ; is a follower in this sense, that 
 he maintains an element necessary for the completion 
 of the Lockian doctrine, or that thus, if he does not 
 lead the doctrine along the line of its true development, 
 he indicates that line. This Berkeley effects, though 
 certainly without any thought or design of so doing, 
 by his tenet of mental extension, or of sensations as 
 possessing the primary qualities of extension and fig- 
 ure. By the recognition and affirmation of this real 
 character of sensations and percepts, an essential sup- 
 plement is provided for Locke's theory of representa- 
 tive perception, or his doctrine that our ideas of the 
 primary qualities of matter resemble them. It is 
 shown how ideas may be truly copies of external qual- 
 ities; and how Locke's representative doctrine may be 
 made complete, or be rendered reasonable and tenable. 
 But in indicating the true course of the development 
 of Locke's theory, Berkeley also, by the same means 
 and by his special teachings concerning mediate knowl- 
 edge, betokens in general the course of the development 
 
150 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 of the true philosophy of external perception. He sug- 
 gests, still in entire self-contravention, the principles 
 and mode for the construction of a complete and genu- 
 ine theory of the empirical cognition of the material 
 world ; a theory which should be superior to and should 
 supersede the speculations of the idealists regarding 
 the reality and perceivability of external matter, and 
 also the hypotheses of the apriorists. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 TRUTH 
 
 Among the philosophical subjects most earnestly 
 considered at the present day is that of the Nature of 
 Truth. There are two common conceptions or defini- 
 tions of Truth. First, Truth is often made identical 
 with fact, reality, actuality. Secondly, it is often de- 
 fined as "agreement of idea with reality" or "corre- 
 spondence of thought to its object." * But it should be 
 remarked that while many unite in these latter defini- 
 tions and others of like import, yet this does not imply 
 unity among them of doctrine; for, with concurrence 
 in definitions, there are very notable divergences in 
 meanings respecting both the character of reality and 
 object and the character of agreement or correspond- 
 ence. In the present discussion, truth will be taken 
 in the second sense, as correspondence or agreement 
 of thought, idea, belief, with its object or with reality. 
 The special understanding had of reality and of cor- 
 respondence will be exhibited hereafter. Truth is thus 
 supposed to be an entirely subjective or mental attri- 
 bute — a property of our thought. 
 
 Note may be made of four sorts of truth or corre- 
 spondence of thought, answering to four kinds of ex- 
 
 i This difference of connotation has been thus stated : "Truth may 
 be understood in two ways — in an objective and in a subjective sense. 
 Objectively, truth is being itself: it is the necessary and essential re- 
 lation of things, which would continue to be what it is even if I were 
 not present to form a thought of it. Subjectively, truth is the conformity 
 of the thought to its object." (Janet, Theory of Moral Science, p. 107.) 
 
 151 
 
152 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 istences: first, correspondence of thought to the per- 
 manent substantial mind to which it belongs or of 
 which it is a transitory experience ; second, correspond- 
 ence of thought to other thought; third, correspond- 
 ence of thought to past events (yet this might be re- 
 garded as involved in the second) ; fourth, correspond- 
 ence of thought to external or extra-mental reality. 
 
 The first mode of correspondence here mentioned, 
 that of thought to mind, is of course no fact, if there 
 be no substantial mind, no permanent mental reality 
 (and there are enough to say there is none). Very 
 naturally it has no recognition at all from those psy- 
 chologists who hold that the only mind is the pure 
 stream of thoughts. But it has received no attention, 
 or very little, from those who believe in the existence 
 of real mind. Kant supported real mind or mental 
 noumenon in coexistence with mental phenomena, 
 though as unknowable; but instead of maintaining 
 agreement of phenomenon or thought with noumenon, 
 he rather maintained total disagreement. This is one 
 of the gravest errors of the Kantian psychology. One 
 instance of the presumed disagreement respects time. 
 The time of phenomena or thoughts has no agreement 
 with an attribute or with the nature of noumenon; 
 for, as supposed, the latter in itself is timeless. Con- 
 trary to this view, as we have argued in a different 
 connection, the fact is not disagreement or opposition, 
 but agreement. The time of phenomena or experiences 
 is an expression or revelation of the time of real mind. 
 We remark incidentally, that it would be interesting 
 to be told what correspondence there might be, if any, 
 in a mode of consciousness to the hypothetical ante- 
 cedent non-substantial "permanent possibility. ' ' 
 
 The only mode of truth, or correspondence of 
 
TRUTH 153 
 
 thought, recognized by many idealistic psychologists, 
 is the second in our list, correspondence of thought to 
 other thought. The only reality they acknowledge is 
 psychical fact, pure mental or subjective experience; 
 they admit no reality outside of mind or independent 
 of sensation or thought; and, therefore, when they de- 
 fine truth as correspondence of thought to its object, 
 or agreement of idea with reality, they mean agreement 
 of idea with idea, or of thought with thought, or of a 
 thought with the context or system of our thoughts; 
 they mean the congruence of a portion of experience 
 with another portion or with the antecedent sum of 
 experience. All is purely subjective; all is between 
 mental fact and mental fact. 1 A feature not creditable 
 to many of their discussions, one always more or less 
 confusing and disconcerting to readers, is the employ- 
 ment of dualistic phraseology instead of the unitarian 
 phraseology that is proper to them and obligatory. 
 
 In the present discussion, the mode of truth, or cor- 
 respondence of thought, which shall be the main con- 
 cern, which shall receive chief attention, will be the 
 fourth specified, namely, correspondence of thought to 
 
 i "Truth means, according to humanism, the relation of less fixed 
 parts of experience (predicates) to other relatively more fixed parts 
 (subjects) ; and we are not required to seek it in a relation of ex- 
 perience as such to anything beyond itself." (James, Meaning of Truth, 
 p. 70.) 
 
 "If a novel experience, conceptual or sensible, contradict too em- 
 phatically our pre-existent system of beliefs, in ninety-nine cases out of 
 a hundred it is treated as false. Only when the older and the newer 
 experiences are congruous enough to mutually apperceive and modify 
 each other, does what we treat as an advance in truth result. In no 
 case, however, need truth consist in a relation between our experiences 
 and something archetypal or trans-experiential." (lb., p. 134.) 
 
 "Ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become 
 true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with 
 other parts of our experience." (James, Pragmatism, p. 58.) 
 
 Other descriptions of similar import have been given of truth; as that 
 truth is "consistency," "systematic coherence," "unity." 
 
154 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 external reality. We accept the definition that truth 
 is the correspondence of thought to its object, with the 
 understanding here that object is an object-object, that 
 is, an object outside and independent of mind and con- 
 sciousness. This manner of procedure will be in ac- 
 cord with the more popular and general conception of 
 truth. In the various definitions of truth as the cor- 
 respondence, or agreement, or harmony, or conform- 
 ity, of thought or idea with reality, the conformity of 
 inside idea with outside object has been with most men 
 more usually in mind. It should yet be remarked in 
 particular of the assumed correspondence of thought 
 to material objects, that thought is supposed to be es- 
 pecially representative of their spatial extension, or 
 shape and magnitude, and their motions. 
 
 But it must be observed that truth regarded as cor- 
 respondence of thought to external object can hardly 
 be treated by itself alone, or without its bringing into 
 consideration at times especially the correspondence 
 of thought to thought. This ensues from the fact that 
 our knowledge of external things is entirely mediate. 
 We know them not immediately, but only mediately 
 through the modes, the ideas, of the mind. Hence, all 
 comparison of things as known at the present with the 
 same things as known in the past, and all comparison of 
 external things with one another, inevitably involves 
 cognizance of the correspondence of thought to thought. 
 Further, it is obtrusive that harmony of outside re- 
 lated objects produces harmony of inside representa- 
 tions. There is manifest "adjustment of internal re- 
 lations to external." And an idea may have at once 
 the two known correspondences, — (1) to an external 
 object and (2) to another idea. 
 
 Here an important question arises and calls for mo- 
 
TRUTH 155 
 
 mentary attention before going farther ; namely, What, 
 in view of the above accepted definition of truth or a 
 division of truth, is the difference between truth and 
 knowledge! Much of our knowledge is representa- 
 tion; it is knowledge because of agreement or corre- 
 spondence with its objects. Are truth and knowledge, 
 then, really identical? The proper answer to the ques- 
 tion seems to be this : Truth is knowledge considered 
 with particular reference to the exactness and com- 
 pleteness of its correspondence to the object. Men 
 commonly, in speaking of or claiming truth, have spe- 
 cial regard to these properties of knowledge. They 
 have also therewith an accordant specially strong feel- 
 ing of assurance or certitude. 
 
 In seeking to maintain the doctrine that truth, or an 
 important portion or mode of truth, is the correspond- 
 ence of our ideas to objects external to the mind, we 
 must encounter at the very beginning the most deter- 
 mined opposition of idealists. They contend with all 
 their argumentative force, united often with scorn and 
 derision, first, against the existence of any object out- 
 side mind or consciousness; and then, of course, sec- 
 ondly, against the possibility of correspondence be- 
 tween thought and any such object. Moreover, they 
 insist that, even if such objects did exist, we could never 
 know whether our thought corresponded to them or 
 not. To claim correspondence, they hold, is a gross 
 petitio principii; for it is assuming that an object is 
 known which has not been proved to be known; it is 
 supposing that a truthful correspondence can be discov- 
 ered by a comparison of our thought with an object 
 which has not been, and can never be, perceived. The 
 following declaration is an example of their mode of 
 
156 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 reasoning : ' ' The fundamental difficulty with a ' corre- 
 spondence theory' is this: it assumes a reality with 
 which that which claims to be true may be compared, 
 in order to find out whether it really be true or not. ' ' x 
 
 There is nothing to do but to grapple with this ad- 
 verse plausible, but delusive, doctrine. It is quite evi- 
 dent, however, that the reasoning against correspond- 
 ence and known correspondence is identical in sub- 
 stance with the primary argument of Berkeley against 
 the possibility of a representative knowledge of ex- 
 ternal matter, with which we have already contended in 
 the chapter on the Nature and Perception of Matter. 
 Berkeley, as will be remembered, argues in the person 
 of Philonous against Hylas (Third Dial.) in these 
 words: "It is your opinion the ideas we perceive by 
 our senses are not real things, but images or copies of 
 them. Our knowledge therefore is no further real, 
 than as our ideas are the true representations of those 
 originals. But as these supposed originals are in them- 
 selves unknown, it is impossible to know how far our 
 ideas resemble them; or whether they resemble them 
 at all. We cannot therefore be sure we have any real 
 knowledge. ' ' 2 
 
 We have presumed boldly to combat this central 
 
 i Philosophical Dictionary (Baldwin), II. p. 720. 
 
 2 Later Berkeleians reproduce the sentences of the master with much 
 fidelity: — 
 
 "If the world outside the mind is copied by the world inside the mind, 
 how can we ever know whether the copy conforms to the original ?" "The 
 real outside the mind, being inaccessible, falls away." (Bosanquet, Es- 
 sentials of Logic, p. 10 and p. 19.) 
 
 "To talk about knowing the external world through ideas which are 
 merely within us is to talk of an inherent self-contradiction. There is 
 no common ground in which the external world and our ideas can meet." 
 (Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, p. 83.) 
 
 "Whether or not our ideas correspond with a transcendent reality it 
 is futile to ask, because it is impossible to determine." ( Schiller, Riddles 
 of the Sphinx, new ed., p. 87.) 
 
TRUTH 157 
 
 position of the Berkeleian immaterialism, and trust to 
 have shown that it is not really so formidable as it ap- 
 pears to be, that it is not as immured from attack and 
 even overthrow as idealists have steadfastly contended 
 to this day that it is. 
 
 It should be observed here, as was observed before, 
 first, that there is no such need, as idealists assume 
 there would be, of a precedent and distinct knowledge 
 of an object, as the condition of comparing our thought 
 with the object and apprehending its correspondence 
 to the latter. We must not have a separate and inde- 
 pendent knowledge of thought and also of object, and 
 then, by a comparison of thought and object, discover 
 their agreement or correspondence. It is not ' ' requisite 
 to go out of ourselves, — out of our faculties, — to obtain 
 a knowledge of the objects by other faculties," and 
 thus ascertain the agreement of representation with 
 object. Comparison of thought with object, and 
 knowledge of their agreement, are involved in the in- 
 ferential process which constitutes our knowing the 
 object. The inference of the object, the comparison 
 of thought with object, and the ascertainment of their 
 agreement, are indeed one and undivided. When I 
 infer, I in the same act compare and discover agree- 
 ment or correspondence. 
 
 The chief, the supremely important, question in the 
 whole subject of the knowledge of external objects and 
 the truth of our knowledge, is the question of the possi- 
 bility and reality of a representative perception of 
 them. In our previous contesting of the Berkeleian 
 position, we have argued that a representative cogni- 
 tion of things outside the mind is possible and actual, 
 A primary provision and condition of the cognition is 
 spatial extension within mind, both the spatial exten- 
 
158 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 sion of sensation and the reciprocal exteriority of sen- 
 sations. The internal, mental, extension is a peculiar 
 and cardinal principle of Berkeley himself. He con- 
 tended, and contended convincingly, that the primary 
 quality of extension is inseparably united with the sec- 
 ondary qualities, as colors, and must therefore be as 
 really in the mind as they are. But he carried the 
 principle to an unjustifiable extreme, in holding that 
 all extension is in the mind, that there is none outside. 
 He thought the old division and distribution by which 
 the primary qualities of magnitude and figure are 
 placed outside the mind, and the secondary qualities in- 
 side, is by the fact of mental extension decisively an- 
 nulled; and that the imagined external world of ex- 
 tended objects consists wholly of extended percepts in 
 the mind. 
 
 The principle of mental extension, though expressly 
 and fully received and advocated by Berkeley, serves 
 a great end of which he had no conception, and which 
 is directly opposed to everything he designed and be- 
 lieved. It affords us a means of a true representative 
 knowledge of external extended realities. The exten- 
 sion of sensation may copy the extension of an outer 
 impressing object. Sensation outside of sensation 
 provides a basis of immediate knowledge for the in- 
 ference of an object outside of mind. 
 
 Another primary condition, necessarily associated 
 with metal extension, of the cognition of external ob- 
 jects, is mental causation; as the control of the mind 
 over sensation, attention and the processes of thought. 
 This also is a principle expressly recognized and used 
 by Berkeley. We could never infer the reality of ex- 
 ternal causation or resistance, if we did not have a 
 ground for the inference in the immediate experience 
 
TRUTH 159 
 
 of internal causation, including experience of the con- 
 trast between sensations caused, and sensations not 
 caused, by our own effort. These principles of mental 
 extension and mental causation we have already ex- 
 pounded as, in their conjunction, largely constituting 
 the necessary and sufficient basis of the perception of 
 the external, and need not repeat the argument further. 
 By them in combination, we perceive realities that are 
 external, extended, enduring and resisting; percept 
 corresponds to object, and is known to correspond. It 
 may be remarked in addition that our perception, as 
 inferential and representative, is probably promoted 
 and aided by inherited disposition. 
 
 It should be now observed that, according to these 
 principles of external perception, truth is a matter 
 of growth, progression, degrees. All divisions of our 
 knowledge grow in the course of time in their agree- 
 ment with outer facts and realities. An illustrative 
 instance is the perception of the sun and the correlative 
 positions of the sun and horizon. Our primitive or 
 earlier perception is true to the circular form of the 
 sun, and to the constant and regular changes in the 
 correlative positions of sun and horizon. But the per- 
 ception has a false part, namely, in the inference or 
 assumption that these changes in positions are caused 
 by the movement of the sun around the earth. In the 
 course of experience we learn that the changes are not 
 caused by the movement of the sun, but by the rota- 
 tion of the earth upon its axis. Then, by exclusion of 
 the original false inference, and by inclusion of the new 
 knowledge, the correspondence of our perception to 
 the reality is very considerably corrected and increased. 
 
 In the further exposition of the main principle, that 
 
160 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 truth is correspondence of thought to external reality, 
 we shall proceed with special reference to the three 
 following questions which have become notable by re- 
 cent discussions : first, the question, How far we Make 
 truth, and how far it is independent of our making; 
 second, the question of the Fixedness and Stability of 
 truth ; third, the question of Utility as the Criterion of 
 truth. 
 
 1. Much has been said in recent times about our mak- 
 ing truth, and even about our making reality. It is 
 frequently affirmed that there is a " cognitive mak- 
 ing' ? of both. Sometimes truth and reality are iden- 
 tified, and by the making of truth is meant also the 
 making of reality. 1 These pronouncements recall the 
 Kantian theory that the "understanding makes na- 
 ture. ' ' According to the well known teaching of Kant, 
 the understanding or intellect, by means of the ma- 
 terials of sense given to it, and by the forms of sense, 
 time and space, and also by its own forms or categories, 
 as substantiality and causality, — by means of these 
 provisions, fabricates the apparent external world or 
 nature. The later extreme idealists, called pragma- 
 tists, go an important step beyond this. They hold not 
 only that the intellect, or thought, or the cognitive 
 process, makes nature, but that it makes it in obedi- 
 ence to our pleasure, designs, wishes, will. They thus 
 impute a remarkable control over thought to willing. 
 The primary action of mind is supposed to be, not 
 
 i "The 'making of truth' is necessarily and ipso facto also a 'making of 
 reality.' " (Schiller, Studies in Humanism, p. 1918.) "Epistemologically 
 speaking, so far as our knowledge goes or can go, the making of truth 
 and the making of reality seem to be fundamentally one" (p. 426). 
 "Truth and Reality grow for us together in a single process which is 
 never one of bringing the mind into relation with a fundamentally alien 
 reality, but always one of improving and extending an already existing 
 system which we know" (p. 185). 
 
TRUTH 161 
 
 cognition, but conation: a speculation which has been 
 exploited with manifest extravagance. Besides, they 
 reckon to willing or wishing and thought a very sig- 
 nificant priority and supremacy over reality; they 
 claim for them a very notable independence and liberty 
 in their productive or creative function. It is of course 
 held that thought is free from control by external re- 
 ality; but it is also supposed to be free from control 
 or determination even by internal fixed reality or by 
 constant innate mental forms, categories, axioms. 
 The Kantian collection of classified ready and stable 
 categories is rejected. Axioms and categories grow, 
 or are produced, as our designs or needs require, and 
 are kept as long as they are useful. They are tenta- 
 tive postulates. On this account these theorists are 
 properly denominated pragmatic idealists. 1 
 
 The questions of our wishing and thought making 
 truth and making reality, are quite different and should 
 be kept apart. There is a sense in which our mind 
 does make truth: but there is no proper sense in which 
 it makes reality. The mind may be said to produce 
 all its percepts or representations of other things, and 
 to give them truth: but it never produces in the least 
 degree the reality or substance of things. It does not 
 produce itself: and as certainly it does not produce any 
 other thing. 
 
 i "The genera] structure of the mind and the fundamental principles 
 that support it also must be conceived as growing up. like the rest of our 
 powers and activities, that is. by a process of experimenting, designed 
 
 to render the world conformable to our wishes." "The axiomatic first 
 principles whereby we organize and hold together our knowledge, are 
 neither the products of a passive experiencing, nor yet ultimate and in- 
 explicable laws or facts of our mental structure." | Schiller, in Personal 
 Idealism, p. 64.) 
 
 "Cosmic space and cosmic time, so far from being the intuitions Kant 
 said they were, are constructions as patently artificial as any that 
 science can show." | James. Pragmatism, p. ITS.) 
 
162 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 The idealistic illusion respecting our intellection and 
 wishing making the external world of matter and space, 
 is decisively contradicted by the very many and vari- 
 ous natural objects and human works which exist and 
 have long existed in perfect independence of us, to 
 which our thinking and wishing and willing never made 
 the least contribution. For instances, take the immedi- 
 ate theatre of our life and action and the surrounding 
 works of nature; take the Bocky Mountains and the 
 Alps; take those much smaller objects, the human re- 
 mains from the very remote past, dug out of their 
 ancient beds, as the Gibraltar skull, the Mauer jaw, 
 the Galley Hill skeleton; also the productions of the 
 labor of past races of men, as the Pyramids of Egypt ; 
 such ethical and legal monuments as the Mosaic Deca- 
 logue, and the Code of Hammurabi with the broken 
 stone upon which it was engraved. It seems farcical 
 to hold that any of these long-abiding natural objects, 
 great or small, or any of these enduring fabrications 
 by generations of men long extinct, owe anything in 
 the least of their reality to any process of thought or 
 willing in us. For us of the present they are certainly 
 already existent and complete. The primary office of 
 our intellect respecting these objects, is to discover and 
 represent, not to make or create. 
 
 On the other side, Professor James explicitly avers : 
 "When we talk of reality 'independent' of human 
 thinking, then it seems a thing very hard to find. . . . 
 It is what is absolutely dumb and evanescent, the merely 
 ideal limit of our minds." 1 Contrary to this Fichtean 
 conception and all such assertions, we must contend 
 for the existence in the world of many perfectly fa- 
 miliar extended objects, of definite sizes and shapes, 
 
 i Pragmatism, p. 248. 
 
TRUTH 163 
 
 of definite duration, of definite motions, which are and 
 always have been absolutely independent of human 
 thought. Of these things we have exact and assured 
 science. Pragmatists are far too subservient in ac- 
 cepting as true, and then too zealous in exaggerating, 
 boasted sophisms of the Kantian epistemology. Pro- 
 fessor James says again: "Keality, we naturally 
 think, stands ready-made and complete, and our in- 
 tellects supervene with the one simple duty of describ- 
 ing it as it already is. But may not our descriptions, 
 Lotze asks, be themselves important additions to re- 
 ality V 11 When, for instance, we perceive and de- 
 scribe a house of a certain length, breadth and height, 
 we add nothing at all to these dimensions. They were 
 and they remain in perfect independence of our per- 
 ceiving minds ; and so of many other constructions of 
 human toil and very many objects of nature. In gen- 
 eral, our thinking is certainly far more subject to in- 
 dependent external realities than are external realities 
 to our thinking. 
 
 Special importance is sometimes ascribed to our 
 wishes in the making of reality, after the manner of 
 the following declaration: "The world is plastic and 
 may be moulded by our wishes." 2 There can be no 
 doubt that the world is to a degree plastic to our 
 wishing. We manipulate, arrange, fashion, many of 
 its objects according to our desires; but surely our 
 desiring or wishing is far more determined by the 
 world than the world by it. Wishing is not a perfectly 
 free and uncontrolled action, self-originated and self- 
 directing, subject to no antecedents and conditions, at 
 the very first a possibility dependent upon nothing be- 
 
 1 Pragmatism, p. 256. 
 
 2 Schiller, in Personal Idealism, p. 61. 
 
164 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 yond its own caprice, as some seem to regard it; but 
 is in subordination to the coercive confinement and re- 
 quirements of antecedent and surrounding independent 
 reality. Our wishes must conform to what is stable, 
 and to what is changing, in the independent world. 
 While it is true that the world is moulded by our wishes 
 to some extent, yet that extent is certainly scant com- 
 pared with the extent our wishes are moulded by the 
 world. 
 
 We will here notice very briefly two particular reali- 
 ties cited by pragmatic idealists as instances of the 
 creative function of human thinking and wishing. 
 These are the atom, and external void space. The 
 atom, though certainly no object of actual vision, is 
 not, as seems to be held, a creation of our thought, or a 
 "conceptual construction of unreal character/ ' For 
 thought comes to it, so to speak, primarily, not by 
 creating it, but by an ideal division of the ordinary ac- 
 tual simple extension of sensation or of tangible ob- 
 ject. If it were not for the common really experienced 
 sense-extension, there would never be any thought of 
 the atom. The atom is indeed ideal, but as an ideal 
 extension it is absolutely dependent upon the concep- 
 tual division of an experienced extension ; to which di- 
 vision we are yet led by our interests and wishes. It 
 is therefore as real as, or cannot be less real than, the 
 real and truly known larger extension from which it 
 was deduced. 
 
 The empty and extensive outer space is by many 
 considered as an ideal construction. It is sorted into 
 "perceptual" and "conceptual" space: perceptual 
 space being the space of our primitive and near per- 
 ception; and conceptual, the space of the geometri- 
 cians, who conceive it as one, continuous, homogeneous, 
 
TRUTH 165 
 
 permanent, and immensely extensive. In fact, there 
 is but one space, and it is always the same. It is a 
 permanent and identical reality, altogether independ- 
 ent of our constructive thought. It is not a product 
 or creation of our intellect; nor, we should add, is it 
 an object of innate or a priori cognition. Our cogni- 
 tion of it is entirely empirical; but also progressive; 
 and the only variation or diversity respecting space is 
 not a diversity of kind, but a diversity in the succes- 
 sive stages in our knowledge of it. Perceptual space 
 is the space of our earlier and less correct and com- 
 plete knowledge. Conceptual space is the space of our 
 later and more perfect knowledge. There is but the 
 one identical space, known by progressive pure ex- 
 periential cognition. No characteristic of our knowl- 
 edge of space is inconsistent with the experiential the- 
 ory. Accordingly, intellect produces our complex 
 thought of space, as of a material object; but not space 
 itself. It constructs a representative percept, making 
 it conform, or making it true, to the independent re- 
 ality. The process of this construction I have treated 
 of elsewhere. 
 
 While we have the strongest reasons for denying 
 that our wishing makes reality, or makes our percep- 
 tion of reality, we must admit an important effect it, 
 with other motives, has upon reality and our dealing 
 with the latter. Wishing determines our selection of 
 the parts or objects of the world; what objects of the 
 multitude known and knowable shall be held in atten- 
 tion, and what shall be shut out; the objects we shall 
 use, and those we shall leave. It is generally acknowl- 
 edged that there is some truth in such declarations as, 
 "perceptions depend upon what we come prepared to 
 see," and "the wish is father to the thought." Un- 
 
166 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 doubtedly wishes arising from our prepossessions, prej- 
 udices, interests, passions, thus often dominate our 
 thinking or percepts and beliefs of reality. But it is 
 still a fundamental fact that we cannot desire, feel in- 
 terest in, or voluntarily aim at, an object which we do 
 not know. Independent knowledge of objects precedes 
 as the condition of the relative emotional activities. 
 When emotions have been aroused by the independent 
 perception of objects, they unquestionably often react 
 powerfully on perception, leading to exclusive consid- 
 eration of particular objects, and to a more exact and 
 complete knowledge of them; but there is no actual 
 originating of reality and perception. On this sub- 
 ject Dr. Ward has observed : "Though an object must 
 be cognized before it can be liked or disliked, still it 
 is to interesting objects that the subject mainly attends, 
 and it is with these, therefore, that the subject acquires 
 a closer and preciser acquaintance." "It is true that 
 what we take and what we find we must take and find 
 as it is given. But, on the other hand, it is also true 
 that we do not take — at least do not take up — what is 
 uninteresting; nor do we find unless we seek, nor seek 
 unless we desire.' 9 x Thus desires and other impulses 
 exercise often a directing power over our thought, by 
 holding it to special objects and inciting it to a more 
 exact and thorough knowledge of them; and by other 
 degrees and modes of influence, as by inducing it to 
 construct of materials and categories supplied to it 
 
 i Naturalism and Agnosticism, II. pp. 131, 133. 
 
 "Sensations are forced upon us, coming we know not whence. Over 
 their nature, order and quantity we have as good as no control." "That 
 they are is undoubtedly beyond our control ; but which we attend to, note, 
 and make emphatic in our conclusions, depends on our interests." 
 (James, Pragmatism, pp. 244, 245.) 
 
 "The blind tendency of passions to subjugate intelligence." (Sir W. 
 Hamilton, Logic, p. 401.) 
 
TRUTH 167 
 
 new combinations which should serve as "working hy- 
 potheses. " But they do not move thought to make 
 reality, and they create nothing themselves. It is the 
 common and not unjustifiable belief that, when "the 
 wish is father to the thought," the child is rather 
 liable to be what it ought not to be in the lack of cor- 
 respondence to reality. In truth, very generally our 
 wishes, purposes, volitions, themselves are and must 
 be formed upon, conditioned by, adapted to, realities 
 that exist and are known antecedently to and independ- 
 ently of them. Too often those who ascribe such 
 great superiority to conation over cognition are blind 
 to indisputably stable and weighty facts. There is too 
 prevalent the more comprehensive tendency to the in- 
 ordinate and unreasonable exaltation of man and his 
 will and intellect ; and to the ignoring or abasement of 
 the independent realities, laws and conditions to which 
 his existence and activity are in fact so completely 
 subject. This tendency is a constitutional vice of ideal- 
 ism. 
 
 As was remarked above, the making of truth is an 
 altogether different matter from the making of real- 
 ity, and should be treated separately from it. If we 
 must deny that the mind, by its thinking and wishing, 
 makes reality, we must admit that, in a significant 
 sense, it makes truth, that is the correspondence of its 
 thoughts, ideas, percepts, to outer objects. The char- 
 acter of this making we shall now proceed to con- 
 sider. 
 
 It must first be observed that this theory of the pro- 
 duction of truth does not involve uncertainty as to our 
 ever really possessing truth, or inevitable liability to 
 much and constant mistake, error and illusion in our 
 perceptions; it does not make truth a thing of mere 
 
168 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 arbitrariness and caprice; it does not justify doubt 
 and alarm. On the same grounds and conditions on 
 which the mind produces its percepts, it produces their 
 truth, that is to say, their accuracy as percepts or as 
 representations. These are in fact one or but stages 
 of one production. We have already contended, 
 against sceptics and idealists, especially against Berke- 
 ley, that the mind is capable of constructing real rep- 
 resentations of external sensible reality, setting forth 
 the means, conditions and process. These and what- 
 ever serves to prove the possibility and actuality of 
 real percepts, will accomplish the same for their truth. 
 In the production of percepts and truth, the mind or 
 the intellect is not an absolutely free and undetermined 
 will or cause. It does not make and mould according 
 to its momentary whim or purpose, without any de- 
 pendence for gifts of materials, and without subjec- 
 tion to set laws and conditions of action. It is de- 
 pendent upon means and conditions both internal and 
 external. First, according to general belief, it is and 
 must be supplied with a stock of elementary materials, 
 varied sense-data, a "f actual' ' provision, with which 
 to operate. The intellect cannot form percepts and 
 judgments without materials to form them out of; it 
 cannot make truth or anything else out of nothing. As 
 to the sense-data, Professor James remarks in general: 
 "All schools must allow that the elementary qualities 
 of cold, heat, pleasure, pain, red, blue, sound, silence, 
 etc., are original, innate, or a priori properties of our 
 subjective nature, even though they should require the 
 touch of experience to awaken them into actual con- 
 sciousness, and should slumber, to all eternity, with- 
 out it. . . . The originality of these elements is not, 
 then, a question for dispute. The warfare of philoso- 
 
TRUTH 169 
 
 phers is exclusively relative to their forms of com- 
 bination. ' ' x Professor Dewey, reporting the views 
 of Lotze, says : i ' The ultimate material antecedents of 
 thought are found in impressions, which are due to 
 external objects as stimuli. Taken in themselves, these 
 impressions are mere psychical states or events.' ' 
 "Sense-experience furnishes the antecedents; thought 
 has to introduce and develop systematic connection — 
 rationality." 2 But it should be noted that writers 
 are often vague and uncertain respecting the strict na- 
 ture of the original elementary sense-materials or 
 sense-data ; respecting what is really contained in them, 
 what are their real properties, or what they supply to 
 the intellect without the action of the intellect itself 
 or before the intellect is supposed to begin its opera- 
 tions with them. In other words, they fail to define 
 the exact character of "crude" or "immediate" expe- 
 rience as antecedent to intellection proper. 
 
 Many assume that the raw sense-matter is in itself 
 extensionless and timeless, and that extension and time 
 are forms imposed upon it by the mind. This is to 
 follow the Kantian dissection of experience, and seems 
 to be one of the greatest errors in mental analysis. We 
 cannot properly suppose that spatial extension is a 
 form produced by the mind or thought and imposed 
 upon the sense-matter; but that it is an original prop- 
 erty of at least a portion of the sense-matter ; not im- 
 parted to it, but belonging to its own self from the first 
 as a constitutional attribute. We are justified in con- 
 tending that the idea of spatial extension is a part of 
 the original and elementary material given in sensa- 
 tion to our intelligence ; and not only the idea of vague 
 
 i Psychology, II. pp. 618, 619. 
 
 2 Studies in Logical Theory, pp. 27, 29. 
 
170 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 and indeterminate extension or extensity, but also of 
 definite measures. The like may be said of time. 
 Time is no form put upon the primitive timeless sense- 
 data by mind or thought. Sensations have time or 
 duration not as a gift from without or from a separate 
 faculty of mind, but as their own property. They are 
 before and after one another from the first and so 
 known, without any proper agency of creative or con- 
 structive "thought." Their succession is a primitive 
 and original relation and fact of experience. 
 
 There are other forms or categories, beside spatial 
 extension and time, which are provisions for our intel- 
 lect, conditions of perception and truth, and not at all 
 the arbitrary creation of our thought acting in compli- 
 ance with some purpose or desire or for some satis- 
 faction. Of these are the ideas of causality, substance, 
 identity and permanence. They are often called forms 
 of the intellect itself. A great error of many psy- 
 chologists has been to treat them as forms lying in the 
 mind, or as, so to speak, loose phenomenal possessions, 
 and not as representing, and as necessarily related 
 to, constitutional attributes of mind. Kant apparently 
 supposed, at least in some instances, that causality 
 was an a priori form of the understanding, but, like 
 time, representing no property of the mind in itself; 
 that a causationless mind could hold or possess the con- 
 scious conception of causation. But it seems more 
 credible that the experience of causation, power, or 
 determining antecedent, is the revelation in conscious- 
 ness of a property or action of real mind ; that the con- 
 stitutional property is the necessary ground of the idea; 
 that the idea, like the idea of time, would never rise 
 if not from the real property. It may be said that 
 the idea is true to the real property, or has a true cor- 
 
TRUTH 171 
 
 respondence to it; and is not a mere phenomenal ex- 
 perience wholly nnlike any real mental attribute or 
 wholly "distinct from the mind and heterogeneous." 
 
 From the primitive and original materials and prin- 
 ciples of knowledge supplied to it, the intellect is capa- 
 ble of making truthful representations of external re- 
 alities. The definite extensions and times of the sense- 
 data enable it to construct accurate percepts of the defi- 
 nite extensions and times of outside objects. In our 
 cognition of external things we are therefore not left 
 to be victims of doubt and uncertainty, but are given 
 good grounds of confidence in the truth of our repre- 
 sentations. 
 
 In all the making of percepts and truth, the primary 
 function of mind, we should again remark, is that of 
 combination. The intellect puts together the original 
 elements given to it, and can compose only such struc- 
 tures as they make possible. It is a fabricator or archi- 
 tect, but not a creator. But though not capable of crea- 
 tion or creative synthesis, it is able to unite the ma- 
 terials and categories furnished to in an endless va- 
 riety of compositions corresponding to the illimitable 
 variety of external realities. It can ideally enlarge the 
 elementary experiences, and ideally divide them, as 
 by abstracting one property of an original unitary ex- 
 perience from other properties. Out of primitive ex- 
 tended unitary experiences the faculty, by conceptual 
 combination and division, forms true ideas of very 
 large extensions, and also of very small extensions. 
 Again, out of the temporal units of our primitive ex- 
 periences it forms true ideas of immense, and also of 
 infinitesimal, times. 
 
 But it must be yet maintained further that in making 
 true representations of external things, our intellect 
 
172 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 is stimulated and aided by the external things them- 
 selves. Objects of definite properties make definite im- 
 pressions on the mind; the mind responds by making 
 definite, truthful, representations of the objects. Per- 
 cepts are therefore framed and rendered true to ex- 
 ternal realities by two sorts of means and conditions : 
 (1) the internal, namely, the active intellect with its 
 inseparable data of sense and inseparable forms and 
 categories; and (2) the external, namely, the external 
 realities themselves, near and remote, which influence 
 the internal construction. This union of activity and 
 passivity in the mind's perceptions of the extra-mental 
 has been already dwelt upon. 
 
 From these conditions of the true knowledge of outer 
 objects, one thing, before remarked, is obvious, namely, 
 that the truth of our knowledge is an affair of degrees. 
 All knowledge of externality is progressive, being 
 gradually made more accurate and complete by repe- 
 tition and additions. The perceptions of a man are 
 truer than those of a child; and the perceptions of a 
 creature of developed senses are truer than those of 
 one of undeveloped. External objects in many in- 
 stances remain long the same; they change very little 
 or not at all; but our knowledge of them changes, it 
 continually grows, becoming by frequency of observa- 
 tion more exact and full. In our perceptions of exter- 
 nal objects there are many illusions, which we gradually 
 understand and overcome by repeated and varied ex- 
 periences; our perceptions become truer, more corre- 
 spondent, to the real and fixed character of the ob- 
 jects. The moon seems much larger at the horizon 
 than in the zenith ; but we learn in time that its magni- 
 tude is constant, and that there is a delusive variation 
 in our perception. Hence, what is called by some in- 
 
TRUTH 173 
 
 creased conformity, or approximation, of reality to our 
 intelligence, is in fact approximation of our intelligence 
 to reality, an increasing accuracy of our representation 
 of reality. 
 
 2. Let us go on from the question of our making 
 truth to that of the fixedness and stability of truth. 
 Many are proclaiming to-day the changing nature of 
 things and of our experience. They say that all things 
 flow, and that truth flows with them. And very often 
 the general change or flow is spoken of as if it were not 
 slow, but rapid or rushing. It is undeniable that change 
 is a primary characteristic of all knowable reality and 
 all our knowledge and experience. The present state 
 of the world and of all that is therein, is the result of 
 many and remarkable mutations; and our experience 
 is subject to incessant variation. But we must reflect 
 that in respect to many things the changes are not rapid 
 and great, but slow and minute. They are very often 
 slight compared with the permanence and sameness 
 of things; and the knowledge and truth of things are 
 uniform and constant during the life of the individual 
 and of generations. 
 
 The enduring sameness of our knowledge and truth 
 results from two great causes, one objective, the other 
 subjective; namely, the identity and permanence of 
 knowable realities, and the constancy of the internal 
 materials and forms of our perception. The sameness 
 and stability for us of many external realities are un- 
 questionable ; as of many parts and features of the 
 earth, its mountains, valleys, contours, and of many 
 constructions by the labors of generations of men long 
 vanished. Among pragmatic idealists there is, as it 
 seems, a singularly obtuse and obstinate disregard and 
 denial of the existence of many such ancient and per- 
 
174 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 manent objects, and of many that have undergone but 
 comparatively slight changes in the progress of ages. 
 Respecting the subjective conditions of truth, it is prob- 
 able that the constitutional properties of the human 
 mind, or the primary forms and categories of thought, 
 as spatial extension, time, and causality, have remained 
 the same or nearly the same for many ages, like the 
 human cranial cavity, or size of the brain. 1 The long 
 existing perfection of brain and general structure of 
 the present type of men is presumably a safe token of 
 a corresponding constant sameness of the internal ma- 
 terials, forms and processes of knowledge, and of the 
 resulting percepts and truth. 2 
 
 Hence, though our intellect makes truth, there is yet 
 no ground for asserting or fearing great changeable- 
 ness and instability of truth. There is no sufficient oc- 
 casion for expecting that the truths of this year will 
 all be errors in the next, or the truths of this genera- 
 tion all false for future generations. Human intellects 
 are not infallible; they have made and kept errors, 
 they have changed in their affirmations and denials of 
 truth, have often reversed their judgments; but un- 
 doubtedly there have been, and it seems probable there 
 will continue to be on earth, many certain, universal, 
 and stable truths. 
 
 i "In size of brain, and in stature, the race [Cro-Magnon] which flour- 
 ished in the south of Europe at the close of the Glacial Period was one 
 of the finest the world has ever seen." (Keith, Ancient Types of Men, 
 p. 66.) 
 
 "We may allow a period of at least 200,000 years to have elapsed since 
 the modern type of man appeared: the probability is that his antiquity 
 is infinitely greater, for he is fully evolved when we meet him first." 
 (lb., p. 79.) 
 
 2 Professor James observes : "Our fundamental ways of thinking 
 about things are discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors, which 
 have been able to preserve themselves throughout the experience of all 
 subsequent time." (Pragmatism, p. 170.) It appears likely that they 
 will preserve themselves to our remote descendants. 
 
TRUTH 175 
 
 It deserves consideration and assent, by the way, that 
 rapid variation, mutability, instability, of truth is not 
 always necessarily implied, as at first view it may seem 
 to be, by such propositions as, that an idea is true so 
 long as we believe it profitable to our lives. For an 
 idea may be found profitable during the whole length 
 of life ; and an idea which may be found profitable to 
 us may have been just as really profitable to genera- 
 tions before us, and may continue so to generations yet 
 to come. The Golden Rule is an eminently stable moral 
 norm. It was as good two thousand years ago as it 
 is to-day ; and may remain not less good for thousands 
 of years ahead of us, or, for aught any school of prag- 
 matic idealists seem able to tell us, throughout eternity. 
 
 3. We pass on to treat of the question, Whether util- 
 ity or practical value is the criterion of truth, or How 
 far our ends, purposes, satisfactions, determine knowl- 
 edge and truth. Pragmatic idealists often express 
 themselves in declarations such as these: "The true 
 is useful, and the useless is untrue"; "An idea is use- 
 ful because it is true, or it is true because it is useful" ; 
 "The true is the name of whatever proves itself good" ; 
 "The true and the satisfactory mean the same"; "An 
 idea is true so long as we believe it is profitable to our 
 lives"; "All realities influence our practice, and that 
 influence is their meaning for us"; "The truthfulness 
 of a judgment is nothing more nor less than its prac- 
 tical value for the determination of the means necessary 
 for human welfare." Contrariwise, to many earnest 
 minds it seems a degradation of truth thus to identify 
 it with utility or to subject it to utility as a test. 
 
 Taking truth as we have been taking it, to mean the 
 agreement or correspondence of thought with its (ex- 
 ternal) object, we may readily accept the proposition, 
 
176 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 that truth is the useful or good, without, it would seem, 
 doing any dishonor to the dignity and character of 
 truth ; and accept also even the proposition that reality 
 is the useful, without any actual depreciation of reality. 
 
 That the real is the useful, that external things, ani- 
 mate and inanimate, or very many of them, at any rate 
 the nearer, have meaning, importance, for us, because 
 of their practical effects, appears to follow inevitably 
 from the fact that they and we are parts or members 
 of one evolved system, and by the process of evolution 
 have all been wrought into mutual adaptations. All 
 are governed by the same universal laws, and held to- 
 gether in relations of reciprocal influence ; are correla- 
 tive and interacting members of one world. When 
 one member suffers, the others suffer with it ; when one 
 benefits, the others benefit too. They form, in short, 
 a self -preserving and not a self-destroying system; a 
 system not divided against itself, but united for itself. 
 Assuredly, then, because of this fixed relationship and 
 interaction, within the same systematic whole, it is safe 
 to say that the real is the useful. The world is coher- 
 ent, concatenated, is one : therefore things always influ- 
 ence us, affect us ; they forward our wishes, purposes, 
 efforts ; they determine our pleasures and satisfactions. 
 
 The same facts may be variously classified, or ar- 
 ranged under different categories or rubrics. The 
 present instance of ranking realities as useful is easy 
 to effect; yet when done it has no claim to special im- 
 portance. It is no considerable advance upon common 
 thought; for men have always been even forced to 
 recognize the practical worth of all things they know 
 and deal with. To say that the real is the useful, is 
 indeed but exploiting the obvious. 
 
 Still, though the reality and the utility of things are 
 
TRUTH 177 
 
 always closely related, are in fact inseparable, they are 
 not the same. Reality is more than utility. Things 
 are more than their mutual adaptations. Adaptation 
 or relation is not substance, — it is a mode of substance. 
 Things have their individual substance as the condition 
 of their adaptations or relations ; — therefore reality has 
 precedence and primacy. Also, nothing is more com- 
 mon with men than consideration of the reality or es- 
 sential qualities of an object apart from its utility, or 
 than making judgments of existence apart from judg- 
 ments of value. Such abscissions of our thought are 
 performed continually and with ease. We think, for 
 example, of the shape, magnitude and motion of a ma- 
 terial object without paying the slightest regard to its 
 utility; and the like is substantially true of many ob- 
 jects of many sorts. Again, objects differ very much 
 in their usefulness to us ; as a general rule, the near are 
 more valuable than the remote; yet their actuality is 
 the same. To an American, the desert of Gobi and the 
 pyramid of Cheops have scanty practical worth, they 
 contribute but little to his profit and satisfaction, they 
 may be easily neglected; but undeniably they are, and 
 he believes them to be, as real as the field he tills or the 
 house he lives in. 
 
 The same considerations that demonstrate that the 
 real is the useful, and similar ones, demonstrate that 
 the true is the useful. When the idea by which we 
 know, and by means of which we handle, an object, ac- 
 curately conforms to it, the idea "works," it is profita- 
 ble and satisfactory ; and the more so, the more accurate 
 and complete the conformation. It "works," it is in 
 harmony or pleasant agreement, with other ideas, espe- 
 cially others that have been tried and tested. And also 
 its object "works"; this is found tractable and man- 
 
178 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 ageable, and useful for our purposes, as likewise other 
 objects with which it is nearly associated. Because of 
 the close systematic connections of things, they will 
 all work together for the same ends. On the contrary, 
 if the idea of an object is not true but false or if the 
 correspondence is very defective, if the idea contradicts 
 the uniformity of nature, then it will not work, it will 
 clash with other ideas, and will cause vexation. And 
 its object will be unwieldy and refractory, not pliable to 
 our wishes and designs. It will be taken for what it 
 is not ; and we will therefore be brought not into har- 
 mony, but into collision, with it. The object cannot be 
 made to serve our purposes fashioned upon past true 
 ideas, but will oppose and frustrate them. The case 
 will be like trying to get along with people whom we do 
 not understand and who do not understand us, when dis- 
 agreements and antagonisms will prevail. In general, 
 the greater the truth of ideas the better they enable us 
 to perfect our relations with things, to adapt ourselves 
 more thoroughly to them and them to us ; and the more 
 finished mutual adaptation is always productive of in- 
 creased satisfaction. So universally is this the fact 
 that we may assert with assurance that the true is the 
 useful. 
 
 The working value of ideas is always a matter of the 
 foremost importance, because our life is so largely de- 
 signed to be a life of action, striving for ends, practical 
 accomplishments. The world is our stage, and we are 
 to be ever purposeful and energetic performers. This 
 is in accordance with the teachings of the philosophers 
 and seers of all ages. It is in harmony with the teach- 
 ings of religion, as is clear from the following forceful 
 injunctions of the Bible: "And now also the axe is 
 laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree 
 
TRUTH 179 
 
 that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and 
 cast into the fire"; 1 "Be not weary in well doing"; 2 
 " Being fruitful in every good work." 3 Many songs 
 of religion spiritedly express the same ; as that by Dod- 
 dridge, often sung in the churches : 
 
 " Arise my soul; stretch every nerve, 
 And press with vigor on. ' ' 
 
 Then, inasmuch as our life is preeminently for prac- 
 tical exertion, all ideas of reality, all thought of our 
 relations to things, all truths, must be tested by their 
 worth for such a life. An idea that is not profitable 
 for action and welfare must be untrue or meaning- 
 less. 
 
 Yet truth, like reality, though always united with, 
 and though it may be always tested by, utility, is not 
 identical with it. Truth is more than utility. In their 
 close union, truth has the primacy. Ideas that work 
 show themselves to be true ; but they work because they 
 are true. And so men have always adjudged. Again, 
 to treat of the truth of ideas apart from their useful- 
 ness, and thus to distinguish it, is of our commonest 
 experience. It appears indisputable that with many 
 men there is a distinct ardor to acquire true ideas, cor- 
 rect and complete knowledge, and a distinct delight in 
 the acquisition ; a zeal to know simply for the * ' sake of 
 knowing, ' ' or just to ascertain what is and to gratify a 
 lively natural curiosity which is awakened by the ap- 
 parent illimitable extent and richness of existence. 
 
 Before closing this chapter, it might be found inter- 
 
 i Gospel of Matthew, 3 : 10. 
 2 11 Thess., 3:13. 
 a Col., 1:10. 
 
180 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 esting and profitable to examine some of the postu- 
 lates, principles, working hypotheses, particularly set 
 forth by pragmatic idealists as having their worth or 
 being wholly in their usefulness. Let us at least con- 
 sider compendiously the most eminent of them, namely, 
 theistic belief, or the conception of an intelligent Su- 
 preme Being. It is said that the practical effects or 
 advantages that attend this religious conception justify 
 us in receiving it as a u working hypothesis/ ' 
 
 We should be ready to concede at once that all prin- 
 ciples of religion and also of morality (that is, those 
 generally believed to be true and obligatory by the most 
 advanced communities) are useful, and that utility may 
 be applied to them as a criterion. Belief in God seems 
 in various ways very beneficial. Kant thought God 
 highly valuable as an ideal for the use of our reason 
 and intellect. What Jesus says of the Sabbath day 
 may be said of other religious ordinances and statutes : 
 they were made for man, not man for them. Further, 
 whatever is commonly deemed ethical or obligatory in 
 character and action is certainly profitable to the indi- 
 vidual and society. No one can doubt the advantages 
 of purity of heart, and of practicing the precepts that 
 inhibit stealing, lying, coveting, adultery, and that en- 
 join unselfishness and benevolence. It seems undenia- 
 ble that whatever is morally right is useful, and that, 
 therefore, utility may be made the test of morality. 
 We might probably adopt even the universal postulate, 
 that all things were made to be useful. 
 
 But while it seems evident that all principles of true 
 religion and morality are profitable, and that profitable- 
 ness may be accepted as a criterion for them, yet it re- 
 mains a very significant fact that men in all ages have 
 reverenced and practiced these principles in many in- 
 
TRUTH 181 
 
 stances with but little or no thought of the advantages 
 that will accrue. They have in this remarkable manner 
 held principles apart, so to speak, from their profitable- 
 ness, and ignored or been indifferent to the latter. 
 They have reverenced and obeyed ethical statutes 
 rather because they have thought them to give expres- 
 sion to the great and permanent realities and laws of 
 the world or nature and to the will of the Creator. 
 They have acted not from feelings of advantage, but 
 from the quite distinct and peculiar feelings of duty, 
 obligation, moral necessity. They have felt bound by 
 them, while disregarding, and often but very imper- 
 fectly understanding, the benefits to themselves for so 
 doing. Men have thus always found it possible and 
 easy to reflect upon the world, its great features and 
 events, and their own existence as conditioned thereby, 
 upon the earth as the permanent theatre of their moral 
 agency and requiring certain courses of action, while 
 giving little attention to their own profit. Before ev- 
 erything else they have felt subordinate to and depend- 
 ent upon the great independent realities and laws of 
 the surrounding world, and the supreme Will. 
 
 Respecting especially theistic belief, men have in 
 many cases thought of, worshipped, and served the Su- 
 preme Being, not primarily as a rewarder of service or 
 bestower of benefits, but as the producer and sustainer 
 of the world, the creator of their own being and the 
 conditions and utilities of their life, and worthy in him- 
 self, because of his own power, acts, and dominion, of 
 the reverence and obedience of his creatures. They 
 have had chiefly in mind the divine rights and claims, 
 not their own advantages. 
 
 Our knowledge of God, as of every being distinct 
 from ourself , is an inference ; and is a worthy inference, 
 
182 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 because grounded on his cognizable works — as the char- 
 acter and regular processes of finite minds and also of 
 the material world. As part of the basis of the infer- 
 ence, or as a confirmation, are to be reckoned special 
 experiences in men of the divine influence upon their 
 souls. The evolutional sallies and progressions, and 
 the remarkable present synthetic results in the material 
 and mental world, evidence a presiding and designing 
 mind. A conception of God not so based may be 
 deemed untrustworthy; but on this ground a genuine 
 and credible inference can be made. But the practical 
 consequences of such an inference or belief must not be 
 ignored as if unimportant. They have certainly great 
 and just influence in confirming our inference of God 
 and our trust in it. They have and should have this 
 influence because of their relation to the permanent 
 facts from which the inference itself is made. Still 
 they must not be put first. A true inference of God 
 may be drawn without consideration of utilitarian con- 
 sequences; and must always have its chief ground in 
 the realities and facts of the universe as knowable in 
 themselves. The inference of God so formed may also 
 be regarded in a manner as a " working hypothesis"; 
 because our inference or knowledge of God is progres- 
 sive, it grows with our knowledge of the material and 
 spiritual realities of the world. Just as our knowledge 
 gradually comes more perfectly to correspond, comes 
 to be truer, to the constant realities and uniform or reg- 
 ular activities of nature, so does our thought of God, 
 constructed from that knowledge, come more thor- 
 oughly to correspond, or to be true, to the constant real- 
 ity of God. 
 
 The extreme teachings of pragmatic idealists respect- 
 ing reality and truth are identical with much that has 
 
TRUTH 183 
 
 long been advocated under the name of anthropomor- 
 phism. According to the hypothesis of anthropomor- 
 phism, man is the measure of all things; into his 
 knowledge of things he imports his own nature or at- 
 tributes ; he knows not things as they are in themselves, 
 but only according to the forms of his own being or 
 thought; he makes all objects, including God, conform 
 to his own nature. 
 
 The only spiritual nature immediately known to us 
 is undoubtedly our own; and our knowledge of any 
 other and higher must be an inference based on the 
 knowledge of our own, or be a representation con- 
 structed out of its attributes. The idea of God there- 
 fore must be to a large extent one formed from human 
 faculties — intelligence, will, power — raised to the high- 
 est perfection thinkable by us. But our thought thus 
 constructed out of human materials, though neces- 
 sarily an imperfect, is yet a true knowledge of a dis- 
 tinct reality. There are both truth and error in the fol- 
 lowing declaration of Paulsen : ' ' Of a superhuman spir- 
 itual life we have absolutely no knowledge. . . . We 
 read into the higher spiritual life conceived by meta- 
 physics the highest phases of our being." 1 It must 
 be admitted we have absolutely no immediate knowl- 
 edge of God ; but we are not compelled to admit that a 
 representative knowledge, possessing some measure of 
 truth, cannot be framed from human knowledge of the 
 universe and idealization of human nature. 
 
 We have a true, though certainly not a complete or 
 perfect, knowledge of a great extent of the universe. 
 We know vast measures of its spatial and temporal ex- 
 istence, and of its motions and forces. We apprehend 
 the wonders of the solar system. Our knowledge of 
 
 i Ethics (Thilly tr.), p. 429. 
 
184 SUBJECT AND OBJECT 
 
 these realities is a true knowledge ; we cognize them as 
 they exist in themselves, in their real extension, time 
 and relations. This universe, thus known truly, of it- 
 self calls for a Being having intelligence and power 
 equal to the production and government of it; and we 
 are justified in supposing that the author and ruler 
 of the cognizable universe has a nature possessing some 
 resemblance to that of the creature who can understand 
 the universe, and feel wonder and delight in contem- 
 plating it. 
 
 The only means in our possession, as above re- 
 marked, of forming a representative knowledge of the 
 Creator and governing Spirit is by the enlargement of 
 our own faculties of intelligence, will and force, to the 
 extent in which they may be thought adequate to the 
 production and control of the universe as far as it is 
 known to us. While a very imperfect, this is yet a 
 true knowledge or representation, since it is based upon, 
 and produced at the excitation of, a true knowledge, 
 as far as it goes, of the universe. Our conception of 
 God therefore is not an arbitrary product or pure inven- 
 tion of the intellect acting under the spur of desire or 
 utilitarian interest, it is not a mere copy of human na- 
 ture, it is not simply a " working hypothesis," or a 
 u regulative ' ' idea of reason ; but is a true inference and 
 representation, having a real and sufficient foundation 
 in a true knowledge of the wonderfully constructed and 
 stupendous works of God as they exist in themselves 
 and of man as in the midst. Our knowledge, as true to 
 the cosmos, and to man's character and relation to the 
 cosmos, constitutes the trustworthy basis and the oc- 
 casion of the loftier knowledge of the Author and Sus- 
 tainer of the cosmos. 
 
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