I 
 
 /
 
 A THEORY OF MONADS
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO.. LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE PHILOSOPHY 
 OF THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY 
 
 BY 
 
 H. WILDON CARR, D.Lirr. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1922
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN this book I have brought together studies which have 
 occupied me for many years, and have tried to impress on 
 them the directive force of my general philosophy of life. 
 They do not pretend to the completeness of system, 
 they are not meant to suggest that a final solution of the 
 philosophical problem is to be attained along any definite 
 speculative line, they are not even my voyage of dis- 
 covery, they are my exploration of the great problem of 
 existence. Yet while I am conscious that I may have 
 raised more problems than I have elucidated, with regard to 
 one problem at least, I think I may claim to have made an 
 advance. For many years it seemed to me that philosophy 
 was paralysed by the inability to offer any escape from the 
 solipsistic dilemma, and in the theory of the monads this 
 difficulty has always seemed to assume its most intractable 
 form. The argument which I have developed in my second 
 chapter and illustrated in my tenth, may not appeal with 
 the same force to every one, but it is the argument which 
 satisfies me on this point. 
 
 Each chapter has an individual theme and may be read 
 by itself. Yet the themes are not strung together as beads 
 on a thread. They present, at least in their author's mind, 
 a definite order in the development of the philosophical 
 problem, and they are all inspired by the motive of evolving 
 a theory consistent with the principles of the new science. 
 
 Chapters VI., VII. and VIII. contain the substance of
 
 vi A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 three Presidential Addresses to the Aristotelian Society in 
 the sessions of 1915, 1916 and 1917. Chapter I. was also 
 communicated to the Aristotelian Society and published in 
 Proceedings, Vol. XIX., under the title " Philosophy as 
 Monadology." 
 
 I have not burdened the text with footnotes, and 
 much indebtedness is passed without acknowledgment. The 
 leaders who have influenced me most are first of all, Bergson, 
 to whom I owe the distinct orientation of my philosophy. 
 Grace's aesthetic theory came as a revelation to me. To 
 Gentile I owe the full concept of the immanence of the 
 ideal in every form of the actuality of experience. But it 
 is to friends past and present of the Aristotelian Society 
 that I owe the interest in philosophy which has sustained 
 me throughout my life. 
 
 H. W. C. 
 
 LONDON, March 1922.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE MODERN SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION . i 
 
 PART I 
 METAPHYSICAL: THE NATURE OF THE MONAD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE WINDOWLESS MONAD . . . . .15 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE . . . . .38 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CONCEPT OF NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE . .58 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE CONCEPT OF NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY . . .81 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE IDEA OF GOD . . . . . -97 
 
 PART II 
 
 PSYCHOLOGICAL: THE ACTIVITY OF THE MONAD 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE . . . .123
 
 viii A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MEMORY THE FUNDAMENTAL FACT IN EXPERIENCE. . 154 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE DIVERSITY IN UNITY OF BODY AND MIND . . 180 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MECHANISM OF PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY . 222 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MONADIC INTERCOURSE . . . . 243 
 
 PART III 
 LOGICAL : THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE MONAD 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS . . * . . .261 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL . , . . . 283 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 CREATIVE EVOLUTION . . . . .301 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD . . . .321 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY . . . -335 
 
 INDEX . ... -349
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE MODERN SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 
 
 WE are accustomed to distinguish between science and 
 philosophy. The main ground of the distinction is that 
 experience, when we study it systematically, presents to 
 us two distinct aspects, one subjective and the other objec- 
 tive. Science deals with Nature, the objective aspect of 
 the world when it confronts the mind as external existence. 
 Philosophy deals with Mind, the subjective aspect which 
 experience presents when we have regard to the fact 
 that external existence itself is primarily and fundament- 
 ally apprehended as idea. The two aspects of reality, the 
 aspect of existence which it presents to science, the aspect 
 of idea which it presents to philosophy, are not reciprocally 
 exclusive, and cannot exist harmoniously in independence, 
 for each in its very definition is universal in the absolute 
 meaning of the term, and each, therefore, is inclusive of 
 the other. Hence the initial difficulty of the problem of 
 their relation, a problem which since the development and 
 triumphant advance of scientific knowledge in the nine- 
 teenth century has come more and more to be the main 
 and crucial problem of philosophy. 
 
 Every relation implies an identity underlying the mani- 
 fest difference in the terms ; but in the case of the two 
 aspects which reality presents to our mind, the scientific 
 and the philosophic, there seems no possibility of reconcil- 
 ing the difference in an identity. We seem in fact to 
 have, not a relation, but two alternatives, the adoption of 
 either, philosophy or science, involving the rejection of the 
 other. For, in so far as science is knowledge, it must fall 
 
 i B
 
 2 A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 within the knowing which philosophy regards as experi- 
 ence, but in so far as science presupposes the existence of its 
 object, its reality must assume a form which is inaccessible 
 to philosophy, and philosophy itself to be justified as 
 science must fall within existence and cease to be philosophy. 
 And this gives rise to a curious dilemma. The one horn is 
 that reality, or existence, supposed independent of know- 
 ledge is in its independence, not merely unknown but by 
 its definition unknowable ; and to be unknowable and to be 
 non-existent are, so far as our thinking is concerned, one and 
 the same. The other horn is that the essence of science is 
 discovery, and if there be no existence completely independ- 
 ent of the knowledge of it, there is nothing to discover. 
 
 Science has never been seriously troubled with this 
 dilemma. Indeed, the very fact that philosophy has been 
 so largely engrossed with it has always been to science 
 the reproach of philosophy, marking it as an abstract, 
 speculative, jejune, logistic, inquiry, remote from the con- 
 crete, practical, urgent, interests of human life. For itself, 
 science simply sweeps the difficulty aside, cuts the Gordian 
 knot, by the simple rough-and-ready device of assuming 
 the existence of the object it is required to presuppose ; 
 assuming, that is, the entire independence of the object in 
 its existence of the act by which it is known. But having 
 done so science cannot stop. The need for a theory of know- 
 ledge is imperative, because knowledge itself is fact. It is 
 obliged, therefore, to go on and assume that knowing is 
 not anything, that it is no more than the simple de facto 
 relation of togetherness, in which one thing, a mind, in 
 consequence of a peculiar quality it possesses, can, without 
 affecting in any way the thing which confronts it, con- 
 template that thing and thereby know it without its know- 
 ing contributing anything to the constitution of the thing 
 known. In this way science has come to adopt as its 
 method the study of the material universe in complete 
 abstraction from the conditions of knowledge, and has set 
 before itself as its ideal the attainment of a systematic 
 body of truth about the universe, devoid altogether of any 
 taint of subjectivity or relativity.
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 Science has certainly seemed to be justified by success. 
 Indeed it is difficult even to imagine that its great advance 
 in modern times could have been achieved had it chosen 
 any other method. That it should be untrammelled by 
 irrelevance was a condition of development. It is by 
 narrowing inquiry, by concentrating observation, by ex- 
 cluding larger issues, by dividing and subdividing that it 
 has conquered. But there is a limit, and the very advance 
 of science, by its own method, and on its chosen conditions, 
 has brought it face to face with the philosophical problem 
 it set out by ignoring. It finds itself after a century of 
 continuous triumphant progress arrested, not by the 
 clamour of philosophers, but by the empirical discoveries 
 of its own researchers, and forced to revise its apparently 
 workable hypothesis that knowing is not anything. If 
 science is discovery it must at least be of some conse- 
 quence to know who or what it is that discovers and what 
 are the conditions of discovery. A revolution once started 
 has a way of gathering momentum and goes on completing 
 itself. And to-day science from its old attitude of regard- 
 ing knowing as not anything is fast coming to regard it as 
 everything. 
 
 The revolution has come with dramatic suddenness, but 
 like all revolutions it has been long preparing. Its fall 
 of the Bastille was the verification of Einstein's calculation 
 of the shift of the stars, observed during the total eclipse 
 of May 29, 1919. This proved that the path of the light 
 rays is curved in a gravitational field, and rendered 
 meaningless the hypothesis of homoloidal space. But 
 though the revolution has been sudden the scientific 
 world was ripe for it. For many years and in many direc- 
 tions the old bedrock materialism, on which science had 
 hitherto builded, was seen to be cracking and crumbling. 
 Along several lines the sciences have been steadily converg- 
 ing on the necessity of a complete revision of their funda- 
 mental principle. 
 
 First, there stands the doctrine of Berkeley. More and 
 more as science has advanced it has become obvious to 
 scientific thinkers that this doctrine cannot be ignored but
 
 4 A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 must be reckoned with. It is easy enough to make a definite 
 and clear distinction between the concepts of scientific 
 reality and the percepts of sensible experience, but is it 
 not evident that these percepts of the senses are the im- 
 mediate objects of knowledge ? How then do we pass 
 from these subjective sensible qualities to the objective 
 concepts of the scientific reality ? What is the relation 
 between the one and the other ? When we have systematic- 
 ally worked out our concept of the scientific reality with its 
 unsensed mathematical properties can we say that it is 
 full reality, and that the colours, sounds, tastes, smells, 
 feelings, which make up our experience of reality, are not 
 anything, a shadow world of mere illusion ? We must 
 admit that they are something, but if they are something 
 may they not, must they not, be everything ? This problem 
 of the status of sensations and their exact position in the 
 scheme of physical reality has particularly engaged the 
 physicists. They by their truly magnificent generalizations 
 enable us to form images of physical reality which represent 
 a universe absolutely indifferent to consciousness ; a world, 
 for example, in which light, electricity, magnetism, and 
 the rest are independent completely of the colour, sound, 
 feeling by which they are known, and which would be 
 what they are even were there no consciousness and, there- 
 fore, no sensible quality to be experienced. But then these 
 sensations and the sensible qualities of which they are the 
 experience are de facto existence. What place and what 
 role is to be assigned to them in physical theory ? One 
 character of them is that of being subjective responses to 
 objective stimuli, but that does not prevent them being 
 objective in the full scientific meaning. As they could not 
 be accommodated in the general materialistic or naturalistic 
 conceptions of physics, it was supposed that they could be 
 side-tracked, and for this purpose the physicists had recourse 
 to the philosophers. Sensations, and, generally, the sensible 
 qualities which they imply, were declared to be epipheno- 
 mena, a euphonious way of saying they are nothing; 
 or they were recognized as existent facts but declared to 
 belong to an independent and parallel series having no
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 relations of interaction with the physical series. This 
 makeshift theory could not work, but it seemed to serve 
 a purpose, and at least to enable science to guard the pure 
 objectivity of its subject-matter. It broke down com- 
 pletely when science recognized the failure of all attempts to 
 determine the movement of a system by observations within 
 the system. This brought out with sudden clearness that 
 the activity of the observer is an essential determinant 
 factor of the nature of the physical fact itself. The principle 
 of relativity is the abandonment of the attempt in science 
 to dissociate act and fact. 
 
 A second line along which science, following its own 
 method and holding fast to its distinctively objective 
 principle, has found its own progress bring it into conflict 
 with its own principle, is in the scientific concept of life. 
 The biological sciences arose under a kind of rational protest 
 against the superstitious idea that life is a mystery, 
 the tree of life planted by God in Eden, something link- 
 ing us with the supernatural and the divine, which it is 
 impious to investigate scientifically. The rapid success of 
 biology seemed at first to be wholly due to the application of 
 the mechanistic concepts of physics. So much so that a 
 few years ago all biologists believed we might be on the 
 point of demonstrating the complete success of the scientific 
 method by the synthetic production of living matter in a 
 chemical laboratory. The outstanding feature of the scientific 
 attainment of the nineteenth century is the Darwinian theory 
 of evolution by natural selection, that is, by a selection con- 
 ceived purely naturalistically as a survival of the fittest. But 
 without any relapse into finalistic and teleological categories, 
 hateful to the scientific spirit, the progress of biological 
 science, following its own line of investigation, has suggested, 
 and brought increasing certainty to the suggestion, that 
 the intellect is itself a product of evolution. The study of 
 instinctive action, and of purposive action generally, tends in- 
 creasingly to confirm it. But if intellect is a product of evolu- 
 tion the whole mechanistic concept of the nature and origin of 
 life is absurd, and the principle which science has adopted 
 must clearly be revised. We have only to state it to see
 
 6 A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 the self-contradiction. How can the intellect, a mode of 
 apprehending reality, be itself an evolution of something 
 which only exists as an abstraction of that mode of appre- 
 hending, which is the intellect ? If intellect is an evolution 
 of life, then the concept of the life which can evolve intellect 
 as a particular mode of apprehending reality must be the 
 concept of a more concrete activity than that of any abstract 
 mechanical movement which the intellect can present to 
 itself by analysing its apprehended content. And yet 
 further, if the intellect be a product of the evolution of 
 life, it is not absolute but relative to the activity of the life 
 which has evolved it ; how then, in such case, can science 
 exclude the subjective aspect of the knowing and build 
 on the objective presentation as an absolute ? Clearly 
 the biological sciences necessitate a reconsideration of the 
 scientific principle. 
 
 A third line is that of the criticism of the foundation 
 of the mathematical sciences. If not more important than 
 the other lines it has certainly been more decisive. It has 
 led to the formulation of the general principle of relativity, 
 and this has involved a complete revolution in our notions 
 of the structure of the universe and necessitated the entire 
 re-formation of our concepts of space, time and matter. 
 Scepticism in regard to the postulates of the mathematical 
 sciences has been until quite recent times purely theoretical, 
 never seeming even to threaten to justify itself in any 
 practical application. Indeed it has seemed eminently the 
 occupation of highly speculative minds, detached completely 
 from any practical interests, or else the attraction of writers 
 of romance attempting to rationalize the creations of a 
 fertile imagination. Those, for example, who in the past 
 have speculated on the possibility of a fourth dimension 
 of space, or of a reversal of the order of temporal succession, 
 have been moved to it either by their interest in theories of 
 personal survival or purely spiritual existence, and their 
 satisfaction in the result of such speculations has been due 
 rather to comfort in the suggestion of possibilities, than to 
 attainment in the discovery, or hope of discovery, of fact. 
 But meanwhile a steady progress of purely scientific investi-
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 gation has led to a new cosmogony and a new theogony 
 based on a new metaphysic of physical reality. Let us 
 indicate briefly the lines of this development. 
 
 First, we may notice the entirely modern research which 
 has led to the mathematical theory of continuity. Mathe- 
 matics is the typical exact science, conceived by us as 
 essentially true without depending in any manner on sub- 
 jective opinion. Yet at its very basis it is challenged to 
 justify its affirmation of the reality of the continuum on 
 which its propositions depend and in regard to which 
 alone its propositions have meaning and are true. What 
 is the relation between the physical continuum which is 
 based on our perceptions of reality and the mathematical 
 continuum of which there are no perceptions but which we 
 construct conceptually from the implications of sensible 
 perception ? In its origin the mathematical continuum is 
 the attempt to rationalize a common contradictory ex- 
 perience. A certain sense-given particular A (a shade of 
 colour, a musical note, a feeling of push or resistance) is 
 indistinguishable from a numerically different particular B, 
 and B in like manner is indistinguishable from C, yet A is 
 distinguishable from C. For example, a shade of green in 
 a colour scale may be indistinguishable by perception from 
 the shade below and the shade above, while yet the 
 difference of these two is clearly perceptible. To harmonize 
 this discrepancy and reconcile it with the logical principle 
 of contradiction, we suppose that behind the physical 
 continuum which we perceive there is a real or mathe- 
 matical continuum of which the physical continuum is only 
 an imperfect apprehension, and we seem to find abundant 
 proof of this in experience itself in the instruments devised 
 to increase the discerning powers of the sense-organs. It 
 is the triumph of modern mathematics to have shown the 
 mode in which the mind constructs this continuum. It 
 consists not of atoms or electrons or ether, but of points, 
 lines, planes, and it has become conceptual space, the 
 subject-matter of the science of geometry. The infinite 
 divisibility of the mathematical continuum, which has been 
 from ancient times the fruitful origin of antinomies of
 
 8 A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 reason, is shown in the modern theory to be involved in the 
 construction of a concept. 
 
 More striking still has been the result of the criticism 
 of the postulates of geometry. From ancient times Euclid's 
 postulate of parallelism has seemed to invite demonstration 
 and at the same time to defeat all attempts to demonstrate 
 it. It is impossible to state that postulate in terms which 
 carry the conviction of self -evidence. To-day we have in the 
 non-Euclidean geometries the definite demonstration that 
 it is indemonstrable. No contradictory results whatever 
 follow from rejecting the postulate or from postulating the 
 direct opposite of it. The result of this has been a complete 
 reversal of the status once assigned to Euclidean geometry. 
 From seeming to be the only possible science of space, the 
 space-system of the Euclidean geometry is now a limit. 
 In the theory of relativity it is the geometry of a point- 
 instant infinitely remote from gravitational fields, that is, 
 the geometry of a space-system when the distance from 
 a gravitational centre is infinite. In other words, Euclid's 
 Elements are not dethroned or rejected as untrue, but 
 applicable in their absolute character (and this alone is the 
 concern of mathematics) in an ideal region. 
 
 What the criticism of the mathematical postulates has 
 changed profoundly, therefore, is not our science of geometry 
 but our concept of the space which is the subject-matter 
 of that science. Instead of absolute space, arrived at by 
 what we have hitherto regarded as a kind of instinctive 
 reasoning, and then set up as a necessary concept of the 
 framework of nature, we have now an infinite series of space- 
 systems, with the ideal space of the Euclidean geometry 
 as a limit. And even these space-systems are not concrete 
 reality, they are abstractions whenever they are taken apart 
 from the time dimension. For concrete Nature is not 
 matter but movement, and concrete Mind is not contempla- 
 tion but activity. It is no longer true, if it once seemed 
 to be true, that the mathematical, physical and natural 
 sciences depend on the realistic hypothesis in philosophy. 
 The assumption of material existence as a presupposition 
 of the activity of mind in knowing and acting, even as a
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 purely methodological postulate, is unworkable in science. 
 This is the real meaning of the new Copernican revolution 
 in science which is named the principle of relativity. 
 
 Knowledge is the expression of the deep-seated need of 
 the mind for unity. The intellect is an unceasing activity 
 of judgment. Whatever the intellect apprehends it relates, 
 and it apprehends by relating. The mode of its activity is 
 externalization. Its objective, therefore, appears always as 
 the multiplicity rather than as the unity of its object, and 
 the unification implied in the systematic order it imposes 
 seems an external unification, something to which objects 
 submit in virtue of their own intrinsic nature. But the 
 only unity which can effectively satisfy is a unity which 
 includes the subject of knowledge. Science based on a 
 dualistic assumption is foredoomed to failure directly it 
 attempts to rationalize its attainment. As matter of fact, 
 the history of philosophy shows us that the invariable 
 result of such an initial assumption is that ceaseless attempts 
 follow to reduce one of the two terms to nullity. This is 
 the meaning of the controversy between realism and idealism, 
 each strong in its affirmation of what the other denies. 
 The keynote of modern idealism and its strength is the 
 affirmation that reality is concrete. It rejects the abstract 
 only in so far as it is set up as concrete in its abstractness. 
 It rejects the presupposition of an object independent in 
 its existence of the subject for which it is object, not on 
 the ground of logical inconsistency, not on the basis of a 
 metaphysical ontology which identifies esse -and percipi, but 
 purely on the ground of its abstractness. Idealism rejects 
 equally the presupposition of a subject independent, in 
 its existence, of the object, God independent of nature, 
 minds independent of things. In this there is no conflict 
 with physical science, because for science the subject of 
 knowledge is a pure abstraction. Science hitherto, in claim- 
 ing concreteness for its object, has imagined a pure object 
 free from all subjectivity. Modern science is now coming 
 into line with modern philosophy in the recognition that 
 actual experience alone is concrete. This is what is meant 
 by the idealistic interpretation of the principle of relativity,
 
 io A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 not that scientific reality has no other basis than the 
 ideas in the minds of subjects of experience, but that it is 
 based on an objectivity which derives its whole meaning 
 from the concrete experience of the subject. Science no 
 longer asks us to assume that there are abstract things- 
 in-themselves contemplated by pure intelligences. 
 
 A very striking analogy to the modern scientific revolu- 
 tion is presented to us in the development of the Cartesian 
 philosophy of the seventeenth century. That philosophy 
 began with the distinction of two substances, thought and 
 extension, the one corresponding to what we think of as 
 pure contemplative intellect, the other to the independent 
 object of contemplation, Nature. This philosophy arose 
 when physics was differentiating itself from mathematics, 
 following Galileo, and relying more and more on the experi- 
 mental method. The philosophy of Descartes seemed to 
 provide the very mechanistic basis of which science stood in 
 need, the conception of a purely independent objective uni- 
 verse whose inmost constitution could be mechanistically 
 explained. As a philosophy, however, we see it striving 
 throughout its development, and continually failing, and 
 finally completely failing, to discover any intelligible prin- 
 ciple on which to establish the relation between the two sub- 
 stances which is presupposed in the concept of them. The 
 dualism which science seemed so imperatively to demand 
 proved unworkable. The way of escape was offered by 
 Leibniz, but it involved a reform of the concept of substance 
 itself. In place of the concept of substance as the sub- 
 stratum of two systems or orders of movement, one inert and 
 mechanical, the other contemplative and volitional, Leibniz 
 formulated the concept of substance as essentially active and 
 dynamic. Reality was constituted, he said, of simple 
 substances, but these were the monads, active subjects of 
 experience each having the universe mirrored in its acting 
 centre. These monads were not conceived as independent 
 minds dotted about in an alien matter, in an independent 
 universe, which they behold in their own manner and make 
 the best of ; they were conceived as centres of activity, an 
 activity consisting in the perceptions of which the objective
 
 INTRODUCTION n 
 
 world or nature consists. When we make allowance for all 
 the differences hi the outlook of the seventeenth century in 
 science, philosophy and religion, do we not see that the 
 essence of this reform of the concept of reality is to substitute 
 concrete experience for the independent abstractions, mind 
 and matter ? 
 
 When we turn to the new conception which is presented 
 to us in the four-dimensional continuum of Minkowski and 
 the finite yet unbounded universe of Einstein, do we not 
 find that the basis of this conception is precisely the same, 
 namely, the rejection of abstractions such as absolute space 
 and tune, and pure contemplative intellect, and the sub- 
 stitution of actual concrete experience ? To see that this 
 is so we have only to look behind the brilliant mathematical 
 devices which form the scaffolding of the new scientific 
 structure, and fix our attention on the leading motive and 
 method, and we see at once that the strength and security 
 of its foundation lies in its conception of scientific reality 
 as consisting wholly in individual experience and not, in 
 any degree or in any respect, on presupposed conditions of 
 the experience. 
 
 Take, for example, the new discovery of the constant 
 velocity of light : the constancy of this calculated velocity 
 depends simply on the experience, not on a presupposition 
 of experience, that we have no more rapid way of com- 
 municating than light signals afford. If we had, or should 
 ever come to have, then the constancy of this velocity 
 would cease to be fact. But this is a minor point and 
 a detail. Let us come to the main conception itself. 
 In the universe, as Minkowski and Einstein require us 
 to conceive it, there is no simultaneity. This does not 
 mean that we have to calculate the simultaneity of events on 
 a new principle, it means that simultaneity in the old sense 
 has lost its significance and in fact represents nothing ; no 
 two events are simultaneous hi any universal meaning. 
 Also there is no universal system of geometry, nothing which 
 even corresponds to the Euclidean geometry in the old 
 conception. Every point-event has its own geometrical 
 system. Instead of Euclidean geometry we are given the
 
 12 A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 concept of infinite geometrical systems of which the Euclidean 
 may be a limiting case. Now when we look behind these 
 facts to the concept of reality on which they rest, we are 
 able to see at once that their whole ground and rationality 
 lie in the conception of scientific reality as constituted 
 wholly of concrete experience. Every point-event in this 
 universe whose track forms a world-line has to be taken 
 primarily from its own standpoint, according to which it 
 is the centre of the universe and its world-line the norm of 
 direction, and all other events and world-lines are co- 
 ordinated by it on a principle which maintains its standard. 
 At no point in this universe and under no aspect of it can 
 we dissolve the experience into factors and say here we 
 have pure nature and here we have pure mind. 
 
 In what follows I have endeavoured to outline the 
 philosophy of this concept of a scientific reality based on 
 pure concrete experience without presuppositions.
 
 PART I 
 
 METAPHYSICAL: 
 THE NATURE OF THE MONAD
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 
 
 The Monads have no windows by which anything can enter or pass 
 out. LEIBNIZ. 
 
 " The world is my idea," this is a truth which holds good for every- 
 thing that lives and knows. SCHOPENHAUER. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY is science but not one of the sciences. It is 
 the search for truth, but not for particular truths, nor for 
 truth about particular facts. I-Msjthe_attempt to know 
 and to set forth in systematic order full concrete reality. 
 It is, to speak figuratively, the mind's adventure or voyage 
 of discovery on the ocean of its own existence, an adventure 
 the purpose of which is to discover the full range of its 
 activity, to know itself. 
 
 There are two ways in which we may regard the mind. 
 We may, and we commonly do, regard it as belonging to a 
 class among the classes of things of which the universe is 
 composed, as an existence within the universe. We dis- 
 tinguish mental things from physical things, and we make 
 the mental things the subject of special sciences. For 
 example, we have special sciences of anthropology, sociology, 
 criminology, ethnology, and innumerable others, all of 
 which treat the mind as a definite thing or as the definite 
 quality of definite things ; and also we have special sciences, 
 like the physical and mathematical sciences, geometry, 
 astronomy, geology, chemistry, mineralogy, and the like, 
 all of which treat their objects as entirely independent of 
 any relation to the mind. Philosophy is not the science of 
 mind when mind is regarded as a particular kind or class of 
 existent objects. 
 
 15
 
 x*L~ 
 
 16 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 We may also regard the mind in another way. It is 
 for each conscious experient the active centre of a universe, 
 a centre which is not independent of the universe, nor one 
 of the constituents of the universe, but a focal point within 
 it, In this way of regarding mind our whole universe comes 
 within it, for our mind consists oLouuJgiowledge^and our 
 knowledge is the miivejge j _jnirrored, as it^^were, in that 
 active centre. When mind is regarded in this way it is the 
 subject-matter of philosophy. 
 
 If philosophy on its theoretical side is science, on its 
 practical side it is wisdom. When we account a man wise, 
 we mean something more than and something different 
 from what we mean when we say that he is learned or 
 skilful ; we mean that however extensive or intensive his 
 special knowledge may be, he is able to grasp or comprehend 
 life in its aspect as a whole. Plato tells us in the Apology 
 that the Delphic oracle had pronounced Socrates the wisest 
 of the Greeks, and that on being informed of the oracle 
 Socrates wondered what could be the meaning of the god, 
 and in order to discover it questioned all those who pro- 
 fessed to have knowledge, but only to meet everywhere 
 with disappointment. He concluded that the oracle spoke 
 truly, but that his wisdom only consisted in his making no 
 pretension to knowledge. This is emblematic of philosophy 
 and philosophers. The search for truth at once attracts us 
 to the possessors of knowledge ; we are even overawed at the 
 vast attainments of the human mind in the arts and sciences 
 which minister to the needs, theoretical and practical, of 
 human beings. Yet this knowledge is not wisdom. What 
 the philosopher would possess is comprehension of the 
 human activity itself, in its full, concrete, universal meaning. 
 
 Can we not then define with clearness and precision the 
 special subject-matter of philosophy in its full technicality ? 
 I think we can. Valuable and necessary as it may be to 
 indicate the general nature of philosophy in literary and 
 figurative form, we always, when we do so, leave behind 
 a feeling of dissatisfaction. Vagueness and shapelessness 
 seem to characterize philosophy, and then we are inclined to 
 draw a sharp contrast between it and science. Scientific
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 17 
 
 knowledge appears precise and systematic and moulded 
 on reality ; philosophic knowledge, nebulous and indefinite, 
 with no sure outlines, and concerned only with what is 
 purely ideal. Yet even to the extent to which this is true 
 it does not necessarily indicate an advantage of science and 
 a disadvantage of philosophy, for we can show that the 
 precision of the mathematical and physical sciences is due 
 to then: abstractness and therefore to their poverty when 
 compared with the richness of philosophic truth. In saying 
 this I do not mean to disparage the sciences. I mean only 
 what Kant pointed out at the end of the Critique of Pure 
 Reason when he made the comparison between mathematical 
 and philosophical truth. In mathematics, he declared, we 
 make synthetic judgments which positively extend our 
 knowledge of reality, while in philosophy any such extension 
 of knowledge is impossible. But the apparent defect of 
 philosophy is due to its wealth and not to its poverty. 
 
 Philosophy is the science of the monad, and the order 
 and arrangement which it studies is the monadic order. 
 Philosophy is monadology. The term was first made familiar 
 in the celebrated work of Leibniz which bears that title. 
 In adopting it I am not advocating a mere return to Leibniz 
 either for the formulation of a particular doctrine or for 
 a new point of departure in philosophical theory. I mean 
 that the term expresses, in a way which no other term will, 
 the true technical subject of philosophy and the nature of 
 its special task. We have come, it is true, to associate it 
 with the special form which Leibniz gave it in his system, 
 and more especially with the difficulties he strove to over- 
 come by the hypothesis of the pre-established harmony. 
 I propose to use the term in a sense in which it seems to me 
 no philosopher can reject it, because it indicates the reality 
 or fact of living experience which is the ground of philosophy 
 as a distinct study. 
 
 What then is this fact of living experience ? It is the 
 mind of the finite individual, the mind which each of us 
 experiences in himself and recognizes in others. This 
 mind is utterly unlike anything in the physical world, and 
 indescribable by any of the categories under which we 
 
 c
 
 i8 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 classify physical things. In the first place, none of the 
 spatial categories apply to it at all, and in the second place, 
 the temporal categories acquire, when predicated of it, an 
 entirely different signification to what they have when 
 used of physical things. The mind is a monad, and a monad 
 is, in the words of Leibniz, " a simple substance, ' simple ' 
 meaning that it is without parts." The mind appears to 
 us indeed at times as a stream of consciousness and this 
 stream seems to break up naturally and artificially into 
 distinct and separate states, but reflexion shows us at 
 once that the states are not elements or constituents of the 
 mind, for the whole undivided mind is in any one of the 
 states. There is, it is true, a mental order or arrangement, 
 but it is of a different character altogether from the order 
 or arrangement of physical nature which we study in the 
 mathematical and natural sciences. The mind in its 
 integrity is the subject of philosophical science. 
 
 At every moment of living experience and from moment 
 to moment of experience we are confronted with two orders 
 of arrangement to which we must conform and to which all 
 our actions are adjusted. Each order seems independent 
 in itself, and self-sufficing in its principle, and yet the 
 two orders seem interdependent on one another. The one 
 is atomic, the order of nature ; the other is monadic, the 
 order of mind. The two principles, the atomic and the 
 monadic, seem irreconcilable. Moreover, each in its 
 universality seems to exclude the other. Yet, to quote 
 again the words of Leibniz, " the monad is a simple sub- 
 stance which enters into compounds." Thus every finite 
 individual is a multiplicity and a unity. Its living activity 
 depends upon the union in the one individual of two prin- 
 ciples which are antithetical and divergent. The subject of 
 experience is mind and body. The body relates the subject 
 to an order of nature of which the body is itself a part, 
 the mind encloses the subject in a private universe which 
 has neither inlet nor outlet. Each, mind and body, indicates 
 a system of relations and a principle of order or arrangement 
 to which the individual must conform. Let us turn, however, 
 from these technical and abstract formulations and see
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 19 
 
 how the seeming paradox is exhibited in plain facts of 
 experience, illustrated in the most ordinary course of our 
 daily life. 
 
 I enter a railway carriage in which other passengers are 
 seated. I at once arrange myself according to the order 
 which I think of as physical reality. There is a space 
 common to all the objects and the objects are juxtaposed 
 within it ; there is a time common to all events and the 
 events are in a fixed relation of before and after. I and 
 my fellow-passengers are physical objects among the other 
 physical objects. We occupy space and have a definite 
 range of activity, that is, a possibility of free movement 
 within definite spatial and temporal limits. This order is 
 an atomic order. Quite apart from any philosophical or 
 scientific difficulty in regard to the concept of the ultimate 
 nature of an atom, the whole order and arrangement is 
 conceived as that of elements or constituents whose reality 
 and individuality consists in adverse space occupancy. I 
 and my fellow-passengers ultimately consist of constituent 
 parts from which it is possible to abstract every quality 
 but one, namely, the occupation of a part of space. 
 
 This then is the atomic order, and to_belong to it or form 
 part of it is, in the common-sense and scientific meaning, 
 to exist. But there is another order. Each of my fellow- 
 passengers is, like myself, a mind. Each mind is a universe, 
 a universe reflected into a centre, as though into a mirror, 
 and every centre is an individual point of view. Between 
 one mind and another there is absolutely nothing in common, 
 neither space nor" tune, neither object nor event. To a 
 mind all reality is experience and to each mind its own 
 experience. All experience is personal experience. Thus I 
 and my fellow-passengers each knows only a private space 
 and a private time, and the objects and events which for 
 each of us occupy this space and time are private and 
 incommunicable. I look then at my fellow-passengers, and 
 I know that for each of them, as for me, there is a centre of 
 attentive interest, and I know that everything which I find 
 it convenient to say is common to all of us, is really for 
 each mind an abstraction of some part or aspect of its own
 
 20 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 absolutely self-centred system. The order into which, for 
 each mind, every new experience enters is not atomic but 
 monadic. Everything to which I attend becomes part of 
 my experience, and an organic part of it. It qualifies the 
 whole and it receives its character from the whole which it 
 qualifies. 
 
 Let us now compare the two orders in regard to the 
 dynamic principle which underlies them. I and my fellow- 
 passengers are so many physical objects of a definite form 
 and structure who occupy space and endure in time. Like 
 all physical objects we interact, and we interpret this as 
 meaning that we belong to one and the same system of 
 reality. Within this system every movement is exactly 
 compensated. We are causally related with one another 
 within the system of which we are a constituent part. All 
 this has come to seem very plain and self-evident, that is, 
 to require no logical proof, and we name the principle which 
 holds the parts of the system together in reciprocal relation- 
 ship, causality. It would be impossible, of course, to 
 demonstrate to any one who should dispute it that there 
 is hi fact an exact equivalence between every action and 
 reaction in the system, but it is so fundamentally necessary 
 to our concept of scientific reality that, though theoretically 
 the principle may be doubted, practically it cannot be 
 disbelieved. The causal concept depends upon the atomic 
 concept, for although space is divisible, theoretically to 
 infinity, yet everything which occupies it is determined both 
 in itself and in every part of itself by its external relation 
 to every other part. This atomic order with its principle 
 of external relations and causal equivalence of action and re- 
 action is the subject-matter of the natural sciences, and their 
 range is practically unlimited. I know, for instance, that 
 my fellow-passengers are highly complex structures organized 
 on a common type for the performance of marvellously 
 co-ordinated actions. To all intents and purposes the 
 natural sciences open to me a range of inquiry which is 
 infinite ; but it is a distinct order of reality based upon a 
 precise concept of a fundamental physical reality common to 
 all subjects of experience, in which each has a definite
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 21 
 
 place in a space order and a definite span in a time order. 
 The atomic order means therefore that I recognize a common 
 world in which I and my fellows and every infinitesimal 
 part of me and of them have their inalienable right to be. 
 
 Let us now consider the monadic order. The common 
 world which exists for our bodies does not exist for our 
 minds. Our mind is an inner which has no outer, and this 
 is equivalent to saying that for the mind inner and outer 
 have no meaning. They are really distinctions which belong 
 to the atomic order of the body. In intimate union with 
 each of the conglomerations of atoms I call other people, 
 which jostles against the conglomeration of atoms I call 
 myself, there is an invisible, intangible, unpenetrable 
 reality, not common to all of us but absolutely private to 
 each of us. The elements or constituents of this world 
 are thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, images, notions, 
 recollections, purposes, intentions, but these are not 
 atomic elements. When my body dissolves, its constituents 
 remain ; they are only dissociated. When my mind dis- 
 solves, there are no constituents which exist dissociated. 
 The mind is individual and absolutely indivisible. The 
 phenomenon of dissociated personality, for example, is 
 altogether different in its principle from the common fact 
 of material dissolution. 
 
 The mind of a finite individual is a monad, and in using 
 this term to denote it we mean to indicate that the cate- 
 gories we employ in the physical and biological sciences are 
 inadequate. They are inadequate because they are fashioned 
 to deal with compounds and analyse their components. 
 The mind is not compound but simple, and only exists in 
 its integrity. This is our reason for holding that philosophy 
 is science of the monad. 
 
 This twofold order of reality, atomic and monadic, is 
 not only met with in the familiar case of the relation of 
 mind and body, it is present throughout the whole range 
 of human knowledge. Whatever in the universe we can 
 come to regard as a subject of experience is a monad. I 
 may illustrate my meaning if I adapt to modern scientific 
 concepts an old-world parable. " The Kingdom of Heaven,"
 
 22 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 it was said, " is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a 
 man took, and sowed in his field : which indeed is the least 
 of all seeds : but when it is grown, it is the greatest among 
 herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air 
 come and lodge in the branches thereof." The sort of 
 miracle of natural processes which appealed to the spiritual 
 teacher, and gave him his parable, is precisely the mystery 
 which baffles the scientific systematizer. The small mustard 
 seed is a constellation of molecules and atoms which obeys 
 the atomic order of the physical world. Its analysis, 
 chemical, physical, electro-magnetical, offers no difficulty, 
 neither, save for obvious practical difficulties, does its 
 synthesis. So far as it belongs to the atomic order its 
 nature is transparent. But then there is something else, 
 something which makes the mustard seed no__parf wh^t^vpr 
 of the atomic order, something indescribable as anything, 
 something which not merely defies scientific analvsis_and 
 scientific synthesis but in respec^ofjwhich scientific analysis 
 and scientic,_3^thejis_aie jmeaningless and absurd. \^e 
 qmjmalyse and jsynthesise a constellation of moiecules^_but 
 ge^ cannot analyse and synthesise a pasi^experience, or a 
 present activity^or a prospective eml_or__purEose^ These 
 belong to a monadic order. It would, of course, be merely 
 figurative to speak of the mind of a mustard seed ; but when 
 we consider the mustard seed in the unity, simplicity, and 
 indivisibility of its individuality, holding in its present 
 activity its past and expressing itself from its own stand- 
 point as a finite living individual centre, the mustard seed 
 is a monad. 
 
 The monad is not, therefore, the concept of an exalted 
 order of existence, transcending or hovering above a lower 
 mundane order, it is any reality when we view it from its 
 own individual standpoint. Anything, however lowly anj 
 however limited the range of its activity, which we apprehend 
 a-sjhging itself the_j5ubject of individual experience, a 
 sub] ect owning its predicates, not a^ubstance displayed 
 with its attributes to the contemplation of another, is ji 
 monad. 
 
 When we view the world in this aspect of it we see what
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 23 
 
 Leibniz meant when he said " the monads are the true 
 atoms of nature." We can view the universe as consisting 
 of monads and of nothing else. We cannot conceive a 
 universe consisting of atoms and nothing else. A monad is 
 a true unity ^ a unity which makes a many one. An atom 
 is a unit, not a unity, it is one of many. Leibniz gives us 
 a striking illustration, as remarkable for its scientific antici- 
 pation as for its philosophic insight. " In the smallest 
 particle of matter there is a world of creatures, living 
 beings, entelechies, souls. Each portion of matter may be 
 conceived as like a garden full of plants and like a pond 
 full of fishes. But each branch of every plant, each member 
 of every animal, each drop of its liquid parts is also some 
 such garden or pond. And though the earth and the air 
 which are between the plants of the garden, or the water 
 which is between the fish of the pond, be neither plant 
 nor fish ; yet they also contain plants and fishes, but 
 mostly so minute as to be imperceptible to us. Thus 
 there is nothing fallow, nothing sterile, nothing dead in 
 the universe, no chaos, no confusion save in appearance, 
 somewhat as it might appear to be in a pond at a distance, 
 in which one would see a confused movement and, as it 
 were, a swarming of fish in the pond, without separately 
 distinguishing the fish themselves." 
 
 The moment we attain this standpoint philosophy 
 acquires a special meaning, and a whole range of new 
 problems comes to view. These concern the nature of the 
 monad, the plurality of the monads, and their relation 
 to one another. Also a whole set of problems will arise 
 in connexion with the relation of the monadic order to the 
 atomic order ; problems of perception, of intuition, of in- 
 tellection, of volition, of action ; problems of intercourse, 
 of social order, of the individual and the trans-individual. 
 These problems will arise in their order. Let us first then 
 give attention to what is essential in the concept of the 
 monad itself. 
 
 I have given some instances of the kind of existence 
 denoted by the term monad and also of the mode of being 
 on which the monadic order depends. My mind and the
 
 24 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 minds of my fellows are monads, anv centre of living activity 
 such as a seed or a cell of my body may be viewed as a 
 monad, and in general anything whatever which can be, 
 and in so far as it is, considered from its own subjective 
 standpoint as a subject of experience is a monad. I will 
 now, still[keeping these particular instances in mind, try 
 and set forth the essential and distinguishing character of 
 the monad. It is expressed in the negative qualification 
 " windowless." We owe this picturesque expression also to 
 Leibniz. " The monads have no windows by which anything 
 can enter or pass out." This has proved a great stumbling- 
 block to the acceptance of the doctrine of the monad. It 
 introduces a paradox into the concept itself. There is 
 intercourse between mind and mind ; minds are monads ; 
 if then there be no inlet or outlet through which influences 
 pass, how is intercourse possible ? Many philosophers, 
 confronted with this difficulty and anxious to retain the 
 concept of the monad, have declared that the monads have 
 windows, that they interact after the manner of physical 
 things, with the difference only that they belong to a higher 
 order. 
 
 If we suppose the monads to have windows, then indeed 
 the difficulty of the problem of interaction disappears, but 
 with it disappears also the essential character of the monad. 
 The monad is no longer a monad, it is transmuted into its 
 opposite, the atom. To say that the monad has windows 
 is as though one should say that the circle has angles. It 
 has been held indeed that the circle is constituted of in- 
 finitesimal straight lines. Such a concept of the constitu- 
 tion of a circle would be to me the exact parallel of the 
 concept of interacting monads. But is it not the negation 
 alike of the geometrical and of the metaphysical concept ? 
 I propose then to examine this qualification " windowless " 
 not as a question of theory but as a question of fact. Let 
 me try and first explain what precisely is meant by this 
 negative character and indicate its particular application 
 in the instances of monads I have given. 
 
 Let me return then to the illustration of my fellow- 
 passengers in the railway carriage. They are minds and
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 25 
 
 minds are monads. I can communicate with them and 
 they with me. For such communication we are dependent 
 on physical signs, facial expression, gesture, bodily move- 
 ment, and above all, spoken words. We are also dependent 
 on special adaptations of our bodily organisms, sense- 
 organs and their neural connexions. All these means and 
 instruments of communication belong to the atomic order, 
 but they seem to intervene between mind and mind and 
 to serve as an independent medium for the interchange of 
 thoughts, wishes, desires, actions, which belong to the 
 monadic order. There is intersubjective intercourse, and 
 it is effected apparently by something common to the 
 communicating minds which at the same time is external 
 to each. How is this conceivable unless we suppose the 
 monads have windows ? When, however, we conceive the 
 mind and its intercourse in this way we are not conceiving 
 the mind as a monad at all. There are not monads and 
 atoms existing side by side in a spatial universe ; there is a 
 monadic order and there is an atomic order. Each order 
 is universal and the presence of one is the absence of the 
 other. When we describe intercourse as an influence pro- 
 pagated from mind to mind through the medium of the 
 physical world, we are not conceiving these minds as monads, 
 subjects of experience, but as substances, essentially atomic, 
 notwithstanding their negative qualification of being in- 
 extended. We are, in fact, conceiving the mind very much 
 as Descartes conceived it when he supposed it to be seated 
 in the pineal gland. We regard it, with its furniture of 
 images and concepts, as existing apart from and externally 
 related to an extended world in space through which it 
 communicates influences to other minds by creating and 
 propagating disturbances in an atomic environment. In 
 the monadic concept the means and instruments are not 
 external to the monad, and the communicating monads, 
 though completely independent, are not spatially juxtaposed. 
 Here, then, we touch the great difficulty in the monadic 
 concept. The monad is a concept unlike all our ordinary 
 concepts, because, while these are based on a spatial schemat- 
 ism, space being the basis of the concept of externality, the
 
 26 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 monad is the concept of a reality more fundamental than 
 space and externality. The first essential inquiry therefore 
 is, why must we conceive mind as a monad ? What is the 
 necessity compelling us to this intellectual effort ? Why 
 may we not rest satisfied with the ordinary view that mind 
 is a particular kind of existent thing ? The answer is that 
 the ordinary view of the mind, however serviceable and 
 convenient in practical life, is theoretically contradictory 
 and leads to actual absurdity. This will appear if we direct 
 our attention to the problem of language. 
 
 In the Academy of Laputa, described in Gulliver's Travels, 
 there was a department assigned to " the projectors of 
 speculative learning." One of these was a professor who 
 had contrived an ingenious machine, by means of which 
 " the most ignorant person at a reasonable charge and with 
 a little bodily labour may write books in philosophy, 
 poetry, politics, law, mathematics and theology, without 
 the least assistance from genius and study." The professor's 
 pupils were engaged in breaking up printed sentences into 
 their component words, rearranging the words by means 
 of the professor's invention, and composing treatises by 
 selecting the new combinations when they were found to 
 have meaning. Obvious as the absurdity is, it is worth 
 while to take the pains to discover the nature of the illusion 
 on which the whimsical plausibility of the story rests. It 
 will be found to be identical with an absurdity which we 
 never suspect but which is inherent in the common opinion 
 of the nature of intercourse by means of language or speech. 
 
 The learned professor of Laputa might have defended 
 the notion, to which he gave practical effect in his machine, 
 by an argument of unquestionable cogency. It is an 
 undeniable fact that words combined into sentences convey 
 meanings ; when, then, words are combined meanings are 
 created ; consequently a mechanical device for combining 
 words will be a simple and economical way of creating 
 meanings ; meanings once created, it will only remain to 
 select, classify and preserve them in treatises. 
 
 The answer seems so easy, that even to tender it appears 
 to argue a lack of the sense of humour. It is enough, we
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 27 
 
 should say, to point out that words are a conventional 
 device to express meanings. Unless there are first of all 
 meanings, words, which are only means of expression, are, 
 if spoken, void and empty noise ; if written, visual marks 
 or traces, not signs. It seems, therefore, that meanings 
 must exist prior to and independently of the words which 
 express them, and so we might suppose that the illusion on 
 which the absurdity rests consists in treating words as still 
 expressing meanings when they are divorced from their 
 meanings. It seems to us indeed that two entirely distinct 
 and separate entities join together in speech ; first, internal 
 unexpressed intuitions, and second, external physically 
 produced sounds. Speech seems to be an artificial com- 
 bination and external relation of two things, completely 
 independent of one another in their existence. One of 
 these is a mental thing or meaning, the other is a physical 
 thing, the definite sound-wave or combination of sound- 
 waves which we name a word. Yet reflexion reveals the 
 curious and generally unnoticed fact that when we divorce 
 a word from its meaning it ceases to be a word, and when 
 we divorce a meaning from its expression the meaning 
 disappears without a trace. There is no unexpressed 
 intuition, and there is no word existing in its own right. 
 The absurdity of the professor's invention rests, therefore, 
 on the universally accepted but false opinion that inter- 
 course is effected by the union of a wordless meaning and a 
 meaningless word. 
 
 This twofold illusion is deep-seated in ordinary thinking 
 and very persistent. We think, and act, and generally 
 conduct our whole practical life on the assumption that our 
 intuitions, our inner thoughts, and our feelings, exist in 
 their own right and entirely independently of any means 
 which we may find of expressing them. The means often- 
 times seem absent altogether and always, even when avail- 
 able, more or less inadequate. On the other hand, this means 
 of expression, whether it be plastic material or, like spoken 
 language, the propagation of controlled vibratory move- 
 ments in a fluid medium, is always, as physical existence, 
 independent of the psychical use made of it. The illusion,
 
 28 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 therefore, if it be an illusion, is founded on what appears 
 to be very fact of existence. 
 
 What are words ? They are parts of speech, spoken and 
 heard, or if written, visual marks which serve as conven- 
 tional signs of uttered words. There is an eighteenth 
 century story which relates that on a voyage in the 
 Arctic Circle, a ship sailed into a region of cold so intense 
 that the words of the crew froze as they were uttered and 
 remained suspended, unable to reach the ears until set 
 free later on by a sudden thaw, when they were heard 
 all together. The gramophone has robbed this tale of 
 much of its original delight of extravagance. Actual words 
 with all the characteristic inflexions of the speaker are 
 now stored in records and can be produced at will by 
 purely mechanical devices. There are, in practical working, 
 applications of this device of marvellous ingenuity. There 
 is, for example, a telephonic apparatus which will give 
 warning to the mariner approaching a dangerous coast by 
 actually calling out in uttered words the nature of the 
 danger and the way to avoid it. We cannot help, therefore, 
 treating words as definite things, existing in their own right, 
 which we, by means of our organization of sound production 
 and sound reception, use as the means of communicating 
 our ideas. For the deaf and dumb, spoken words have no 
 existence, not because the words are non-existent, but because 
 the means of apprehending them are wanting, just as for 
 the blind there is the lack of means of apprehending light 
 and colour. For the normal organization, therefore, there 
 are words without and intuitions within, and all that is 
 necessary is agreement on a convention which will attach 
 a particular intuition to a particular sound. 
 
 If, however, we consider what a word is when we abstract 
 from its meaning, we see at once that whatever form of 
 existence we leave to it, it has ceased in any sense to be a 
 word. The whole of the definition, the fixity, the objectivity, 
 which bestows on a sound the individuality of a word is due 
 to meaning and to nothing else. Speech consists in pro- 
 ducing, by means of the larynx and its accompanying 
 muscular mechanisms, sound-waves within a certain range
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 29 
 
 of frequency and amplitude, and imposing on these a form 
 and definition which the receptive organ, the ear, can 
 select and distinguish. Production and reception are 
 strictly relative but the relation is not external. Neither 
 medium nor waves propagated in the medium possess in 
 themselves the forms which words assume. There is no 
 identity or fixity in a word which is due to physical 
 structure. 
 
 If again we consider what a meaning is without words 
 or some other form of expression we shall find that we fail 
 altogether to give either form or content to the notion of it. 
 We often speak of thoughts too deep for words, we are 
 accustomed to think that we feel what we cannot express, 
 and generally we suppose our mind to consist of a wealth 
 of intuition out of all proportion to its means of expression. 
 Does it accord with fact ? The very act of reflecting on the 
 intuition is itself an expression. There are no doubt infinite 
 degrees of clearness or of confusedness in the expression, 
 wide differences in the power or efficiency of the expression 
 to be communicable to another mind, but no introspection 
 will bring to light an intuition save and in so far as it is 
 expression. 
 
 We find in fact when we analyse the descriptive account 
 of intercourse which we accept as self-evident, that we are 
 really taking for granted several notions inconsistent with 
 one another and putting them together regardless of their 
 incompatibility. Our ordinary notion of the relation of 
 the mind to the object of knowledge and of the relation of 
 one mind to another mind is in fact absurd. The absurdity 
 is disguised in practical life because it is convenient and 
 convenience is more important than logical consist- 
 ency. So when the absurdity is exposed, as for example 
 in the story of the Laputan professor's machine, we are 
 amused but not arrested. We find it difficult to suppose 
 the humorist is in earnest. In philosophy, however, 
 logical consistency is the criterion of truth. Let us first, 
 however, indicate the incompatibility of the notions. 
 
 We suppose that there are two different kinds of world, 
 an inner world of mind and an outer world of nature, and
 
 30 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 their relation to one another seems to be of the following 
 order. Minds are separated from one another and also 
 united to one another by the outer world of nature. This 
 outer world is a system of external relations, and minds seem 
 in the first place to be in definite external relation to it and 
 through it to one another. It is by means of external 
 relations, and not directly mind to mind, that we suppose . 
 we communicate with one another. We think the mind 
 is in the world although it does not occupy any of the space 
 of the world or interfere with the real stuff which we suppose 
 does occupy that space. The mind is an ideal world of 
 meanings ; nature is a real world of things. It seems to 
 us prima facie absurd to suppose that the mind holds the 
 world of physical reality within itself or that in any way 
 whatever that outer world can be an essential part of and 
 belong to the inner world. On the other hand, we find it 
 natural to suppose that the spatial world would remain 
 undisturbed in its existence were there no mind. This 
 is our ordinary notion of the two worlds and their relation. 
 Minds are behind, as it were, and in some way attached to, 
 certain definite material structures, and at the same time 
 independent of and distinct from the order to which those 
 material structures belong. 
 
 When, however, we make our notion of a mind definite 
 and explicit, we see that mind consists of feelings, thoughts, 
 and wishes, held together, not by a material bond but by a 
 continuous memory, and owned by a centre of active experi- 
 ence which we call the ego or self. The wealth of a mind 
 consists in intuitions and concepts. All its wealth it has 
 originated within itself, and only what it has originated can 
 it possess. We never think that feelings, ideas, desires, pass 
 out of one mind and enter into another, nor that they arise 
 in the mind in any other manner than by a process wholly 
 within the mind itself. A thousand homely proverbs bear 
 witness to the universal acceptance of this notion. " There 
 is no royal road to knowledge," " A man convinced against 
 his will is of the same opinion still," and the like. It is 
 true that we always associate a brain with a mind, but also 
 we ordinarily distinguish very clearly between the mind
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 31 
 
 and the brain, even if we believe that they are existentially 
 inseparable. The continuity which makes the constituents 
 of mind a unity is memory, and the mind is the interrelated 
 system of meanmgs_heldjtogether T)y~memory. Memory 
 is the substance of personality in the conscious subject of 
 experience. Meanings can be expressed and communicated, 
 but they can only arise within the mind to which they 
 belong and for which they exist ; they never pass out nor 
 come in from outside. This is the fact we are affirming 
 when we say that the monads have no windows. 
 
 The external world when we make our notion of it 
 explicit is a system of reality conceived as the direct converse 
 of mind. It has a unity but its unity is of another kind. It is 
 a system of external relations with no privileged centre and 
 no part of which has an exclusive nature. It is true we image 
 it as an aggregate of particular things, each of which seems 
 to own its qualities, but we come in our ordinary scientific 
 inquiry to regard this image as a mere first appearance of, 
 and approximation to, the true notion. The essential 
 feature in our concept of the physical world is that there 
 is an extended substance, every part of which is open to 
 influences propagated from every other part. Its continuity 
 is not, like the continuity of mind, in its inner nature. It is 
 the notion of space which gives continuity, and space is the 
 notion of externality. The external world is conceived 
 therefore as a system of events arising out of the interactions 
 of a material substance in a framework of three-dimensional 
 space and one-dimensional time, a system in which every 
 movement is exactly compensated by a reciprocal movement 
 and every constituent or element is in causal relation with 
 every other. 
 
 Our notion of knowledge is that it is a relation between 
 minds and the external world. The relation is that of 
 subject to object. The images and concepts of the mind, 
 its ideal constituents, are supposed to represent the reality 
 of the external world. Knowledge is truth when the ideas 
 of the mind faithfully and adequately represent subjectively 
 for the mind the objective independent external world. We 
 suppose further that the mind can not only express itself in
 
 32 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 the external world but can use it as a means of intercourse 
 with other minds. 
 
 These ordinary notions the mind, the external world, 
 knowledge when we examine them critically, are incom- 
 patible with one another and inconsistent. The discovery 
 may and usually does surprise us, but it is no passing 
 illusion, it is clear and manifest whenever we reflect. It 
 requires no dialectical subtlety to discover that if the in- 
 dividual mind be as we suppose, a unity of the ideas which 
 arise within it ; and if the external world be as we suppose, 
 an independent existence indifferent in its reality to the ideas 
 of the mind ; and if knowledge be as we suppose the valid 
 and adequate representation of the world in the mind ; 
 then, either knowledge is an arbitrary and groundless 
 hypothesis or our notions of mind and world are wrong. 
 There cannot be an agreement between an ideality and a 
 reality if by their very definition a common factor is excluded. 
 There is nothing recondite or abstruse in this dilemma; it 
 is patent to every one who reflects. How, then, we may ask, 
 are we able to go through life as we undoubtedly do, with 
 this obvious absurdity barely concealed in our ordinary 
 common-sense notions ? The answer I have already in- 
 dicated in saying that in practical life convenience is of 
 more importance than logical consistency. It is well, 
 however, to observe the device by which this " convenience " 
 is maintained. The paradox of our common-sense notion 
 is concealed from us by the image with which we portray the 
 whole process of life and mind. 
 
 The image which seems naturally suggested to us by our 
 general view of the world and confirmed by common 
 experience, is the image of a mind dwelling within the 
 chamber of the living body as in an abiding-place. The 
 body is then pictured as a closed chamber but a chamber 
 with windows, the windows being the sense-organs, through 
 which the mind surveys the world beyond. The theory 
 when stated in scientific terms is named animism, and 
 finds illustration and expression in innumerable religious 
 beliefs and practices and also in philosophical doctrines. 
 With these we are not concerned. Apart from any scientific,
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 33 
 
 philosophical or religious doctrine, this image of the mind 
 as having an abode and of the body as being this abode, 
 is fundamental and ineradicable. It accords with the 
 analogies of living experience and has come to appear as 
 not itself an analogy but a direct and immediate datum of 
 experience. It is this image, constantly accompanying us 
 in our philosophical effort to express a pure concept, which 
 fills the background whenever we try to present the theory of 
 the monad. The monad is windowless not because it dwells 
 in a dark chamber but because it is the conception of the 
 subject of experience in its integrity. 
 
 We can now give precision to the character " windowless." 
 It does not imply that the monad suffers from a defect nor 
 does it denote poverty or deprivation. It is the distinctive 
 feature in a new notion of what reality is and in a new way 
 of conceiving it. It does not mean that monads might 
 have windows, like the sense-organs of the body, but are 
 unfortunately without them. It means that we are con- 
 ceiving reality and ideality, existence and knowledge, in a 
 different manner from that of science and common sense. 
 We are compelled by a philosophical necessity to adopt a 
 new way, because as we have seen, particularly in examining 
 the ordinary idea of the process of intercourse, the notion 
 that the mind is the disinterested contemplator of an 
 independently existing world, looking out upon it from its 
 vantage-ground in a living body, fashioning ideas into con- 
 formity with reality for the benefit of the body it inhabits, 
 and communicating these ideas to other minds through 
 other bodies, is an impossible and inconsistent notion which 
 leads to absurdity. 
 
 The monad is the concept of an individual experience as 
 an integraLjuniiyiin which subject and. object are distinct 
 but united in an indissoluble relation. Subject and object 
 are not separate existences held together by an external 
 bond. They are a unity in duality, a. jiuaUty in unity. A.< *. 
 Suppress either term or the relation which binds them, 
 there is no remainder, all is dissolved. To separate the 
 subject of experience from the object of experience, or the 
 object experienced from the subject experiencing, is like
 
 34 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 dividing the circle into centre and circumference and 
 supposing that each exists in its own independent right. 
 The monad includes self and not-self, mind and nature, 
 in the unity of an individual experience. In each monad 
 there is the one and only centre into which the universe 
 is mirrored and one universe mirrored into its own centre. 
 When then we say the monad has no windows, we mean that 
 sojar jisjthe objective world is concerned the image_Qf_the 
 frVj^fCLJQPfong out of q chamber r>n tp_fjT^ah'en universe 
 is superseded^ There are no separate worlds of the subject 
 and the object and distinctions fall within the monad. 
 
 Besides the subject-object relation there is also a subject- 
 subject relation, or rather, if we take the subject-object 
 as included in the monad, there are many subject-objects 
 and a plurality, even an infinity, of monads. How can the 
 monads be related if they have no windows ? Without 
 going into the problem of the plurality of monads and of 
 the relations of the monads, it is sufficient for the immediate 
 purpose before us to show that the concept of windows, 
 were we to adopt it, would be of no service, would indeed 
 be without meaning. If we find it difficult to understand 
 how one mind can know another ; how two minds can enter 
 into a common life which is then no longer the aggregate 
 of the two lives but the whole life of each ; how individual 
 experience expands in intersubjective intercourse without 
 increase or decrease of actual content ; our difficulty is 
 not in the " windowless " character of the monads. The 
 concept is not spatial. The subjective experience of a 
 nation does not cease to be the experience of the individuals 
 who constitute the nation. There are no windows in the 
 individual out of which his experience can pass to enter on 
 the new national life. When a man devotes his life to his 
 country, in enriching his nation he is not impoverishing 
 himself. This is the meaning of the saying that the monads 
 have no windows. 
 
 Intercourse between mind and mind seems to us then 
 theoretically impossible if the monads, that is, the minds, 
 are windowless, and yet practically we know that the monad 
 is windowless by our experience of this very fact of inter-
 
 CHAP, i THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 35 
 
 course. The whole concept of moral conduct rests on and 
 illustrates the fact that the monad is windowless. Consider 
 such concepts as humanity, nationality, church, state, tribe, 
 family, the matrimonial and parental relation these con- 
 cepts have no meaning save for individual lives. Every 
 one supposes individuals in relation of intercourse, yet there 
 is no life outside the individual lives and each concept 
 stands therefore for a higher degree of realized individual 
 life. Thus a nation consists of individual lives and has no 
 separate existence outside the individual lives of those who 
 constitute it ; what is it then ? It is a fuller and higher 
 degree of each individual life. Nothing passes out of the 
 individuals to form a new combination, the individuals 
 each gain a higher degree. So we have the apparent paradox 
 of a man losing his life to save it. The same truth is illus- 
 trated in every relation of intersubjective intercourse. The 
 man who loves a woman, the woman who loves a man, 
 lose nothing of their own individuality in loving. This is 
 expressed in the paradox " they twain shall be one flesh." 
 Their union is not interchange, neither receives nor parts 
 with anything which belongs to its full individuality but 
 in seeming to give all each gains all. In the perfect union 
 of two loving souls the two monads remain two windowless 
 monads. 
 
 To sum up, then, the mind taken with its experience 
 in its integrity and indivisible unity is a monad. The 
 monad is a simple substance, but substance conceived as 
 an active subject owning its activities and not as a sub- 
 stratum of qualities or attributes. The monads are the 
 true atoms of nature. They are not units but unities. 
 They represent a mental or spiritual order, and are not to 
 be confused with physical atoms which represent nature 
 as an external order independent of mind. Experience 
 obliges us to regard real existence from two different stand- 
 points, namely, as a system of external relations and as 
 an all-inclusive activity. To the individual mind, nature 
 appears as a world which it contemplates, and yet per- 
 ception and action are wholly dependent on and exist 
 only in and for its activity as a subject. Our practical
 
 36 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 life obliges us to regard the world as an extended sphere 
 of activity, consisting of a common space and a common 
 time, within which common objects are juxtaposed and 
 events are before and after one another. By common is 
 meant that which is one and the same for all contemplators. 
 Space, time and material are the fundamental data of this 
 world and its constituent atoms are conceived as forming 
 part of a mechanical system of action and interaction. On 
 the other hand, experience is itself an order which is pivoted 
 on and revolves around an active subject. The subject 
 is the centre from which activity is directed and controlled 
 and into which the whole universe is reflected. 
 
 The monad is self-contained and all-inclusive ; yet 
 experience obliges us to recognize that there is a plurality 
 of monads, because there are other minds and infinite 
 possibilities of subjective centres each of which mirrors 
 the universe. The relation of the monads is not juxta- 
 position but harmony or accord. Units (atoms) form 
 aggregates by addition, combination and disposition. 
 Unities (monads) make the many one. Monads therefore 
 enter into compounds but not by way of addition. The 
 type of the monadic order is seen in the relation of mind to 
 living body. I Each organ of the body and each constituent 
 cell of each organ is a monadJ The mind which makes 
 the many one is not quantitative. 
 
 " The monads have no windows by which anything 
 can enter or pass out." This negative description gives 
 in effect the positive character of the monad and serves to 
 mark the principle which distinguishes the monadic order 
 from the atomic order. It means that every centre of living 
 or conscious activity possesses the unity of a subject of 
 experience, and that every change in the state of such a 
 subject is wholly determined by the subject and self- 
 inclusive. No monad by intercourse with other monads 
 parts with its substance or deprives other monads of their 
 substance. The monad does not dwell within the body 
 and look out on nature through the sense-organs as through 
 windows. Neither does it grow by seizing what is without 
 and adding it to what is within, nor yet does it diminish
 
 CHAP. I 
 
 THE WINDOWLESS MONAD 
 
 37 
 
 by dispersing activities in actions. There are not monads 
 and atoms. When we view real existence as a monadic 
 order there are no atoms ; when we view it as purely a 
 system of external relations, that is, as atoms, there are no 
 monads. The two orders are not of equal validity. When 
 we view reality as atoms we are taking an abstract view 
 for a practical end.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 
 
 As the same city regarded from different sides appears as other cities, 
 and is, as it were, multiplied perspectively, so, by the infinite multitude 
 of simple substances, it comes about that there are as many different 
 universes ; they are, however, but the perspectives of one only, according 
 to the special point of view of each monad. LEIBNIZ. 
 
 THE monad mirrors the universe and the universe consists 
 of monads, for there is nothing real but monads ; to each 
 monad therefore the other monads must present an external, 
 objective aspect ; how is this possible ? 
 
 It is not difficult to recognize the facts upon which the 
 monadic theory is based ; it is difficult to avoid presenting 
 those facts in a spatial setting and so completely concealing 
 their true nature. We may easily be convinced of this. 
 Nothing is clearer than that the distinction between our 
 body and our mind, between the things of the body and 
 the ideas of the mind, is a distinction between what is spatial 
 and what is not spatial. Our body is spatial, our mind is 
 not spatial. Yet whenever we think of a mind possessed 
 of a wider or narrower range of perception we invariably 
 find that we form the idea by the device of imagining our 
 body to possess larger or smaller spatial proportions. A 
 large mind in the sense of a wide range of perception seems 
 necessarily associated with bodily bulk. Thus when Milton 
 describes Satan after his fall, lying with the rebel angels 
 prone on the lake of fire, his body covers " many a rood." 
 Yet it is clear from the definition of the monad as a centre 
 of activity into which the universe is mirrored that the 
 body is not that centre but itself a part of the mirrored 
 universe. The body is not the subject for which the universe 
 
 38
 
 CHAP, ii THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 39 
 
 is object, the body is itself part of the object which exists 
 in and for the subject. The spatial proportions of the 
 universe, and of the body as part of that universe, are the 
 perspective of the monad. This means that if we accept 
 the theory of the monads, it follows necessarily that we 
 cannot regard space as an absolute reality within which 
 the monads are. Space is not the unity or continuity 
 which binds the monads together, and makes the many 
 one. Space is the unity which binds together the diversity 
 within the monad, but that is because the monad's activity 
 is centralized and the universe is its perspective. 
 
 When I look up into the starry sky on a clear night, the 
 immediate object of my visual perception is a firmament 
 bespangled with myriad stars. Science has discovered that 
 those stars are distant suns. An infinite universe of bound- 
 less potentiality and illimitable diversity lies beyond my 
 ken, outside the system to which I belong and the range of 
 activity which makes up my life. Yet every ray of light 
 from however distant a star reveals to me, when I interpret 
 its message, that the world from which it comes is of like 
 nature with my world, subject to the same order, the same 
 natural laws, and in every sense continuous with it. Again, 
 beneath and within the smallest compass which I can 
 distinguish as part of my tangible world there is a universe 
 of infinite diversity. Science reveals to me that my tangible 
 world is composed of ultimate constituents of a nature 
 which I denote by the term electrical, constituents which 
 form molecules, atoms, electrons, etc. The immediate 
 objects of sense which lead me to conceive this world reveal 
 in that world a unity of structure and a uniformity of 
 behaviour which show it to be continuous not only with 
 my own world but with the infinite stellar universe beyond. 
 What is the nature and what the origin of this systematic 
 unity ? What is it makes this one many, this many one ? 
 What is the principle of interpretation which this unity 
 demands ? 
 
 The monadic theory rejects the view that the unity and 
 diversity of the universe are qualities or characters inherent 
 in an objective reality independent of the mind, presented
 
 40 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 or given in passive contemplation. If we assume or posit 
 such a reality, and suppose its presentation to the mind, and 
 suppose the mind possessed of the power of discernment, it 
 is still unintelligible how or that such reality could itself 
 reveal to contemplation the character which is implied in 
 saying that in it the many are one and one many. And 
 we are in fact forced, as I shall endeavour to show, when 
 we seek to make such character rational, to introduce a 
 transcendent source of the unity. 
 
 The^monadic activity is_ sjelf-centred. The monad acts 
 as a seed or germ acts when it is converting its inner 
 potentiality into outward expression and action. A monad 
 does not create or produce from itself the universe, for the 
 monads are the true atoms of nature, and monad does not 
 create monad. There are not monads and universes, but 
 to each monad belongs its universe, which is the universe. 
 The monad determines from within the perspective of its 
 universe, inasmuch as it is a centre from which the universe 
 is viewed and into which the universe is mirrored. In this 
 perspective lies the principle of unity and diversity. Each 
 monad is confined to its own perspective. But the very 
 isolation which is thus affirmed postulates the infinity of 
 monads, for there are infinite perspectives. 
 
 Every monad exists both in itself and for the other 
 monads. In itself it is a subject of experience, living its 
 experience, with its own perspective. For the other monads 
 it is part of each monad's universe within whose perspective 
 it comes and of which perspective it forms part. Thus 
 while every monad is thing-in-itself and also thing-for- 
 another, it is not for another what it is in itself and it is 
 not in itself what it is for another. 
 
 It is not easy to see why unity and diversity in nature 
 cannot be directly apprehended as attributes of a reality 
 in which they are inherent, and it is most important to 
 demonstrate this impossibility clearly at the outset. To 
 ordinary common sense the monadic theory presents a 
 distinct air of paradox. It seems unnecessary and even 
 perverse to common sense to reject an interpretation of 
 nature which is plain and straightforward for one which,
 
 CHAP, n THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 41 
 
 whatever fascination it may have for dialecticians, calls 
 for an unusually difficult intellectual effort and carries us 
 in the reverse direction to that of our ordinary habits of 
 thought. The interpretation of uncritical common sense 
 is that we discover in nature unity and uniformity because 
 they are there to be discovered. It is part of a general 
 uncritical theory, and as it is not unusual for philosophers 
 to appeal to what they call common sense it is very important 
 to state the theory with precision. Common sense is the 
 view that things are in their independent existence what 
 they are as we know them. It is not merely the belief or 
 opinion that things exist independently of whether we know 
 them or not, it is the affirmation that things which we know 
 are in their own nature what they are as objects in our 
 knowledge of them. Common sense is not dualistic in the 
 philosophical meaning of the term, it does not distinguish 
 mind as thinking substance from matter as extended sub- 
 stance. It has no theory of knowledge ; it simply accepts 
 what is as what may be known and what is known as being 
 in itself what it is known as being. 
 
 Many philosophers have claimed for their theories of 
 knowledge and reality that they simply formulate this 
 naive realism of common sense. Berkeley, for example, was 
 insistent that his theory, esse is percipi, expressed the 
 ordinary unsophisticated man's meaning. We may admit 
 that so far Berkeley was right, yet when he sought to justify 
 the common-sense view of the permanence of existing things, 
 the view that our perceptions which we are actually 
 perceiving are continuous with identical objectively existing 
 perceptions which we are not perceiving (and this is common 
 sense) , he was driven to posit as the ground of this continuity 
 a transcendent cause. The claim of Berkeley to represent 
 common sense is indeed one of the paradoxes of philosophy. 
 Berkeley's theory is literally what the ordinary man to be 
 consistent must mean, yet it is what the ordinary man 
 never does mean. So that we may quote Boswell's words 
 in the famous story of Dr. Johnson claiming to have refuted 
 Berkeley's theory by kicking a stone, " that though we are 
 satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it."
 
 42 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 The reason is that our first reflexion on experience, the 
 ordinary reflexion which leads to scientific knowledge, 
 brings home to us the evident fact that the particular form 
 nature assumes in immediate apprehension is determined 
 by perspective. Perspective clearly appertains to the mind 
 and depends on its standpoint of observation and is not 
 inherent in the object apprehended. Hence arises the 
 distinction between the object of scientific knowledge and 
 the object of direct sense-perception. Science we regard 
 as peculiarly concerned with the task of determining what 
 reality is when divested of every appearance which can 
 be attributed to the observer's perspective. 
 
 Dialectical disquisitions on what common sense means, 
 or ought to mean, by its affirmation of the real existence of 
 the objective world, have an air of unreality. They never 
 seem to come to close quarters with a real issue. It is 
 both more important and more impressive to examine 
 the notion of reality which serves as a basis of physical 
 science. Just as the space of geometry is not the space 
 of sense experience, so the reality which science treats 
 as actual independent existence is not the reality of sense 
 experience. It is a conceived, not a perceived, reality, 
 and if it must be formulated in terms of a potential per- 
 ception it is a perception which under no possible con- 
 ditions could be actual. It is a conceptual reality which 
 experience is held both to postulate and interpret. It is 
 important therefore to lay this concept bare, that is, to show 
 what is implied not in any particular theory of the con- 
 stitution of the external world, but in the general notion, 
 deeply seated in common-sense thought, that there is a real 
 world with its own nature, independent of the mind whose 
 object it may be, and that this world, whatever its nature, 
 and however inaccessible to us, is the ground of knowledge 
 and the only criterion of the validity of knowledge. When 
 we examine the notion and follow out its implications we 
 are likely to be amazed at its inconsistency, and we may even 
 come to feel surprise that we should have somehow come 
 to believe it as a matter of course, the antecedent improb- 
 ability of its truth makes belief in it seem so extravagant.
 
 CHAP, ii THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 43 
 
 The world of immediate experience is both diverse and 
 uniform, it is many and it is one, its variety is infinite, its 
 order universal, and this many-oneness is the principle 
 which enables science to carry investigations beyond what 
 is given in experience and formulate results which transcend 
 any possibility of verification by actual experience. What 
 sort of world must it be then if we assume it to exist in itself, 
 and to display the character of many-oneness as its inherent 
 property, to the mind which contemplates it ? We are to 
 divest the world of any aspect it may present which is due 
 to the perspective of the observer and form a notion of it 
 as it is in itself and unobserved. The world must consist 
 of matter or stuff the form of which may be quite indeter- 
 minate but it will be absolutely conditioned in three definite 
 respects, namely, (i) adverse occupancy of space (by adverse 
 is meant that the occupancy is absolute and exclusive), 
 (2) perduration of time, and (3) mobility, that is, the power 
 to occupy a new position in space at a new moment in time. 
 Space, time and mobility are the conditions of existence, 
 but what really exists is the matter or stuff. These real 
 conditions, however, are essentially principles of division 
 and separation ; by virtue of them real existence is many, 
 not one. Space occupancy confers independence, space is 
 an order of juxtaposition, the very concept of it implies 
 the exclusiveness and therefore the independence of the 
 occupant. Abstracted from mind and purely in itself 
 real existence is a many which cannot possess any principle 
 of unity to secure uniformity, for pure space and pure time 
 possess no privileged point or moment such as exists in 
 the experience of an observer. The diversity of the world 
 so considered is absolute. But this is to deny to the concept 
 we have formed the very condition which alone can make 
 it the object of scientific knowledge. On the other hand, 
 unity and uniformity are necessary conditions of mind and 
 mentality from which we have made abstraction. The 
 Greeks accounted for the unity and uniformity of nature by 
 imagining the world populated with nature-gods, nymphs, 
 satyrs, river-gods and such like. The Christians rejected 
 this as paganism and believed that the physical universe
 
 44 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 was brought into existence by the personal creative act of 
 God, but that at present it is to a large extent under the 
 sway of Satan and his subordinate spirits of evil. Both 
 systems of thought are mythological and anthropomorphic, 
 but at least they recognize the fact that the unity of nature 
 can only be conceived in terms of mind. The modern 
 scientific concept of a physical world existing in itself and 
 in abstraction from mind, and yet possessing and capable 
 of revealing unity in its diversity, is a self-contradiction. 
 For the reality of science is absolute in its manifoldness. 
 There can in the very nature of it be no unity. Yet science 
 assumes uniformity and conceives that its reality not only 
 possesses it but reveals it. 
 
 The common-sense belief that the ground of our know- 
 ledge of the physical universe is the objective existence of 
 that universe in itself and irrespective of its relation to our 
 mind in knowing it, is not a dualistic doctrine and is not 
 to be identified with dualism as a philosophical theory. 
 Common sense does not set over against the object the in- 
 dependent existence of another kind of existence, the mind. 
 It rather inclines to the view that the mind is nothing 
 substantial, or, what is the same thing, that anything may 
 be a mind. It is important therefore to point out that a 
 precisely analogous difficulty would confront us were we 
 to take mind abstracted from its object physical nature, 
 as possessing independent existence. To suppose that the 
 mind or subject of knowledge exists independently of the 
 object of knowledge, that it would be unaffected in its 
 nature and existence if separated from any and every object, 
 could easily be shown to involve the same contradiction as 
 that which we have noted in the common-sense belief. 
 Yet common sense does not commit this logical error. The 
 reason is that no practical need compels us to affirm the 
 substantiality of mind. The things of the mind, thoughts, 
 feelings, volitions, seem so unsubstantial that our natural 
 difficulty is to imagine their independent existence, whereas 
 the objects of the physical world are so insistent in their 
 materiality that to regard them as in any way dependent 
 on their relation to the mind seems irrational.
 
 CHAP, ii THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 45 
 
 When we try to get behind the common-sense and 
 scientific belief in order to discover and lay bare the rational 
 need in our nature which this belief satisfies we find this 
 deep-seated conviction. Whatever we regard as real must, 
 it seems to us, possess an in-itself nature, however much the 
 aspect it presents to an outside observer may belong to that 
 observer's perspective. And it is precisely this need that 
 the monadic theory is designed to satisfy. Monadism is not 
 an attempt to establish for the subjective order of images 
 and ideas a superior reality to that of the objective order 
 of physical objects. In declaring the monads to be the true 
 atoms of nature, that is, to be " reals," it is not denying 
 the objectivity of nature but presenting a theory of it. 
 Every " real " is thing-in-itself, yet its objectivity for a 
 subject cannot be that in-itself-ness. Monadism reconciles 
 being-for-self and being-for-another. 
 
 I will accordingly present the monadic theory in regard 
 to what it rejects and to what it accepts of the common- 
 sense notion of reality. It rejects the common-sense belief 
 in an absolute space and time as the necessary background 
 or framework of reality. There is no common universe of 
 the monads, open to all and private to none. The monads 
 are not circumscribed. They are not like a froth each 
 bubble in which is bounded and shut in by the circum- 
 ferences of the others. On the other hand monadism accepts 
 the common-sense belief that whatever is real exists in- 
 itself and for-itself and does not depend for its existence on 
 presence in the consciousness or mind of another. It accepts 
 also the common-sense belief that objects of knowledge 
 are things-in-themselves. But it rejects the common-sense 
 belief that objects are in-themselves what they are as objects 
 of knowledge, or that knowledge of objects is knowledge of 
 things-in-themselves, for things-in-themselves are monads. 
 The most fundamental difference therefore is in regard to the 
 concepts of space and time. For monadism these concepts 
 are not, as they are for common sense, principles of the 
 separation of reals ; on the contrary they are principles of 
 unity. They belong to the monad, they are the perspective 
 of its universe. The difference is not whether space and
 
 46 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 time are real or unreal, and common sense is not the view 
 that they are real as opposed to monadism for which they 
 are unreal ; they are equally real for monadism, but the 
 nature of the reality is conceived as fundamentally different. 
 Space and time belong to the reality of the monad and are 
 not the reality upon which the monad depends and from 
 which the monad's reality is derived. The nature of space 
 and time is therefore the problem of the monad's perspective. 
 One of the most important landmarks in the evolution 
 of philosophical theory is the doctrine of Kant in the 
 Critique of Pure Reason that space and time are brought 
 by the mind to nature and not given to the mind by nature. 
 But a century before Kant the problem of space and time 
 had forced itself on the attention of philosophers as a con- 
 sequence of the advance of purely inductive science. A 
 difficulty arose over the question of the nature of magnitude. 
 In the seventeenth century two scientific instruments were 
 invented, the telescope and the microscope. Why mankind 
 had had to wait so long for them is difficult to understand, 
 for they were nothing more than practical applications, 
 mathematically deduced, of the observation which must 
 have been familiar even to primitive man, that objects seen 
 through a spherical transparent body such as a drop of 
 water are visually magnified. The new instruments brought 
 new and ever wider realms within the range of accurate 
 observation. They were also the occasion of a philosophical 
 discovery of a curious nature and of wide speculative interest, 
 the discovery that " great " and " small " have no absolute 
 meaning, that magnitude is not a property or character 
 intrinsic to real existences. I will state briefly the argument 
 as it is given by Malebranche in his Recherche de la Verite 
 (Bk. I. Chapter 6, a remarkable chapter which had a great 
 influence on contemporaries. The argument impressed 
 Berkeley, who has reproduced it in the first " Dialogue of 
 Hylas and Philonous " and who also makes reference to it 
 in " Siris "). Suppose I take a line an inch in length, I 
 know by mathematical proof that it is divisible to infinity, 
 yet a very moderate division brings me to the absolute 
 limit of what I can actually distinguish, a limit below which
 
 CHAP, ii THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 47 
 
 no fraction exists for me at all. But the inch may represent 
 a mile and then at once hundred-thousandths of the inch are 
 appreciable. Again, a mite (by which Malebranche meant 
 any living creature so tiny that it is visible and no more) 
 is for me a minimum visibile. Any part of it, its foot for 
 instance, is less than my minimum visibile, therefore for me 
 it can have no foot. But place the mite under the micro- 
 scope and my minimum visibile is changed. I now view 
 reality not from my standpoint, but as it were from the 
 mite's standpoint. I find that the mite has an organism 
 to some extent the counterpart of mine and a world which 
 is not the cramped world of my ordinary perspective but a 
 world in which there are magnitudes which correspond to 
 mine. So I am led to conclude not only that the mite has 
 a foot, but that its foot is of precisely the same order of 
 magnitude as mine. In other words, from my ordinary 
 point of view the mite has no foot, from my microscopic 
 standpoint, if, as it may, it exactly correspond with the mite's 
 ordinary standpoint, the mite has a foot as big as mine. 
 
 This may sound curious in the somewhat quaint example 
 chosen by Malebranche, but the argument is not obscure. 
 When we look at an object through a telescope or through 
 a microscope we describe the effect as magnification of the 
 object, in the one case a distant object, in the other a near 
 one, yet it is quite clear that the object undergoes no kind 
 of alteration whatever. If then we try to correct our 
 statement we shall probably say that the object is unchanged 
 but its appearance is magnified, yet this is not only a con- 
 tradiction in terms but also a gross inaccuracy. An appear- 
 ance cannot be magnified and the new appearance is not 
 only different in its proportions but in kind. We may 
 work out a point to point correspondence between the two 
 appearances, but this would be in respect of abstract 
 mathematical or logical characters ; so far as imagery is 
 concerned they are completely different. What in fact 
 happens is neither change in the object nor in its appearance 
 but change in the observer's perspective. The instrument 
 enables me pro tanto to view the world as it appears to an 
 observer in another system of reference.
 
 48 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 Such an argument is generally supposed to be concerned 
 purely with knowledge and not with the reality which we 
 know. It may even be held that the relativity of our 
 knowledge of magnitude implies the absolute reality of that 
 of which our knowledge is relative. For example, we possess 
 no absolute standard by which to measure time, but we do 
 not base on that negative fact a denial of the reality of time. 
 Again, we never see what we believe to be the true size of 
 anything, for its true size would be that which would be 
 seen if no distance intervened between the object and the 
 eye, and in that position nothing could be seen. So it 
 seems to us that the fact we all recognize that our knowledge 
 is mediate and relative requires us also to recognize as a 
 correlative truth that the reality in itself is absolute. This 
 is not the case with the particular problem of magnitude. 
 It is not merely that we do not know or cannot know the 
 true magnitude of any object ; it is that magnitude is not 
 a fixed determination of any objects. 
 
 Suppose two observers : one, A, has telescopic vision, 
 and sees the world as we see the heavenly bodies when we 
 look through a telescope ; the other, B, has microscopic 
 vision, and sees the world as we see ordinarily invisible objects 
 through a microscope. Let us suppose that each is looking 
 at the same object, say the sun. In the perspective of 
 A it will be a large expanse on which he distinguishes 
 the various markings known to astronomers ; in the per- 
 spective of B it will, by reason of its greater distance, 
 be a minute point of light. If it be an identical object 
 for each observer as we are supposing, then either its actual 
 magnitude is different or else the space which separates 
 it from B is greater than the space which separates it 
 from A. Either alternative involves the denial of magni- 
 tude. Moreover it is impossible to reduce the spatial 
 difference to appearance. For let us suppose that A and 
 B actually set out to travel together from a common 
 starting-point to a common goal. Either the time occupied 
 in the journey, though beginning at the same moment and 
 ending at the same moment, is different for each, immensely 
 longer for B than for A, or else the velocity of their movement
 
 CHAP, ii THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 49 
 
 is different, immensely greater for A than for B. Either 
 alternative involves the denial of magnitude. Yet again, 
 suppose a light signal from an identical source to arrive 
 simultaneously to each observer, then if the velocity of 
 light be uniform, the source is in a different point of space 
 for A than for B, or if the point in space be identical for each, 
 then the velocity of light is not uniform but immensely 
 greater for B than for A. 
 
 The usual explanation of the phenomenon of telescopic 
 and microscopic vision is that each is a deformation of the 
 normal appearance of a real spatial extension, that it is 
 analogous to astigmatism or to the distortion of the convex 
 and concave mirrors, or indeed to the ordinary accommoda- 
 tion to perspective. Such explanation will not hold. In 
 these cases there is complete compensation which can be 
 worked out mathematically. In the case supposed there is 
 and can be no compensation. The inch of one is the mile 
 of the other. 
 
 It is not intended to deny that any change which a 
 particular object may undergo when viewed in a new 
 perspective is accompanied by a correspondent change in 
 every other object in the old perspective introduced into 
 the new. Thus if the mite's foot, in Malebranche's example, 
 appear the size of my foot, a correspondent change would 
 occur in the magnitude of my own foot brought from the 
 old perspective into the new. It may be argued, therefore, 
 that the ratio between magnitudes is constant throughout 
 all changes in perspective. This is not denied : but it 
 means that the magnified foot would only be the size of 
 the foot if everything were altered in the same ratio : and 
 that means that the system of reference is changed : and that 
 means that the magnitudes of the new system are identical 
 with those of the old. What is denied is that there exists 
 a standard of absolute magnitude, a standard which would 
 enable us to fix a ratio between perspectives. In my normal 
 perspective I myself am neither large nor small ; I am the 
 norm, and in that perspective the mite is infinitesimal. 
 In the mite's perspective the mite itself is neither small nor 
 large ; it is its own norm, and if I come into its perspective 
 
 E
 
 50 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 I am a gigantic object. There may be perspectives in 
 which both I and the mite are objects, and in these they 
 may preserve the ratio of magnitude they have for me and 
 for the mite. What is denied is that there is behind and 
 beneath these perspectives an absolute standard of reference 
 such as the Newtonian space or the ether, a system of 
 reference which determines the ratio of perspectives. The 
 perspective itself is absolute, and the norm of magnitude 
 in all perspectives is constant, not variable. It is this 
 which is essential in the monadic theory. Reality is not an 
 absolute within which monads are and from which their 
 reality is derived. The monads are the reals. 
 
 The principle I have had in mind as directly contrary 
 to the monadic principle is that known in philosophy as 
 scientific monism. It interprets the many-oneness of reality 
 by an absolute which is external to experience, that is, a 
 physical basis independent of experience but on which 
 experience depends. The philosophical monism, however, 
 which is usually propounded as the most direct contrary 
 of monadism is a principle of the universal comprehen- 
 siveness of experience. This is the idealist theory that 
 the absolute is the one ultimate subject of experience, in 
 relation to which finite individuals are adjectival. The 
 opposition between this philosophical monism and monadism 
 offers a contrast of an altogether different kind from that 
 of scientific monism. There is essential agreement as to 
 the nature of reality but divergence in the interpretation 
 of its form. Absolutism insists on the one-manyness of 
 reality, monadism emphasizes the many-oneness. Abso- 
 lutism affirms that there is one ultimate subject of the 
 logical judgment ; that all propositions imply, if they do 
 not adopt, the form " reality is such that . . ." ; and 
 that the absolute itself is a super- individual expressing 
 itself in and through finite centres of experience. It 
 denies that finite individuals are monads and that taken 
 by themselves they are all-inclusive. It declares on the 
 contrary that taken by themselves they bear evidence of 
 their abstraction from the whole. They are torn out, as 
 it were, from the whole to which they belong and manifest
 
 CHAP, ii THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 51 
 
 their origin in torn edges. At the same time they exhibit 
 a degree of reality, and it is this that gives them their 
 individuality, so that finite individuals may approximate 
 to the absolute itself in the degree of their reality. This 
 brief and inadequate presentation of what is essential in 
 Absolutism is necessary in order to make clear what is 
 essential in the monadic scheme. 
 
 In order to present this monadic scheme in the simplest 
 possible form, I will take an illustration which, though it 
 must primarily be a representation in the reader's mind, 
 I want to analyse not as a representation but as actually 
 occurring experience. According to the theory, the monads 
 are infinite in the positive meaning of the term, but I propose 
 to select two monads and consider them in their separate 
 existence and mutual relations as exhausting reality. My 
 purpose is to make unambiguous the monadic theory of the 
 nature of the multiplicity and unity of reality, and to show 
 the essential respect in which it differs both from scientific 
 and from philosophic monism. 
 
 In the descriptions of the battlefields in France during 
 the great war, one of the extraordinary circumstances 
 recorded by many observers was the persistence of bird- 
 life continuing its ordinary activity, undisturbed, however 
 inconvenienced, while havoc and destruction were being 
 wrought in its environment. It is said that after an artillery 
 duel or barrage of great intensity had ceased, the skylarks 
 could be heard continuing their song which apparently had 
 been proceeding throughout the terrific noise of the explo- 
 sions. Let us picture to ourselves, then, a soldier after the 
 battle listening to a skylark's song and the skylark above 
 the smoke choosing its alighting ground with regard to the 
 soldier in whose movements we may suppose it directly 
 concerned. Let us take these two subjects of experience 
 for our illustration, the soldier and the skylark. Let us 
 suppose the identity of their environment so far as anything 
 we are accustomed to regard as physical reality is concerned, 
 and let us suppose each to be within the perspective of the 
 other. Let us consider them as two monads or " reals " 
 and suppose them to be the whole of reality in the absolute
 
 52 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 sense in which reality is experience, that is, let us suppress 
 in thought the idea that there are any other subjects of 
 experience. There is no difficulty in doing this, for the sup- 
 position involves no diminution of reality. The reality 
 we will call the battle, and we suppose that it exists in 
 the experience of the soldier and in that of the skylark 
 and that they alone experience it. The battle is not to be 
 thought of as a third thing, but as what each and both are 
 experiencing. In what sense are these monads two, and 
 in what sense one, and how is their two-ness reconcilable 
 with their one-ness ? 
 
 The soldier and the skylark are each within the other's 
 perspective, yet neither is for the other what it is in itself. 
 On the other hand, one and the same monad is both in- 
 itself and for-another and the in-itself existence is not exist- 
 entially distinct from the for-another existence. There is 
 therefore an essential two-ness which is not an existential 
 two-ness. In what does it consist ? The answer is all- 
 important. It does not consist in the obvious fact that 
 neither lives the experience of the other. Such a proposi- 
 tion is true but purely tautological, involved in the bare 
 concept of numerical difference. The true answer is that 
 the two monads are essentially and substantially two 
 because there is no identity of meaning in the experience 
 of each, neither hi the experience hi its integrity nor in 
 the minutest element or part of it on whatever principle 
 it be analysable. On the objective side there is no 
 common factor. Let no one accept this statement without 
 challenging it. If there be a common factor, what is it ? 
 The experience in each case is the battle. As that battle 
 exists for each experient, whether it be conceived as a whole 
 or as an infinite diversity, neither as a whole nor in any 
 aspect of the whole or of its infinite detail can it mean the 
 same to each. Such is the essential pluralism of the monads. 
 
 In what then, we now ask, does the essential one-ness 
 consist ? The answer is that reality is not shared out 
 between the two monads so that part is appropriated by 
 one, part by another. Each monad is within the other's 
 perspective, but in coming into another's perspective the
 
 CHAP, n THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 53 
 
 included monad leaves nothing of itself outside. There 
 is absolutely no transcendence. The soldier's perspective 
 which the skylark does not possess is not a detachable part 
 of the soldier as he actually exists in the skylark's perspective. 
 
 This then is the principle of monadic explanation, and 
 if I have succeeded in making it clear in the supposed case 
 of two monads it will be seen that it is of universal 
 application. Reality is experience ; the subjects of experi- 
 ence are monads ; every monad enjoys its own perspective 
 not by reason of its spatial exclusiveness of other monads, 
 but by reason of the inclusiveness of the monads in its 
 universe. Finally, when a monad is within the perspective 
 of another monad, the perspective of the included monad 
 is not part of the perspective of the monad in which it is 
 included. 
 
 There is yet a further point of great importance. It is 
 only for a monad that there are monads ; a monad is not in 
 and for itself a monad, that is, one of the monads. Thus 
 we may say the soldier and the skylark are monads, but we 
 must not mean that each apprehends itself as a monad. We 
 apprehend it as a monad when we recognize that in itself 
 it is a subject of experience with its own perspective. The 
 only way in which I can present myself to myself as a monad 
 is by the device of imagining myself as in the perspective 
 of another monad. 
 
 Thus monadism gives us a concept of reality in complete 
 contrast with that which is assumed by scientific realism. 
 The universe which comes within the perspective of the 
 monad is real in the most absolute meaning of the term. 
 Its reality does not mean, however, that what is within any 
 perspective is in itself what it is in that perspective, but the 
 direct contrary ; what it is in itself is not what it is in the 
 perspective. That alone is real which exists in itself, and 
 knowledge of reality is knowledge that this in-itself existence 
 belongs to what in my experience is my perspective. I 
 recognize as real only what is in my perspective and by reason 
 of its belonging to my perspective ; but the reality I recognize 
 is that what is for me a perspective has in itself a perspective 
 of its own in which perspective I may have a place. What-
 
 
 54 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 ever cannot be thought of as subject of experience cannot 
 be thought of as real. 
 
 The philosophical gain of this theory of reality is that 
 it dispenses with the concept of transcendent reality. 
 There is no point in the theory of the monads at which it 
 is necessary to bring in the deus ex machina. I say this 
 advisedly, because Leibniz's theory of created monads and 
 of a pre-established harmony, has probably, more than 
 anything else, done him the disservice of concealing the 
 strength and self-sufficiency of the principle he has the 
 merit of having discovered. Leibniz felt himself under the 
 necessity of reconciling his notion of reality with that of 
 a creator God, and this introduces at once a discrepancy 
 into the whole concept. " There is no way conceivable 
 by which a simple substance can perish naturally. For the 
 same reason there is none by which a simple substance can 
 begin naturally, since it cannot be formed by composition. 
 So we may say then that the monads can begin or end 
 only all at once, that is to say, they can only begin by 
 creation and only end by annihilation " (Monadology, 4, 5, 6). 
 It is clear from this that it is not because without God 
 their reality would be transient that the monads are in 
 need of God. On the contrary God is required because 
 the monads must not be self-sufficient as by their concept 
 they are. They must be created and creation is an event 
 in time. But in the monad time as well as space is within 
 the universe mirrored. The time order belongs to the 
 monad's perspective. Creation makes time an external 
 condition of the monad, and the monad has no external 
 condition. Leibniz, while endowing the monads with an 
 indestructible nature in their relations to one another, 
 postulates a transcendent God by whose creative act they 
 are brought into existence as a system with a pre-established 
 harmony, and by whose act they might, conceivably, be 
 annihilated, annihilated not individually but as a system. 
 Partial annihilation would break up the system and destroy 
 the harmony. Such an act of God is not wanted to give 
 consistency to the monadic theory. Monadism as a theory 
 is neither atheistic nor theistic for the sufficient reason
 
 CHAP, ii THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 55 
 
 that its essential principle involves the inconceivability 
 of transcending experience. For the same reason it is 
 not agnostic, affirming a God and declaring him unknowable. 
 Our perspective of the universe is not only from within the 
 universe but from a centre into which it is reflected. We 
 cannot view the universe from outside because we cannot 
 be outside. The monads in our perspective are not the 
 outsides of universes. Monads have no outside. The 
 externality with which one monad endows another in its 
 perspective is derived from that perspective and belongs 
 wholly to it. 
 
 To create is to bring into existence what does not pre- 
 exist. The monad is creative in its nature because that 
 nature is essential activity. It is possible to create a work 
 of art as Pygmalion created Galatea, when he sculptured her 
 form in stone. It is impossible to create a monad, a living 
 Galatea, for to do that is to create a human nature, which 
 can only mean bringing into existence what pre-exists. It 
 would be to create something the very essence of which is its 
 past existence. There is, that is to say, a contradiction in 
 the very notion of creating a living thing, for a living thing 
 carries its past in its present activity. How can there be 
 creation of the past ? Moreover, the very notion of creation 
 involves the concept of a transcendent creator. Thus 
 Pygmalion can only create Galatea if he already possess 
 in idea what he will express in sculptured marble. The 
 whole theological difficulty of the origin of evil, of sin and 
 redemption, arises from the perception that in the very 
 idea of creation is involved pre-existence as idea in the mind 
 of God. We cannot escape the dilemma. " And God 
 said, Let there be light : and there was light." What 
 meaning can we give to this if we suppose before the creative 
 act inexistence of light even as intuition in the creator's 
 mind when called forth by expression in word ? It is clear 
 therefore that anything we can call creation falls within 
 and is not outside the monad. To create monads is in- 
 conceivable. To conceive God as a creator is to conceive 
 God as monad, and it must then be true of God as of every 
 monad that he is a living mirror of the universe and the
 
 56 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 reality of that universe can only be the infinite monads 
 within his perspective. Only a monad can create because 
 only a monad can have that twofold activity which presents 
 in idea what it will bring into existence ; and a monad 
 cannot be created or brought into existence because the 
 present which alone could be created includes the past of 
 which it is the outcome and holds within it potentially the 
 future. 
 
 To sum up : I have argued that the monadic principle 
 is the only philosophical principle which can do justice 
 to the unity and manifoldness of reality, and which at 
 the same time is under no necessity to sacrifice either 
 character to the other. In interpreting the nature of the 
 real it eschews the attempt to transcend it. It neither 
 seeks the origin of unity in a transcendent character of 
 the many nor the origin of the many in a transcendent 
 one. The nature of the reality itself discloses the incon- 
 ceivability of origin. It is not in appearance but in itself 
 that reality is both one and many. It is not an agnostic 
 limitation. 
 
 It is hard to convince ourselves that the mind's attempts 
 to transcend reality are vain. We are indebted to Kant 
 above all for having established this philosophic truth. 
 The Ideas of Reason, objects of a transcendent reality, 
 God, the Soul, the World, are not speculative ideas, but 
 regulative ideas and practical postulates. We cannot know 
 them because they are not objects within experience and 
 we are not subjects outside experience. 
 
 On the other hand, monism transcends the given in order 
 to affirm a one, superior to, more original and more real 
 than the many. Scientific monism affirms a transcendent 
 object, absolutism a transcendent subject, of experience. 
 Absolutism therefore comes very close indeed to monadism 
 inasmuch as it sees the principle of many-oneness in the 
 subject rather than in the object. Both absolutism and 
 monadism recognize that only what acts is, and that only 
 mind or spirit acts. And moreover in the theory of degrees 
 of reality it comes very close to the monadic concept. It 
 fails and monadism succeeds just in the fact that the one
 
 CHAP, n THE MONAD'S PERSPECTIVE 57 
 
 must, and the other need not, appeal to a transcendent 
 principle. 
 
 Unity and diversity, the one and the many, can only 
 be interpreted, then, on the principle that reality is monadic. 
 The ordinary view of common sense which has formed the 
 concept of scientific reality is that activity is exercised by 
 the mind upon an independent material given to it. The 
 monadic theory is that mind is self-centred activity develop- 
 ing like a germ or seed by converting inner potentiality into 
 outward expression and action. The monad does not 
 create its universe or produce it out of its own nature, for 
 the monads are the true atoms of nature and monads cannot 
 create monads. The monad is an acting centre into which 
 its universe is mirrored. The perspective of its universe 
 is determined by the monad from within and is self-contained. 
 The monad is confined to its perspective, but in that per- 
 spective are the infinite monads. The monads within the 
 monad's perspective are the reality of the monad's universe. 
 The monad is both in-itself and for-another. In-itself it is 
 subject of experience with its perspective. For-another it 
 belongs to the universe of the monad in whose perspective 
 it is. 
 
 Monadism means that reality is activity and not a stuff 
 of which activity may be an attribute, quality or endow- 
 ment. It denies substance as inert substratum, but affirms 
 substance as active subject of experience. Monads are not 
 a crowd with spatial boundaries, plurality is not mutual 
 exclusiveness. The monad mirrors the whole universe and 
 infinite monads are within the universe of the monad. Yet 
 there are not an infinity of universes limiting one another. 
 The monads all enter into and constitute the universe of 
 every monad, but the perspective of one monad forms no 
 part of the universe of another monad. The perspective 
 of the monad is its in-itself-ness and incommunicable. 
 
 Monads are things-in-themselves, for in themselves they 
 are subjects of experience. They know and are unknown, 
 for to become known they would have to enter as objects 
 into the experience of a subject, and in so far as they were 
 objects they would cease to be subjects.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CONCEPT OF NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
 
 Henceforward space and time as independent things must sink to 
 mere shadows, and the only thing which can preserve some sort of sub- 
 sistence is a kind of union of the two. MINKOWSKI. 
 
 MONADOLOGY seems to follow a direction in the search 
 for truth the reverse of that which the mind takes in 
 ordinary practical life and in physical science. This would 
 be of little account were it not that in representing the 
 inclusive character of reality the monad seems to undermine 
 and even destroy the fundamental concept of physical 
 science, the notion of a physical reality independent of 
 any mind and a common object for all minds. All dis- 
 tinctions fall within the monad and all relations are internal. 
 The ego and the non-ego, the subject of experience, the " I " 
 or " me," and the object of experience, the world or universe, 
 are not brought together in the monad ; they are not two 
 existences united somehow in an act of knowing, they are 
 one existence dissociated in the act of knowing. The 
 relation subject-object is a relation of polarity, the existence 
 of each term depends on relation. Subject and object 
 are not therefore dual existences but a dual relation within 
 one existence. 
 
 In physical science the objects which we apprehend are 
 common to all minds. This indeed is what " physical " 
 means. The objects of physical science are not tastes, smells, 
 auditory and visual sensations, feelings of pleasure and pain, 
 but the existences which give rise to these subjective 
 experiences. And in physical science we regard these 
 existences, however changing and unstable their appear- 
 
 58
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 59 
 
 ances, as independent of their relations to the minds which 
 may apprehend them. If then monadology renders such 
 a fundamental assumption a priori impossible, it would 
 seem to be destructive of physical science in its inception 
 and ground. This is not a problem we can set aside, and 
 it is not a scientific problem ; it is a problem of philosophy. 
 
 Physical science is in no need of philosophy to justify 
 its existence, or even to stamp its method with the hall- 
 mark of validity. It is justified by its success, a success 
 which is complete and unequivocal. The astronomer 
 calculates the movements of the planets and predicts an 
 eclipse, he can foretell the exact incidence of the shadow 
 and define the time interval occupied by any portion of 
 the event and to any required fraction of a second. All 
 the astronomer's activity in calculating is dependent on 
 the working of his mind, but the accuracy of his science 
 depends on the absolute sense in which he can eliminate 
 every subjective element from his object. It has come to 
 be accepted universally that the success of science is due 
 to this complete elimination of subjectivity, and that the 
 possibility of such elimination is proof of the fact that 
 there exists a common object which minds possess the 
 power of apprehending. If metaphysical theory under- 
 mines or destroys this basis, it must furnish some ground of 
 explanation of the success of science. I propose therefore 
 to examine critically the scientific notion of physical reality. 
 The notion itself, whether or not it be necessary as a basis 
 of physical science, is not a physical but a metaphysical 
 concept. 
 
 John Locke in the Essay on the Human Understanding 
 makes frequent use for purposes of illustration of the 
 embarrassment of an Indian philosopher who, questioned 
 as to what supported the earth, replied an elephant, asked 
 then on what the elephant stood, replied a tortoise, and 
 when further questioned as to what supported the tortoise, 
 replied, something or other he knew not what. Locke 
 argues that the notion of substance as philosophers 
 use it is this kind of explanation, it is an idea of 
 something or other we know not what, which holds
 
 60 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 together the sensible qualities of a thing and constitutes 
 its thinghood. What impressed Locke was the necessity 
 we are under to postulate something or other and the 
 helplessness we experience in our effort to give this 
 something any characterization. The illustration is more 
 apposite even than Locke suspected if we apply it, not to 
 the philosophical effort to form a notion of substance, but 
 to the scientific effort to frame a positive notion of the 
 stuff which ultimately constitutes physical reality or Nature. 
 The history of physical science is a record of the continual 
 displacement of one notion of the material basis of reality 
 by another, each on its discovery claiming to be absolute 
 and each in its turn finding that it must seek support out- 
 side itself. The Indian of Locke's story was not intended 
 to denote some particular Brahmin, Buddhist, or other 
 sage. Oriental philosophy was little known in Locke's 
 time. The Indian of the eighteenth century was the in- 
 genuous child of nature, the purely unsophisticated mind. 
 He is Pope's " poor Indian of untutored mind," Voltaire's 
 " I'lngenu," and the humour lay in the simplicity and 
 childishness of the imagery. What the story really illustrates 
 is the fact that the human mind by an apparent logical 
 necessity of thought continually finds itself compelled to 
 form a notion of some existence other than the actual 
 existence present to it in sense experience as the support 
 and ground of sense experience, and then finds that it 
 cannot give expression to its notion save and except in 
 the imagery of that very sense experience which requires 
 the extraneous support. 
 
 Thinking is interrogating. The mind asks questions 
 about immediate sense reality, and the very possibility of 
 asking questions supposes a reality which is not sensibly 
 experienced. The essential nature of thinking, it has been 
 said, is the distinction of the " that " from the " what." 
 The " that " exists as present sense-imagery. The mind 
 may accept the " that " without asking what, but then 
 it does not think. There may be, that is to say, 
 and we commonly suppose there are, grades of mind in 
 which what we call " discursive " thought is absent alto-
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 61 
 
 gether, in which the creature lives entirely hi the present 
 without representation of the past or anticipation of the 
 future. We usually picture the animal mind as more or 
 less completely at this grade. Mind is essentially activity, 
 but the activity may consist only in the simple expression 
 of experience in immediate sense-imagery without any 
 conscious reflexion or interrogation. But whatever may 
 be the normal condition of mind below the human, and 
 however content at times the human mind may be in the 
 enjoyment of immediate experience, absorbed in a present 
 attention to life, it is human nature to think, and thinking 
 means that the mind sets the image over against itself and 
 refers it to something not itself. Why it does so, wherein 
 lies the necessity which disrupts immediate experience, 
 we may leave aside for the present and concern ourselves 
 with the fact. 
 
 The typical form of discursive thought is the question : 
 What is that ? The question implies that the immediate 
 reality in the form of sense-image is not self-existent but 
 an appearance whose ground is the reality. This something 
 as the ground or cause or reason of the existence gives rise 
 to the notion of physical reality. It is the idea of a reality 
 outside the mind and independent of it, which manifests itself 
 to the mind by a stimulus which compels the mind to infer 
 it. The certain fact therefore is that every thinking being 
 does, and must by the very nature of thought, suppose 
 that there is a physical reality, a reality which is not a 
 thought but something thought about, something inde- 
 pendent of the thinking individual mind ; a somewhat 
 which explains the actual that which is experienced. 
 
 There are two philosophical theories of the nature of 
 this physical reality. One is that it is an existence which 
 the mind discerns by means of its sense experience and that 
 our experience is experience of the sensible qualities of this 
 existence. According to this view, whatever be the ulti- 
 mate nature of physical reality and however inferential our 
 knowledge of that nature, it nevertheless is independently 
 of any act by which we come to know it. And also ulti- 
 mately it is the ground not only of the knowledge of it
 
 62 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 but of the mind which knows it. In knowing we discern, 
 or make discovery of, what exists unknown. 
 
 The other theory is that this physical reality is a notion 
 which is entirely a construction of the mind itself, a very 
 complex construction, the result of a long and elaborate 
 process. It is not a process which originates anew in each 
 individual subject of experience. It has become through 
 evolution a human heritage, taking in man the special form 
 of intellect and being the human mode of activity. 
 
 Setting aside, however, any philosophical theory as to the 
 genesis of the notion of physical reality, let us examine the 
 nature of that notion itself and trace the variation of form 
 which in the history of science it has assumed. We shall 
 see that philosophers have not been more successful than 
 the Indian who imagined first an elephant, then a tortoise, 
 then something or other he knew not what. 
 
 It is clear that no one living our human life can ignore 
 the obstinate facts which confront and environ that life. 
 Life presents itself to us as a power of using what is the 
 very opposite and antithesis of itself, dead, inert matter. 
 We shape and mould this matter to our purposes but we 
 have no power to bring the least and weakest element of it 
 into existence. It is there. It is indifferent to us, inde- 
 pendent of us, and it seems as though life, in itself a 
 strengthless, feeble stream of tendency without support, 
 had, by insinuating and adapting itself, won the means of 
 subjecting this inert mass to its service. It succeeds by 
 what appears an incessant watchfulness and alertness, 
 which if it fail for a moment is obliterated for ever by the 
 dead matter. This matter, inert in itself, is swayed by 
 resistless mechanical forces, consisting of the actions and 
 reactions of blind unintelligent movements. This is the 
 aspect of the world to the human mind, and the first effort 
 of the mind when it reflects and becomes self-conscious is 
 naturally and of necessity to form a clear and precise notion 
 of this matter, which seems opposed to life and at the same 
 time the necessary condition of the activity in which life 
 consists. We find accordingly that historically the first 
 records we have of pure philosophy are the efforts of men
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 63 
 
 who sought to think out precisely the nature of this physical 
 reality. 
 
 A certain division or grouping of the forms of this physical 
 reality suggested itself, we may suppose naturally, to the 
 first reflecting observation. From very early times this 
 physical reality seemed divided into four distinct elements 
 earth, air, fire and water. This classification, which now 
 appears to us primitive and even childish, not only endured 
 through ancient and medieval philosophy but comes right 
 into the modern period. It is, in a general way, accepted 
 by Descartes in his Principles of Philosophy, and its place 
 in our language shows how rooted it is in our modern 
 thought. We still speak of the " elements " when we wish 
 to signify what we call in poetical language the untamed 
 forces of nature. Moreover, it was observed that there is 
 a certain opposition in the nature of these forms of matter 
 so that one form is inconsistent with another, as, for example, 
 fire and water. This notion is familiar to us in our expres- 
 sion " the warring elements." Hence when men turned 
 their thoughts to the investigation of the nature of this 
 " nature," which is opposed to mind and at the same time 
 the sphere of its activity and the ground of its exist- 
 ence, two problems presented themselves. The first, what 
 is the primordial stuff of which the elements are forms ? 
 And the second, what is and whence is derived the moving 
 force ? 
 
 We may single out four types of theory, each of which 
 has for some time and during definite historical periods 
 held sway and appeared to offer a satisfactory basis of 
 physical science. They will repay examination and criticism, 
 for each may be said in formulating a principle to have 
 disclosed a problem which has led to the supersession of a 
 theory previously held. 
 
 The four types of theory I propose to pass in review are : 
 (i) the theory elaborated in the ancient philosophy of atoms 
 and the void ; (2) the rejection by Descartes of the vacuum 
 or void and the theory of the vortex to explain movement 
 in a plenum ; (3) the theory of absolute space and time and 
 infinite velocity (Newton) ; (4) the principle of relativity.
 
 64 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 Every scientific theory of the physical basis of the 
 material universe approximates to one or other of these 
 types. I propose, therefore, to examine them as types, to 
 criticize only what is the essential concept in each, and I 
 shall not attempt to present them in their historical sequence, 
 or with full detail, or to set forth the variety of forms they 
 have assumed. I shall also of course completely ignore all 
 criticism based on other than logical grounds. 
 
 The concept of matter, which is the basis of physical 
 science, is not identical with the concept of substance in 
 philosophy. Matter is the general idea of non-mental, 
 space-occupying stuff. The doctrine that matter is itself 
 the seat of efficient causality is materialism, and this is a 
 philosophical doctrine. It is a curious fact that notwith- 
 standing the overwhelming importance of the part which 
 the concept of a physical reality plays in practical life, 
 materialism is not a primitive, certainly not a natural and 
 self-evident belief. Animism, the contrary of materialism, 
 is more primitive and more universal. Materialism, in the 
 pure or atheistical meaning, has always appeared late and 
 not early in metaphysical speculation. It is also not a little 
 curious that its condemnation by the popular judgment 
 is always on moral, never on rational grounds. It has always 
 seemed seductively rational, sometimes distressingly so, 
 but it has also seemed to involve disastrous consequences 
 in religion and ethics. It is in this connexion that rational- 
 ism is used as the synonym of materialism. Materialism 
 seems to justify the maxim, " Let us eat and drink for to- 
 morrow we die." 
 
 The atomic theory of Democritus was the first form 
 in which materialism took shape. It furnished the meta- 
 physical basis of the Epicurean philosophy. The most 
 beautiful exposition of this philosophy is preserved for us 
 in the great work of the Latin poet-philosopher Lucretius, 
 De rerum natura. The stuff of which the objective 
 world or nature consists exists, he tells us, in the form of 
 separate particles, " atoms," whose size represents a limit 
 of divisibility. The atoms are eternal and indestructible, 
 identical in content, but diverse in shape, and movable by
 
 CHAP, ni NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 65 
 
 external compulsion, forming by segregation and dispersion 
 the variety and diversity of the elements. They are encom- 
 passed by the void. The void is a negation absolutely 
 necessary to the affirmation of the atom, and deriving from 
 this necessity a positive status. The void is not merely 
 the logical opposite or negation of the atom ; it does not 
 signify only the absence of an atom ; it is a positive reality. 
 There must be a void as well as an atom in order that there 
 may be an atom. But the void also performed a function 
 of prime importance, it rendered movement possible. For 
 suppose the void abolished, and the atoms everywhere in 
 contact with no free surface, even assuming them still to 
 preserve their atomicity they would be immovable. An 
 unoccupied place in which to move is a condition of move- 
 ment. If the space is occupied by atoms, the displacement 
 of the surrounding atoms is a prior condition of the move- 
 ment of any atom. An atom before it can move must displace 
 the atom into whose place it is moving. If then there were 
 no vacuum, and atoms formed a plenum, movement would 
 be impossible. Moreover, as all the atoms are movable 
 by external compulsion and are continually shifting, here 
 condensing and there dispersing, the void, like the atom, 
 is eternal and indestructible. 
 
 This argument is admirably set forth in the following 
 quotation from Lucretius (i. 370-383) : 
 
 Illud in his rebus ne te deducere vero 
 Possit, quod quidam fingunt, praecurrere cogor. 
 Cedere squamigeris latices nitentibus aiunt, 
 Et liquidas aperire vias, quia post loca pisces 
 Linquant, quo possint cedentes confluere undae : 
 Sic alias quoque res inter se posse moveri, 
 Et mutare locum, quamvis sint omnia plena. 
 Scilicet, id falsa totum ratione receptumst. 
 Nam quo squamigeri poterunt procedere tandem, 
 Ni spatium dederint latices ? Concedere porro 
 Quo poterunt undae, cum pisces ire nequibunt ? 
 Aut igitur motu privandumst corpora quaeque, 
 Aut esse admixtum dicundumst rebus inane, 
 Unde initum primum capiat res quaeque movendi. 
 
 (And herein I am obliged to forestall this point which some 
 raise, lest it draw you away from the truth. The waters they say 
 
 F
 
 66 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 make way for the scaly creatures as they press on, and open liquid 
 paths, because the fish leave room behind them, into which the 
 yielding waters may stream ; thus other things too may move and 
 change place among themselves, although the whole sum be full. 
 This you are to know has been taken up on grounds wholly false. 
 For on what side, I ask, can the scaly creatures move forward, unless 
 the waters have first made room ? Again, on what side can the 
 waters give place, so long as the fish are unable to go on ? There- 
 fore, you must either deprive all bodies of motion, or admit that in 
 things there is mixed up the void from which everything gets its first 
 start in moving.) 
 
 The atomic theory, or what is better described as the 
 theory of atoms and the void, held its ground practically 
 unchallenged throughout the ancient and medieval philo- 
 sophy. It was opposed, but not by disputing the nature of 
 matter, only by challenging its self-sufficiency and causal 
 efficiency. Those who opposed it did not offer criticism of 
 the concept, but denied the eternity of matter, holding that 
 it had been created and could be annihilated. It was the 
 presumption of the atomic theory that nature in the form 
 of atoms and the void was a reality which without contra- 
 diction could be conceived as eternal and indestructible, and 
 this constituted, certainly for Lucretius, its main attraction. 
 The object of his poem is to deliver mankind from the vain 
 superstitions which torment it by showing that everything in 
 nature can be explained without any necessity of supposing 
 the intervention of the gods. 
 
 The effective criticism of the theory of atoms and the 
 void is a main part of the philosophy of Descartes. It 
 occupies a considerable portion of the Principles of 
 Philosophy, and in fact furnishes the real ground of 
 Descartes's theory that material substance consists in 
 extension alone. It is impossible to exaggerate the 
 importance of Descartes's criticism of the idea of void and 
 of its supposed necessary function in supplying a condition 
 of the possibility of movement. The whole subsequent 
 development of physical theory may be said to hinge upon 
 it. Yet it is strangely neglected. The once famous vortex 
 theory is now passed over in most of the accounts of 
 Descartes's philosophy, or treated as merely an archaic 
 curiosity. This neglect is perhaps not difficult to explain.
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 67 
 
 It is due to the fact that Descartes is regarded as before 
 everything else a speculative philosopher, and physics is 
 regarded as peculiarly the business of the experimentalist. 
 In the development of physical theory, therefore, we pass at 
 once from Galileo and Kepler to Newton, and ignore the 
 careful and elaborate work of Descartes, because it is con- 
 fined, we suppose, to criticism of concepts and not to 
 observation based on experiment. So far as the historical 
 evolution of theory is concerned we are quite wrong. Some 
 of the amazement we experience in regard to the simplicity 
 and directness and magnificent comprehension of the 
 Newtonian system is due to our ignorance of the profundity 
 of the physical speculation of Descartes. 
 
 Descartes's philosophy, however speculative in the 
 philosophical meaning of the term, that is to say, concerned 
 with concepts as distinct from empirical facts, is in the 
 fullest sense practical. His rejection of the concept of a 
 void or vacuum is not based on the formal logical argument 
 that the vacuum is the idea of nothing and that nothing 
 is a pseudo-idea, for it is impossible that there can be an 
 idea which is not the idea of something. He rejected it 
 because if there be a void, action is impossible. That 
 movement of any kind may be propagated from one body 
 to another separated from it by any distance, some medium 
 uniting them is essential. Action at a distance is incon- 
 ceivable and also a contradiction of experience. I can 
 only ring a distant bell if I pull the cord attached to it. 
 How is such an action possible if the connecting cord be 
 composed of atoms separated from one another by a void ? 
 In every case of an influence passing from one body to 
 another there is some medium through and by which the 
 influence is conveyed. 
 
 While, however, Descartes saw clearly that a void if it 
 existed would be an impassable barrier destroying the 
 possibility of action between bodies which it separated, he 
 saw equally clearly the difficulty of movement in a plenum, 
 the difficulty to obviate which the atomists had assumed 
 the void. It was this difficulty which led him to formulate 
 the famous theory of the vortex. The theory is that
 
 68 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 movement in a plenum cannot consist of the successive 
 displacement of the parts in movement. Such succession 
 could never begin because the condition of the movement 
 of one part is the prior displacement of the part which is to 
 give way to it. Movement in a plenum is therefore only 
 possible if all the particles composing it move simultaneously 
 and are so interconnected that they form a complete system. 
 If, for example, we have a system of atoms, a, b, c, d, . . . z, 
 such that the movement of a involves that of b, this again 
 that of c and so on to z, and if z completes the system so that 
 its movement involves that of a ; then, in this case, move- 
 ment is theoretically possible but must be simultaneous 
 throughout the series. Not only is a vacuum unnecessary 
 but it would upset the mechanism. This is the simple 
 scheme of the vortex, and Descartes applied it on a magnifi- 
 cent scale to explain the planetary movements, as well as 
 to account for the mysterious phenomena of the loadstone. 
 
 The vortex is not a theory of the origin of movement in 
 a plenum assumed at rest, it is a theory of the nature or 
 constitution of a universe in which movement is actually 
 existent, one of its characteristics. Descartes does not 
 assume that matter existed originally as a compact mass 
 and that movement was somehow imposed on it or set going 
 within it. His argument is of the nature of an a priori. 
 He points out the conditions of the possibility of what is 
 an actuality. 
 
 The solar system is in this view a vortex and surrounded 
 by other vortices which are the systems of which the fixed 
 stars are the nuclei. The condensations in sun and planets 
 are not solid concretions poised in vast empty space, they 
 are centres of revolving movement, heavier and denser by 
 reason of their lower velocity compared with the immense 
 velocity of the ethereal elements of which the vast firmament 
 is composed. Light he held to be a very subtile matter 
 and capable by reason of its subtilty of stupendous velocity. 
 He throws out the curious speculation that it is stuff formed 
 and continually forming by the friction of the vortices 
 moving against one another. 
 
 Descartes had no theory of the matter or stuff of the
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 69 
 
 universe. He accepted the old distinction of the four 
 elements earth, air, fire and water. What he did endeavour 
 to deduce was the particular form of these elements from 
 the movement of an assumed primordial stuff equally 
 distributed. The substantiality of matter consisted only 
 in extension, or what perhaps we ought rather to call exten- 
 sity, for it is not geometrical space. The whole point of 
 Descartes's argument is that wherever there is matter there 
 is extensity not the place where matter may or may not 
 be, but the substance of matter itself. Where there is nothing 
 there is no extension. Empty space is inconceivable, the 
 notion of it directly contradicts the only idea which makes 
 a mechanical propagated movement possible. Speculative 
 as this argument is, it assumes exceptional importance in the 
 light of our present physical problem, as well as for the part 
 it has played in the historical development of physical 
 theory. The hypothesis of the luminiferous ether is in 
 fact designed to meet the very difficulty which Descartes 
 had insisted on the inconceivability of action at a distance. 
 Descartes's whole philosophy was in fact called forth 
 and determined in its direction by the great discovery of 
 Copernicus which had been published some half-century 
 before his birth, and which in his time was revolutionizing 
 the world-view and necessitating an entirely new recon- 
 struction of human thought concerning the fundamental 
 nature of our universe. The eppur si ntuove of Galileo 
 is the real starting-point of modern philosophy. It is the 
 historical fact that throughout ages mankind had supported 
 itself intellectually on a theory now demonstrably false, 
 which explains the whole Cartesian theory of clear and 
 distinct ideas. Our senses not only are untrustworthy in 
 the matter of truth and error, they are not only liable to 
 deceive us, but the whole of our practical life is based on the 
 deception, wrought in us by the senses, that the moving 
 is at rest. It is clear then that it is not to the senses we 
 can turn for our criterion of truth, they must serve a lower 
 and utilitarian purpose. Truth is not based on psychical 
 certainty but on principles which are only discerned by 
 an intellect free from the distractions of sense. It was
 
 70 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 the Copernican discovery, moreover, which set the problem : 
 Is movement the vacating of a position ? When a material 
 substance moves does it leave behind a void ? Or, is 
 movement a change of neighbourhood of material substances 
 relatively to one another ? In declaring that material 
 substance consists in extension alone, Descartes rejected the 
 notion of a void within which things move and of atoms as 
 indivisible particles occupying an infinitely divisible exten- 
 sion. Material substance is extension and extension is not 
 distinct from it ; it is not a void expanse spread out beneath 
 it. The physical universe is a plenum, and all movement 
 within the plenum is relative change of neighbourhood. To 
 be at rest is to be within a system in which the objects retain 
 to one another their relative position, although the system 
 itself may be in movement of translation relatively to other 
 systems. In this way the new world-view was rationalized. 
 " The earth is at rest," said Descartes, " in the same sense 
 in which I am at rest in the. cabin of the ship which is trans- 
 porting me from Calais to Dover." It was therefore the 
 new world-view which absorbed the attention of Descartes, 
 and which has made the profound difference between the old 
 philosophy and the new. 
 
 Descartes's brilliant physical theories, however, suffered 
 complete neglect when the scientific world came under the 
 influence of the great mathematical and physical work 
 initiated by Newton. It seemed that then a new method 
 was found and a new era opened, promising an unlimited 
 extension of the science of nature. Newton discarded all 
 dialectical arguments, and refusing to be turned aside 
 by any problems of a priori possibility, set to work to 
 study minutely the facts as they lay before him and to 
 measure them. " Hypotheses non fingo," he wrote at the 
 close of his Principia. He took for granted that facts 
 are what they purport to be, or rather he never allowed 
 doubt on the question to disturb him. This attitude to- 
 wards nature has now been adopted as the distinctive basis 
 of the physical sciences. We have indeed to recognize that 
 only by assuming the subject-matter of the sciences can we 
 have any sciences, for if we insist on raising the previous
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 71 
 
 question we cannot begin. Newton, then, described the 
 universe as it presents itself to a human mind contemplating 
 it, and he sought to determine and fix in clear mathematical 
 formulae the laws of its phenomena. Space and time 
 and movement were therefore for him accepted facts, 
 not problems. The framework of nature is an absolute 
 space, an even flow of time fixing an absolute suc- 
 cession of events, and movement, the translation of 
 matter occupying a position in space through adjoining 
 positions at successive moments of time. Space might 
 be occupied or unoccupied but could not be annihilated, 
 time was absolute and unalterable, and movement was 
 capable of an infinite acceleration. The framework of the 
 universe is therefore an infinite and absolute space, and an 
 infinite and absolute time, and consequently an infinite 
 velocity. Movements of translation and propagation and 
 in fact all physical phenomena which involve movements 
 were therefore expressible in equations of velocity, of which 
 space and tune are constants. 
 
 What is continually surprising us in the study of nature 
 is the discovery that its actual processes, detected by 
 scientific observation and experiment, are so entirely con- 
 trary to what seems the obvious mode of their working. 
 How difficult it is to-day, now that we have become familiar 
 with the sight of people riding bicycles and able to control 
 perfectly every deviation of the movement, to realize how 
 incredible was the notion of its practicability fifty years 
 ago. With what painful timidity we witnessed its first 
 practical demonstrations ! A most curious source of quite 
 a number of illusions in regard to the movements which 
 form part of our daily experience is an apparently natural 
 induction, a false inference, to make which seems part of 
 our human nature. The head which we hold erect is by 
 far the heaviest portion of our bodily organism. We main- 
 tain its position by a continual expenditure of muscular 
 energy, but of this expended energy we are entirely un- 
 conscious, and because of this unconsciousness we act 
 continually and perform purposive movements under the 
 conviction that our head is the lightest portion of the
 
 72 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 framework. Were it not for this illusion, and were it not 
 for the difficulty of overcoming the tendencies and habits 
 created by the illusion, the well-known difficulties in 
 acquiring the art of bicycle riding, swimming, skating, 
 even tight-rope dancing, would be non-existent. It is 
 simple facts like these which show us that common experi- 
 ence is not self-explanatory and which make scientific 
 experiments appear so paradoxical in their inception, so 
 revolutionary in their effects. The story that a falling 
 apple raised in Newton's mind the question which led to 
 the formulation of the law of gravitation may be apocryphal, 
 but it illustrates the principle. Our nature is an equilibrium 
 between an activity served by consciousness and able to be 
 purposive, and an environment. Mental apprehension of this 
 environment is practical, not theoretical. Familiarity is not 
 identical with, nor a substitute for, scientific knowledge. 
 
 Take, for example, Newton's first law of motion, the vis 
 inertiae, the force or power in matter to persist in any 
 given state, whether of rest or of motion in a straight line, 
 and to resist any external force impressed upon it to change 
 that state, in its two particulars it is the direct reverse 
 of what common experience appears to us to establish. 
 Yet it is not based on speculation but on careful observation 
 and experiment. A moving body goes on moving till 
 some force stops it, and a movement set free from a control- 
 ling force takes immediately the direction of a straight line. 
 The cricket ball when it leaves the bowler's hand goes 
 straight, it has taken no curve in its direction from the 
 swing of the bowler's arm. The stone released from the 
 sling does not follow the circular movement which gives it 
 momentum, it flies off at right angles in a straight line and 
 is drawn to earth by the curve of the force of the earth's 
 gravity. 
 
 Newton assumed the framework of nature. The 
 mechanical forces which he observed for the purpose of 
 determining the laws of their action were viewed as free to 
 act within a sphere fixed for them by absolute space and 
 time. By regarding space and time as constant factors 
 of the situation he was able to determine the laws of motion.
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 73 
 
 The equations which he formulated are adequate for all 
 ordinary velocities, that is, for all movements which are 
 under our control in practical life. It is only in regard to 
 the immense velocities which modern science has brought 
 within our view, velocities which approach that of the 
 propagation of light ten million miles a minute as compared 
 with the earth's translation ranging round 5000 miles a 
 minute, that the equations fail. 
 
 The difficulty which we meet throughout the whole 
 development of physical theory is concerned with motion. 
 How are we to conceive the ultimate constitution of the 
 matter which seems to be necessary to support the reality 
 which confronts us as nature, so that it shall not be incon- 
 sistent with the free movement of the masses, and of elements 
 within the mass ? The translation of masses and the con- 
 tinual transformation within the mass by internal change 
 are undoubted facts of experience. How frame an image 
 of a constitution consistent with motion and change and 
 so render possible the determination of the laws of movement 
 and change ? Newton found all the necessary conditions 
 in space and time. Taking these as constant, movement 
 could be expressed in the terms of a ratio between them. 
 As they were infinite, so an infinite acceleration was con- 
 ceivable. Infinity, so troublesome to common sense and 
 philosophical reflexion, did not trouble him. Could any 
 one doubt that God is infinite ? Space and time are the 
 sensorium of God, parts of his infinite nature. 
 
 The Principle of Relativity marks a revolution in the 
 concept of the nature of physical reality which can only 
 be compared in its completeness with that which followed 
 the Copernican discovery in the sixteenth century. It can 
 be simply stated. The Newtonian measurements took 
 space and time as constants and velocity as variable ; the 
 principle of relativity takes velocity as constant and space 
 and time as variable. It seems, and indeed it is, contrary 
 to our ordinary notions, but it is not paradoxical. It is 
 often denied that any metaphysical concept is involved 
 in it and held to be of purely mathematical importance, a 
 question only of convenience in the method of measuring
 
 74 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 phenomena. It is becoming increasingly evident, however, 
 that the principle of relativity is based on a real fact as to 
 the nature of physical reality, and therefore that it corrects 
 a false notion and replaces it with a true one. 
 
 Descartes pointed out that when we push off a boat from 
 the shore we invariably express the fact by assuming that 
 only the boat moves and that the shore is at rest, whereas 
 it is just as true that the shore moves and the boat is at rest. 
 The movement in fact is relative, and may be measured by 
 taking either boat or shore as at rest and the other as having 
 moved, but the calculation required in one case is infinitely 
 more complicated than it is in the other. It is practical 
 convenience in this case, and not physical fact, which deter- 
 mines our choice. The child's riddle, " Why did Mahomet 
 go to the mountain ? " derives its point from our invariable 
 habit of representing physical objects as immobile and living 
 objects as mobile. A philosopher's answer that the same 
 fact could be equally truly described in terms that the 
 mountain went to Mahomet as in terms that Mahomet went 
 to the mountain would seem pure nonsense to the child. 
 
 Many other modes of judgments which appear to us 
 as invariable are merely conventions. Thus a distant 
 object appears small and its visual image grows larger as we 
 approach it. The doubt never disturbs us that the change 
 may be in us and not in the image, that in approaching the 
 object we may be shrinking to smaller proportions. Yet 
 the phenomenon could be explained just as perfectly in that 
 way. We may suppose that the good genius directing 
 the evolution of our species has settled the matter for 
 us and not left it to choice. 
 
 There are many interpretations of common experience 
 which are alternative modes of explaining phenomena and 
 which in themselves do not disclose the principle which 
 has guided us in our choice. We look around us at 
 the room in which we are sitting and we judge that 
 it contains so and so many cubic feet of extension or 
 space, and we think of this space as unalterable. When 
 we translate this into terms of our experience it simply 
 means that with a certain expenditure of energy it will
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 75 
 
 occupy us a certain definite time to pass from point to 
 point within it. Suppose that a strange and surprising 
 experience should occur, that we should find our ex- 
 pectation not fulfilled, but that expending our accustomed 
 energy we had to take as many strides and as long a time 
 to cross the room as to go a mile along a road. We should 
 feel ourselves the subject of a strange illusion ; how should 
 we describe it ? It is easy to see that we could describe 
 it in either of two ways. We could say that the walls of 
 the room, which we had in our old experience found to be 
 a few feet apart, were now a mile apart. Or we could say 
 that our movements, which previously had seemed rapid, 
 now appeared to be laboured and slow. This means that it 
 would be perfectly indifferent so far as the fact was con- 
 cerned whether we took space and time as constant and 
 our velocity as variable, or our velocity as constant and 
 space and time as variable. But we need not go to fanciful 
 experience for our illustration, we can take it from historical 
 fact. In the Great War an army of millions was transported 
 from America to France hi less time than an army of thou- 
 sands could have been transported from England to France 
 a hundred years ago. We can express this fact by saying 
 that we live in a smaller, less spatial or more contracted, 
 world than our forefathers lived in, or that we move more 
 quickly in it. We are not accustomed to take space as 
 variable, to do so seems to go athwart the whole mode of 
 our intellectual behaviour, but so far as pure experience is 
 concerned the fact is the same, and we can express it either 
 way. Is it then purely indifferent which we do ? No. We 
 are all now familiar with the famous experiments and 
 astronomical observations which have made it appear 
 certain that space and time are hi reality variable, and that 
 it is not merely a question of convenience whether for the 
 purposes of measurement we regard them as being so or not. 
 All our methods of measuring physical phenomena depend 
 in the last resort on light signals. They are practically 
 instantaneous. We know that the propagation of light 
 is not actually instantaneous, it occupies time, but the 
 velocity is immense when compared with the velocities we
 
 76 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 are familiar with in the movements of matter, and the time 
 interval between the emission and reception of a light signal 
 for any two points on earth is infinitesimal and practically 
 inappreciable. We could never have discovered this velocity 
 by observing purely terrestrial phenomena. We know it 
 because our observation extends far beyond the limits of 
 our planet, and it becomes not only appreciable but sub- 
 stantial for the immense distances of the fixed stars, and it 
 serves us as a means our only means of computing these 
 distances. The actual discovery was made by Roemer 
 in 1675 from observations of Jupiter's moons. So far as 
 terrestrial phenomena are concerned, we can measure a 
 distance accurately by transmitting simultaneously a light 
 signal and a sound signal, and recording the time interval 
 which separates their reception. If we had in our experience 
 the cognizance of any force which would propagate a move- 
 ment with greater velocity than light, it would enable us to 
 appreciate the interval of light transmission, but we have not. 
 Velocity is not self-explanatory. It requires a scheme ; 
 for it is a ratio between distances traversed and time 
 taken. It therefore supposes space and tune. The scheme 
 of the physical universe, which our experience of external 
 reality demands, comprises (i) Space of three dimensions, 
 (2) Time with one irreversible direction, (3) Matter or 
 mobile mass, and (4) Energy or transmissible force. There 
 is a vast gap between the velocities of the movements 
 of matter when a mass is transported and the velocities 
 of energy transmitted without translation of mass. It 
 is easy to see, therefore, that if the scheme of an 
 absolute space and tune were a true representation of 
 the framework of the reality of the physical universe, 
 if, that is to say, space and tune were constant and 
 invariable constituents and if velocities were capable of 
 infinite acceleration, then strange and disconcerting 
 phenomena would occur when velocities of translation 
 approached and overtook the velocities of transmission. 
 Suppose, for example, that the stellar system of which our 
 solar system is a member were itself moving through space 
 at the velocity of light (it is conceivable and may actually
 
 CHAP, m NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 77 
 
 be so from the view-point of some system of reference), what 
 ought the effect to be on us dwelling on a planet revolving 
 round the sun ? We depend on our sun for our utilizable 
 energy hi light and heat, but we should find ourselves wholly 
 deprived of any supply during the six months when the earth 
 would be in advance of the source, for we should be in trans- 
 lation of greater velocity than the emitted light, and during 
 the other six months, though the earth would be behind 
 the source, it would be receiving light which could not be 
 reflected. This appears extravagant, but it is always useful 
 to take the limiting case as the example. Are we justified 
 because this conjectured experience is not actual in denying 
 the supposition ? Can we, in other words, on the basis of 
 this argument, of what would occur in the circumstances 
 supposed, set limits to the velocity of the movement of 
 translation of our system ? There is an alternative and this 
 is offered to us in the theory of relativity. The alternative 
 interpretation is that the velocity of light is constant, invari- 
 able and independent of the movement of the source, and 
 that space and time are variable. Every movement of trans- 
 lation of the source of light is automatically compensated 
 in a shrinkage or an expansion of the space and time 
 co-ordinates. 
 
 Have we any means of deciding between these alterna- 
 tives ? The answer is that it has been possible to devise 
 experiments, and that the result of them is overwhelmingly 
 decisive in favour of the principle of relativity. The 
 historically important experiment which led to the formula- 
 tion was made by Michelson and Morley in 1886. The 
 earth in its annual revolution round the sun is carried 
 through space, and we can therefore represent this space 
 as an ether stream flowing past us, and every six months 
 the direction of this stream is completely reversed. 
 It is of no consequence what theory of the hypo- 
 thetical ether we hold; ether is the name of the medium, 
 space or something occupying space, through which light 
 is transmitted. An instrument was designed capable of 
 detecting a variation of one -millionth of the velocity of 
 light. The effect of the ether stream to be measured was
 
 78 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 at least 100 times greater than this. A beam of light 
 directed on equidistant mirrors, one in the direction of 
 the stream, the other across the stream, was reflected back 
 to the source. The ether stream should have retarded one 
 of the beams, producing an interference fringe, but the 
 expected result was not obtained. The ether stream was 
 shown to be without effect on the observed velocity of light. 
 Presuming the accuracy of the experiment, and this is not 
 questioned, and moreover has had independent confirmation, 
 the result is decisive for theory. It has demonstrated the 
 constancy of the velocity of light to an observer in a moving 
 system, and as the variation due to the ether stream must be 
 accounted for, the only possible conclusion is that the space 
 and time of the observer accommodate themselves to the 
 constancy of the velocity. There is no need here to follow 
 out the development of the theory, to describe the work of 
 Einstein and the formulation of the general principle of 
 relativity, which extends to gravitation and to all the 
 laws of nature. The scientific concept of the nature of 
 physical reality is not an absolute existence independent 
 of mind, but a co-ordinated framework relative to the 
 observer. 
 
 The significance of the new theory is not in the revolution 
 it has occasioned. So far as physical science is concerned, 
 it is no more disconcerting to treat space and time as vari- 
 ables than it was to treat the earth as moving when the 
 Copernican discovery showed that the common-sense theory 
 of a geocentric universe was untenable. The two cases are 
 exactly analogous. The adoption of any scientific basis 
 of reality is to some extent arbitrary ; what drives us to 
 it is not obstinate fact but convenience. The principle 
 of relativity is adopted because it is more convenient. It 
 is true indeed that the new principle extends the range of 
 mathematics, also it reconciles some puzzling discrepancies 
 between astronomical calculation and fact which were not 
 due to error. The true significance of the theory is only 
 seen, however, when the whole historical evolution is taken 
 into account. It is the recognition that it is impossible 
 to co-ordinate the physical universe without taking into
 
 CHAP, in NATURE IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE 79 
 
 account the observer's standpoint. It marks the intro- 
 duction into science, and full recognition of, a monadic 
 principle. The observer in a system in relative translation 
 in regard to other systems measures his universe from his 
 own standpoint by three dimensions of space and the one 
 dimension of time. These dimensions are not constant ; 
 they vary with the acceleration and direction of the trans- 
 lation of the system, and by their variation velocities are kept 
 constant. This is a new world- view. 
 
 The universe consists of events, and these events are 
 co-ordinated by the observer so that a constant ratio 
 between space and time is maintained. Space and 
 time vary, therefore, with the system of reference, and 
 ultimately every observer is the unique centre of his own 
 system of reference. There is therefore no objective scale 
 by reference to which magnitudes can be assigned an 
 absolute value. Great and small are relative terms. We 
 all recognize the constancy of velocity when we compare 
 the range of activity of a human being with that of 
 other living creatures. For as an insect's world is smaller 
 than ours and a bird's world more extended, we must 
 imagine each creature to co-ordinate its world on a 
 scale of its own and not on ours. But the world- view 
 which science now presents to us enables us to apply 
 this principle of the constancy of velocity on an infinite 
 scale. Physical science, in fact, presents to our view a 
 universe which is as amazing in its limitations as it is infinite 
 in its vista. At one of its limits, above us, as we say, is the 
 stellar system, and at the other limit, below us, as we say, is 
 the atomic system. These bound for us the scientific 
 horizon, but they are not indefinite limits indicating an 
 obscurity into which the mind can penetrate no further. 
 They are clear systematic, inclusive concepts which give to 
 our universe the character of an objective, organic self- 
 repeating design. The planet on which our life has evolved 
 appears to our imagination as the electron of a vastly 
 magnified atom, and the atom is a solar system shrunk to 
 infinitesimal proportions. The principle of relativity shows 
 us that this great and little are not absolute magnitudes.
 
 8o A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 The infinitely great becomes infinitely little when the 
 observer changes his system of reference. Shrunk to the 
 proportions of the atom, the electron of the physicist 
 becomes for the observer a planet revolving in its orbit 
 round a sun, and we have only to imagine a being of 
 Olympian proportions and the necessary range of activity to 
 see earth and sun and stars dwindle to atoms. Whatever 
 change the new system may introduce hi the quality of 
 experience the proportions will remain the same. Such is 
 the significance of the constancy of velocity in the principle 
 of relativity. 
 
 This brief outline of some of the distinct stages in the 
 evolution of the scientific concept of physical reality is 
 intended to emphasize the impossibility of separating 
 scientific and philosophical development. At one time 
 the fashionable theory was that science had superseded 
 philosophy. It was declared to mark a new era, a definite 
 progress in human reason and a new stage in freedom from 
 mental bondage. The old mythological and theological 
 stage had been replaced by a metaphysical stage, and 
 now in modern inductive science, it was said, a new positive 
 stage had come to supersede the vague and unsatisfactory 
 speculations of philosophy. A mere glance at the historical 
 connexions shows how shallow this judgment was. To-day 
 it is impossible to ignore the claims of philosophy, but 
 it is usual to accord it, often grudgingly, a place of 
 subsidiary importance, dealing with subjects altogether dis- 
 tinct from the sciences, and not possessing like them a sure 
 basis in physical reality. But history shows us that the sup- 
 posed clear lines of demarcation are arbitrary and false. 
 Philosophy depends on the world-view. Modern science 
 and modern philosophy arose together when the heliocentric 
 discovery altered the world-view. At every stage the 
 speculative or large view of the philosopher has acted and 
 reacted on the analytical and experimental research of the 
 scientific investigator. For a long time indeed the methods 
 seemed to diverge, but to-day we are witnessing a remarkable 
 approximation. The approximation is due to the recognition 
 of the monadic principle.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CONCEPT OF NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY 
 Whose is this image and superscription ? ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 IT is as certain as any scientific truth can be that this 
 earth existed ages before there was any conscious life upon 
 it, and that it will continue to exist ages after its condition 
 shall have rendered life impossible in any form of which 
 we have experience. It is true that to present this existence 
 to the imagination we are dependent on sense-imagery, we 
 can only represent it as potential consciousness, but this 
 does not affect our confidence that something has existed, 
 does exist, and will exist, independently of whether any 
 cognitive being has existed, does exist, or will exist to know 
 it. The classical arguments of the idealists leave us cold. 
 We may hold with Spinoza that extension is a mode of the 
 infinite substance, God ; we may believe with Fechner 
 that there is a world-soul expressing itself in the physical 
 universe ; we may find satisfaction in the idea of a spiritual 
 absolute, an ultimate harmony, in which the contradictions 
 and antinomies of temporal existence are reconciled ; but 
 the main fact of our conscious being seems to be our relation 
 to an externality which, whether or not it is dependent on 
 spirit, is itself non-spiritual. 
 
 The aspect of nature as indifferent and hostile to spirit 
 is as prominent a feature of the old world-view as it is 
 of the new, and it finds abundant expression in ancient 
 literature, but the new world-view has given it new embodi- 
 ment. The modern scientific concept of physical reality 
 has made practically impossible the direct and easy solution 
 
 81 G
 
 82 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 offered by the old world- view in the theory of special creation. 
 We may still believe that the words " In the beginning God 
 created the heavens, and the earth " are philosophically 
 true, but we can no longer refer them to a definite temporal 
 event, however far back in time we remove it. We can 
 only smile at the serious mood in which the seventeenth- 
 century philosophers disputed concerning the nature of 
 the creative act. " From the beginning," wrote Leibniz, 
 " God has made each of these two substances (the soul and 
 the body) of such a nature that merely by following its own 
 peculiar laws, received with its being, it nevertheless accords 
 with the other, just as if there were a mutual influence, or 
 as if God always put his hand thereto in addition to his 
 general co-operation." It is quite impossible for us even 
 to conceive the creative act which should bring the world 
 into being, and we no longer seek the answer to our problem 
 by reasoning about its nature or trying to fix its date. 
 And this means that for us the concept of God has changed 
 with the world-view, and as completely. It does not mean 
 that our philosophy is atheistic, for the old atheism is as 
 impossible as the old theism ; neither touches the fringe of 
 the great problem which the new world- view has disclosed. 
 With the geocentric universe has gone the idea of the 
 artificer and the analogy between the skilful contriver of a 
 perfect machine and the architect of the universe, but 
 the essential problem survives in a new form. Let us look 
 at that problem. 
 
 One of the most magnificent expressions of the aspect 
 of nature as a sublime and awful force, indifferent to man, 
 however completely subject to higher spiritual powers, is 
 the Book of Job. It begins with the drama in heaven where 
 Satan appears among the Sons of God with the sequel of 
 the great fourfold catastrophe which leaves Job desolate. 
 We are told that " Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved 
 his head, and fell down upon the ground and worshipped ; 
 and he said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, 
 and naked shall I return thither : the Lord gave and the 
 Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the Lord." 
 In these words we seem to have the agonized expression
 
 CHAP, iv NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY 83 
 
 of the burden of the human mind contemplating its brief 
 period of individual existence. We come naked into a 
 strange world, are buffeted by a fortune we do not control, 
 make what we can of our life, and finally sink again into the 
 eternal oblivion out of which we arose. The world into 
 which we have come existed before us, will exist when we 
 are gone, is independent of us and indifferent to us. We 
 exercise indeed some brief authority, we experience joys 
 and sorrows, but the world confronts us as an existence in 
 relation to which our life is nought. We may possess 
 goods, we may create values, but all these belong to the 
 world, they are external to us, they are no part of our real 
 life. It is an already-made world into which we come at our 
 birth, and from it we shall depart at our death, leaving 
 hardly a trace upon it of our activity during our brief 
 sojourn. Such is one aspect of our human life. 
 
 There is another. There is a sense in which we do not 
 come naked into the world but bring with us our heritage. 
 This heritage itself has two aspects it is an endowment and 
 it is a burden ; it is an impulse to strive and a vantage- 
 ground in the struggle ; it is a task-master bending us to a 
 circumscribed range and it is a hostile force crushing and 
 thwarting the free activity of spirit. This aspect of nature 
 is abundantly illustrated in poetry and religious literature. 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 
 The soul that rises with us, our Life's Star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar : 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home. 
 
 But it is not only clouds of glory which we trail. The 
 whole burden of our human nature is borne along with us 
 as our heritage. All the generations from the beginning 
 (a beginning which can have no absolute meaning for us) 
 are gathered up in the generation of individuals who at this 
 moment by their activity constitute living humanity, and 
 this generation will impart to the succeeding one both the
 
 84 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 impulse of its present life and the accumulation of its 
 inherited past. 
 
 It is in the mythical form which it has assumed in 
 Christian doctrine that this aspect has become most familiar 
 to us. It is the concept of original sin, which forms the basis 
 of the scheme of redemption. It is brought out with 
 peculiar force in the Pauline writings : " That which I do 
 I know not ; for not what I would, that do I practise ; 
 but what I hate, that I do." " For I know that in me, that 
 is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing : for to will is 
 present with me, but to do that which is good is not. For 
 the good which I would I do not : but the evil which I 
 would not, that I practise " (Romans vii. 15, 18, 19). 
 And the conflict found its explanation, in the Christian 
 scheme, in the mythical history of the first man Adam and 
 his fall. " For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all 
 be made alive " (i Cor. xv. 22). 
 
 Thus there arises before the reflecting mind a new and 
 different view of nature. Nature possesses in itself that 
 essential activity which characterizes mind. It is no longer 
 a garden which God has planted, a place prepared, an 
 environment in which life can exercise its activity and 
 consciousness arise, it is now an active force, an opposing 
 force indeed, but at the same time essential to the force 
 it opposes. This aspect of nature as a hostile force, a reality 
 with which the spiritual life is in necessary conflict and also 
 in a necessary relation of dependence, is not a purely sub- 
 jective aspect. It is not mythology, expressing itself in 
 poetry, concealing such truth as it contains in metaphor, 
 concerned only with a contemplative mood ; on the 
 contrary, it is as distinctly scientific as the physical theory 
 which resolves all existence into the velocities of electrons. 
 It is the aspect which nature presents to the biologist, for 
 whom reality is history and present existence a stage 
 in a universal conflict. The struggle for existence has 
 acquired a technical meaning in the evolutionary theory 
 of the origin of species, but in a profound and universal 
 sense life itself is a struggle. Into the very notion of it 
 there enters the opposition of a structure, dependent on
 
 CHAP, iv NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY 85 
 
 an inert matter, and a function, dependent on a developing 
 purpose. 
 
 There is yet a third aspect of nature, which finds expres- 
 sion in poetry and religion. It is even more comprehensive, 
 more significant and profounder than the other two, for it 
 indicates a concept which embraces and harmonizes them. 
 Nature appears to us as a moment in the developing life 
 of spirit, and therefore as itself spiritual even in its antithesis 
 to spirit. The conflict and opposition which characterize 
 it are a necessary condition of the activity on which mind, 
 as a concrete life, depends. Nature therefore is compre- 
 hended within a higher unity, and owes its reality to that 
 inclusion. This aspect is expressed with great beauty 
 in the Johannine writings and it is the rational ground of 
 the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. " In the beginning 
 was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
 was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All 
 things were made by him ; and without him was not any- 
 thing made that was made. In him was life." 
 
 In the doctrine of the Trinity the philosophical principle 
 is barely concealed beneath its mythological expression. 
 The procession of the three persons Father, Son and Holy 
 Ghost is not a process in time, it is a figurative representa- 
 tion of the principles which are the condition of time process 
 and which are not themselves temporal but eternal. Reality 
 conceived as simple being is indistinguishable from its 
 opposite nothing. For being to manifest itself as being 
 it must do something, it must act, it must change or become. 
 But the concept of change or becoming is the concept of a 
 difference or otherness which is identical with the being 
 from which it has proceeded. The concept of activity 
 cannot therefore be expressed except in moments ; in the 
 first moment it is a bare identity, in the second a polarization 
 or internal opposition, a contrast of positive and negative, 
 of mind and nature. The third moment is the action or 
 deed or event which is the reunion of the other in the self. 
 The third moment is that of the concrete reality. We owe 
 to Hegel the explicit exposition of this principle in modern 
 philosophy. Whether or not it was suggested to him by
 
 86 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 the Christian theology, the doctrine of the Trinity is made 
 rational in the light of it. It is easy also to interpret the 
 Christian theory of Redemption as further setting forth the 
 principle. Evil is rebellion. It is no other than the self- 
 assertion of the negation in the second moment and the 
 imperfection implied in it. This must be overcome by 
 union with God in the higher concrete reality the City 
 of God ; and this is the work of the Holy Ghost. We, 
 being ourselves individual centres of activity, view nature 
 in the moment of its most complete opposition or estrange- 
 ment. 
 
 Hegel, in his zeal and enthusiasm for the philosophical 
 view of nature as a moment in the development of mind, 
 unfortunately took up a hostile attitude toward physical 
 science, and heaped contempt, not unmixed with vituperation, 
 on its votaries and their methods. He proposed a philosophy 
 of nature as a substitute for physical science. In this way 
 he not only raised opposition but positively obscured the 
 true greatness of his own concept. He is chiefly responsible 
 for the estrangement between philosophy and physical 
 science, an estrangement particularly marked in the great 
 advance of scientific discovery in the nineteenth century. 
 It is one thing to protest that the physical sciences are not 
 philosophy, another to deny them their place in the activity 
 of mind. Hegel was dominated by the idea of totality or 
 concreteness, the sciences are dominated by the idea of 
 analysis, and they tend ever to minuter divisions. For 
 the sciences reality is essentially discrete. Hegel saw the 
 impossibility of attaining reality by a piecemeal method. 
 He held it an absurdity to suppose that the fundamental 
 reality is to be found in the most attenuated abstraction. 
 He failed to see that the strength of science lies in its method 
 and therefore in the abstractness of its subject-matter. 
 Rightly understood, this abstractness is the value of physical 
 science and not a reproach against it. 
 
 The philosophical science of nature is named cosmology. 
 Its subject-matter is identical with the physical reality of 
 the sciences, but its task is not to study it in their manner, 
 nor with their purpose, but to make explicit what is implied
 
 CHAP, iv NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY 87 
 
 in the notion of an external world and what is its relation 
 to life and experience. This is clear when we compare the 
 criterion of science with that of philosophy. The aim of all 
 physical science is practical, however remote its application 
 may be. We know the nature of anything when we can fore- 
 tell what its state will be under given conditions. Practical 
 convenience and the needs of action govern us in our selec- 
 tion of material, in our organization and arrangement of the 
 sciences, as well as in our assumptions regarding the scheme 
 or framework of physical reality. Cosmology, on the other 
 hand, critically examines the concepts which science assumes 
 or postulates the uniformity of nature, the unity of the 
 world, the concept of a universe, the reality of space and 
 time, the concept of existence, the relation of reality to 
 ideality. 
 
 The first view which is presented to us when we make 
 the universe the object of our thinking is that of its anti- 
 thetical nature in relation to the mind which observes or 
 contemplates it. Nature presents itself to mind as a 
 different realm. Mind has no control over nature in so 
 far as existence is concerned. It may direct its forces but 
 it can bring nothing into existence. This aspect of nature 
 leads to the view that mind in its act of knowing contem- 
 plates an alien existence and that the essence of its activity 
 in knowing is discernment. We cannot in our individual 
 life abstract from this view. Every individual mind by the 
 act of knowing experiences itself as subject in relation to an 
 object which as known confronts it as an alien external 
 thing. Also every individual mind as subject knowing is 
 in a relation of inter-subjective intercourse with other minds 
 or subjects through the medium of external objects common 
 to it and to them. We regard nature therefore as a world 
 of objects distinct from our mind and from other minds also. 
 This world confronts us and is a common world for all minds 
 contemplating it. In practical life this view admits of no 
 doubt, the very possibility of action consists in taking it. 
 The image of a " nature " opposed to " mind " is not an 
 arbitrary assumption or postulate which any one deliber- 
 ately makes, neither is it a necessary inference we con-
 
 88 A THEORY OF MONADS PART: 
 
 sciously make. It is the basis of action, a necessity of the 
 practical life. When, however, we examine critically the 
 belief it implies we meet a formidable difficulty. All that 
 is immediate in experience is in relation, and though we may 
 distinguish the relation from the terms, and the terms from 
 one another, we cannot infer from a distinction in knowledge 
 the separate existence of what we have distinguished. We 
 cannot affirm the independent existence of the terms, for 
 in their independence it is impossible to experience them. 
 When I know anything the object is always object in 
 relation to a subject, and I in knowing an object am subject 
 in relation to object known. Neither subject nor object 
 can be known apart from the relation. It is this fact which 
 gives rise to the problem of philosophy concerning the 
 relation of thought to reality. 
 
 Our ordinary view is then that a reality distinct and 
 separate in its existence from ourselves is present to us for 
 our contemplation, and that we, by virtue of our constitution, 
 are fitted to, and actually do, by sense and understanding, 
 discern its true nature, apprehend it as it is. We think, 
 moreover, that this identical reality is present to all minds 
 alike, and that what difference there may be in apprehension 
 is due to the subjective individual point of view and in no 
 sense whatever to the reality present. Few indeed would 
 hesitate to accept this view, and many are surprised when 
 it is called in doubt. It seems a paradox to affirm that it is 
 absolutely inconceivable that it can be true, yet this is the 
 view to which philosophical reflexion brings us. 
 
 In order to see this let us make the hypothesis that it is 
 true ; that is, that nature in its existence is what it appears 
 in our knowledge, and that knowledge is a simple relation 
 between two real existences which are present together, 
 one of which being a mind contemplates the other. Let 
 us raise no question as to the a priori possibility of such a 
 relation, but accept it as description of fact and assume it 
 to be ultimate fact whether explicable or not. Let us ignore 
 too the classical difficulty of all naive realism, the difficulty 
 of accounting for illusion and error. Let us look only at 
 the problem presented by the need of delineating clearly to
 
 CHAP, iv NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY 89 
 
 wliich of each of the two realities, mind and nature, is to be 
 assigned the existence which knowledge reveals. This leads 
 us to the great cleavage in philosophical theories. 
 
 Nature is not a chaos but an order. It is revealed to 
 us as a unity, but this unity is not the unity of an individual 
 experience ; on the contrary, nature is not one but many ; its 
 unity is a uniformity. In itself it seems to consist wholly 
 in external relations ; that is, the character or quality of any 
 part, or of any particular component object taken for con- 
 venience of analysis, resolves itself always into the relations 
 in which it stands to the other parts or to other objects. 
 Yet all these relations are founded in and flow from a neces- 
 sary systematic unity of the whole. Is this unity discerned 
 by the mind in nature, or is it imparted to nature by the 
 cognizing act ? According to one view the mind is passive 
 or receptive so far as the whole content of cognition is con- 
 cerned. It receives " impressions " from an independent 
 external world. Its activity consists only in attention and 
 discernment. The unity of nature is an inference we draw 
 from the uniformity which we observe. According to the 
 other view mind makes nature. It does not receive impres- 
 sions, but itself impresses sensible experience with intelligible 
 form, moulding, fashioning, and so creating, things. The 
 unity of nature is the necessary consequence of the mind's 
 activity in framing experience with the categories of the 
 understanding. The two views are historically famous ; the 
 one is illustrated in the philosophy of John Locke, the other 
 in that of Immanuel Kant. There is a third alternative 
 presented in M. Bergson's theory of matter and intellect 
 in Creative Evolution, one which on the assumption of 
 dualism avoids the impasse of each of the antithetical 
 views. It is that the unity of nature belongs exclusively 
 neither to nature nor to mind, but consists in the mutual 
 adaptation of one to the other. Intellect and matter do not 
 stand to one another hi the relation of cause and effect, 
 and the question, which is cause and which effect, therefore, 
 does not arise. Both are determined in their form by the 
 life-impulse. A condition of action is an original dichotomy 
 of mind and nature, and evolution has created the forms of
 
 90 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 living action by mutual and progressive evolution of these 
 two factors. 
 
 This last theory has the great merit that while it recognizes 
 and does not seek to explain away, or reduce to unity, the 
 imposing fact of duality ; while it regards the duality of 
 mind and nature as absolute in fact as well as in theory, 
 in existence as well as in idea ; it yet bases that duality 
 on a metaphysical principle and derives it from the unique 
 concept of the vital impulse. The unity is not a state which 
 precedes either temporally or logically the duality. Rather 
 the unity of mind and nature may be said to consist in their 
 essential and necessary duality. It is not an original unity 
 succeeded by a disruption destructive of the unity, it is an 
 ideal unity without beginning or end. It characterizes the 
 process itself, not a stage of the process. 
 
 If we accept this view it is to the concept of living activity 
 we must turn for light on the problem, because there only 
 do we find intellect and matter in an essential combination. 
 Each of us is in himself a centre of living activity, and the 
 easiest approach is to direct our study on the self, which is 
 the individual subject of experience. I, who feel and will 
 and think and act, find in myself those two orders of existence, 
 mind and nature, in intimate and indissoluble union. In 
 this union I cannot confound the two orders in practical 
 life I never do and I cannot dissociate the unity. My 
 mind belongs to a spiritual order, my body to a material 
 order. My body is part of the external world, and while it 
 is separated from the rest of the world within which it is an 
 object by the perfection and completeness of the individu- 
 ality of its systematic organization, it is yet continuous with 
 the world and owes its efficiency entirely and exclusively to 
 this continuity. My mind is not part of the world in which 
 my body is an object, yet it is completely separate in its 
 individuality as a subject of experience from other minds 
 who are subjects, and at the same time continuous with 
 them in its intercourse. As a life, a living thing, thinking 
 mind in acting body, my self or ego has a definite period of 
 individual activity, closed by the time-limits of its birth and 
 death, completely separate from other lives, yet continuous
 
 CHAP, iv NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY 91 
 
 with all other lives, present, past and yet to be. It is the 
 outcome of past lives and is what they have accomplished ; 
 it is the potentiality of future lives, and it is continuous even 
 in the present with other lives, for its relations of sex, of 
 family, of community, of humanity, are the essence of it. 
 
 The fact I wish to emphasize is that in the actual 
 individual agent the two antithetical orders are impossible 
 to confuse, and impossible to dissociate. They cannot be 
 confused, for who can confuse thoughts, feelings and desires 
 with muscles, nerves and blood-vessels ? They cannot be 
 dissociated, for apart from one another there can be neither 
 meaning nor efficiency. We can only describe the material 
 order in termsjof the mental, and_we__caj only exernkg 
 agency bytheinstnimentaUtvoj^he_jnaterial. With this 
 f actjthatevery living agent is a unityln~dualitv and a duality 
 injunityjs bound up anotherjact._ Each of the dual orders 
 united in the agent reaches out beyond the individual, so 
 that on each side of his dual nature he is continuous with 
 a reality which transcends his individuality. My body 
 relates me to the physical world in which it is an object, 
 my mind relates me to the spiritual world of which it is a 
 member. Clearly it is this continuity of the two orders, 
 outside and beyond myself, which causes the world to present 
 itself to me as something in itself, something in no way 
 dependent on my mind. Also because my efficiency appears 
 to lie wholly in the order to which my body belongs, my mind 
 appears to me as something passive or receptive, wholly 
 dependent on its relation to the order of nature. 
 
 My activity as a living agent is seen therefore to rest on 
 a twofold nature, or on a nature which combines a twofold 
 order. IJiave_a^body^which carries out in action what my I 
 mind projects injdea. ^TactlvityTs twofolcTin itsTcEar- J 
 actgiyjt^is first theoretical and sprnndly jTgafrHrgj^ In my 
 individual experience neither character exists nor can be 
 thought of as existing independently of the other and for 
 itself. The frequent attempt to present in imagination a 
 disembodied spirit always fails ; we find that try how we 
 will to imagine pure spirit we must borrow imagery from 
 the body. Yet, notwithstanding this defect, the concrete-
 
 92 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 ness of the reality of my individual life appears to me as 
 a result of composition, and the two components seem not 
 merely distinguishable but separable. On the independence 
 of thought and action my feeling of freedom in the exercise 
 of choice is based. My power to choose is dependent on 
 the presentation of alternative courses in idea which may 
 be rejected or carried out into action. Since in every 
 particular case of choice I separate the idea from the action, 
 it seems to me that the whole of my ideas, the complete 
 mental order, may be separate from my actions and therefore 
 from the material order. My whole theoretical activity 
 seems independent of my whole practical activity. But 
 even when this appearance is reconciled there is another 
 which is more especially responsible for the concept of 
 nature as an independent, alien and even hostile existence. 
 
 My body encloses within its skin an object which separates 
 me as spatially distinct from every other object occupying 
 space in the whole extent of the universe. To this separated 
 object my mind is attached and its whole efficiency is confined 
 to the activities of this object. Without are other material 
 objects and other bodies to which minds are attached. 
 It appears to me therefore that within the spatial limits 
 which mark me out as one among other living creatures, 
 the two natures, the psychical and the physical, are indis- 
 solubly united. Yet outside the limits of my spatial 
 organism those two natures, each continuous with my own 
 nature, are completely separate. A living creature therefore 
 has within its individual organism one indivisible nature, 
 but it is twofold because it is linked to two orders of existence 
 which outside that individuality are completely different 
 and entirely separate. It must seem to me therefore that 
 my unity is somehow brought about by a union of what 
 are originally separate, spirit and matter ; that I am a 
 composite and not a simple being. My theory is that_this 
 is wrong, that a living creature is originally one andsimp^ 
 andjthaLthp diwrgpnrp of thejtwo natures and their apparent 
 separation jm^Jndependejie_of nrip. ^nnthp.r in th^ imjvgrcu^ 
 is a dichatpjnyjnhrent.in the nature of h'vmgjictivity. 
 
 In order to make this clearer I will repeat the argument
 
 CHAP, iv NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY 93 
 
 in a slightly different form. When I speak of myself I can 
 distinguish within this self my mind and my body, but it 
 is a purely theoretical distinction for I cannot even imagine 
 the existence of either without the other, the two are 
 essentially and in every important particular one. When, 
 however, I speak of the world outside myself, the case is 
 exactly reversed, for I not only distinguish two sorts of 
 existence, inert matter and active mind, but they are 
 separate and I cannot think of them as one, they are always 
 and in every respect two ; so that while in myself it is the 
 duality of mind and body which is theoretical and the 
 unity which is practical, hi the world it is the unity of 
 matter and spirit which is theoretical and the duality which 
 is practical, and the more I study nature the more pro- 
 nounced is the duality. So that if we take the standpoint 
 of the individual as a living centre of activity into which 
 the universe is mirrored or from which the universe is 
 surveyed, it seems as though from the limit of complete 
 fusion at the active centre the two orders diverge ever more 
 widely as the perspective extends in range. 
 
 I can now indicate the theory to which these arguments 
 lead. The independence of nature, the priority of the 
 material over the spiritual order, the indifference of matter 
 to the form imposed on it, these aspects of nature are due 
 to perspective and arise out of the monadic activity. They 
 arise from the fact that activity can only be conceived as 
 an opposition of two antithetical forces, a centripetal force 
 which shows itself in the condensation, shrinkage, tension, 
 concentration around a centre, and a centrifugal force which 
 shows itself in dispersal, expansion, extension. There is a 
 force directed inwards and a force directed outwards and 
 the finite individual is the equilibrium of those forces. 
 The limits of the individual are the organic conditions by 
 which that equilibrium is established and maintained. How 
 then does this interpret our view of nature as a hostile 
 force, prior to, and indifferent to, our spiritual purposes, 
 however successful we be in adaptation to circumstances and 
 in making these circumstances subserve our ends ? The 
 answer is that this aspect of nature as resistant and hostile
 
 94 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 may be deduced from the nature of our activity. This 
 activity is twofold and the duality constitutes our intel- 
 lectuality. Our activity is both theoretical and practical ; 
 we know and we act. Knowledge is for the sake of action. 
 Theory has regard only to practice ; action is our pressing 
 need. The life-impulse is the push to act, and action is 
 called for from a living creature at every present moment 
 of its existence. It lives forward-looking and prepared 
 to act. Nature is our view of the universe as the range of 
 our activity and the form of it theoretically conforms to 
 the use of it practically. 
 
 It is then a condition of finite individuality that an inert, 
 fixed, static, permanent form of reality should be opposed 
 to the changing reality of life and consciousness. On such 
 opposition activity is dependent. But this only brings a 
 greater problem to light. How are we to conceive the 
 higher unity in which the duality of finite individuality is 
 reconciled ? The higher reality and unity can only be what 
 we name God. Does our monadic concept enable us to 
 frame a conception of God ? 
 
 It seems to me that it does, but it gives us a concept 
 of God which is usually rejected by the religious mind, 
 concerned for a kind of reality with which the personal 
 relationship of intercourse can be established. The monadic 
 God is, in the true meaning of the terms, conceived in our 
 own image, and yet it is neither anthropomorphic nor 
 mythological. Nature is not the field of God's activity. 
 We cannot present to ourselves a field of activity for God 
 in the sense in which the world is presented to us ; to do 
 so would be to conceive God as a finite individual on some 
 higher plane. The relation of God to the world is the 
 relation of the mind to the body. We cannot present God, 
 that is, infinite or supreme being, as an agent apart from 
 nature, because " in him we live and move and have our 
 being." Spinoza's concept of God, and not Leibniz's, is the 
 only one consistent with monadism. That it is consistent 
 with monadism I will endeavour to show in the next 
 chapter, I will close this one with a brief recapitulation of 
 the argument I have tried to develop.
 
 CHAP, iv NATURE IN PHILOSOPHY 95 
 
 We have seen then that nature presents a different 
 problem hi philosophy from that which it presents in 
 practical life and in physical science. To common sense 
 and science nature is an external existence which the mind 
 discerns and discriminates and the laws of which it seeks 
 to determine. To philosophy nature is not external, it is 
 an essential element of experience. It is conceived as 
 an opposing force, a hostile power to be overcome and at 
 the same time an opposition which is essential to the activity 
 of mind. 
 
 The philosophical problem of nature is to account for 
 the uniformity we observe in it. This uniformity is an 
 axiom or postulate of physical science, but it is a problem 
 of philosophy. We regard nature as a system, but the mere 
 concept of external independent reality does not carry the 
 necessity of order or system. Chaos is not inconceivable, 
 it is not even irrational, though it is the negation of the 
 possibility of science. The essential character of nature is 
 manifoldness ; every part is external to every other part 
 and there is no limit to its divisibility. The problem there- 
 fore in its abstract form is to understand how the many are 
 one. There have appeared to be two alternatives, either 
 the uniformity is a character of nature which we discover, 
 or it is the work of the mind itself imposing unity on a real 
 manifold in apprehending it. 
 
 We have suggested that the clue is to be found in a 
 certain aspect which the relation of mind and body presents 
 to us. In living experience these are known only hi their 
 union ; they are experienced not as two things in union 
 but as unity. Yet we distinguish in this unity two orders 
 of existence, each, in what is essential to it, antithetical to 
 the other. We come to think that the orders are origin- 
 ally independent of one another and somehow associated 
 in the finite individual. The essential nature of our body 
 is that it is composite. It belongs to the material order. 
 It is separated from the external world, an object distinct 
 from other objects, yet it is continuous with the world, for 
 its constituent elements are drawn from the world and 
 returned to it ; also, it is subject to all the laws and
 
 96 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTI 
 
 uniformities which prevail in the material universe. Both 
 separation from and continuity with the world are essential 
 conditions of individual life. On the other hand, the 
 essential nature of mind is indivisible unity. Mind is not 
 spatial. It is the unity of a subject of experience. The 
 mind of an individual is separate from other minds, and 
 also continuous with them. It belongs to a spiritual or 
 ideal order which extends beyond the finite individual in 
 whom a particular mind is united with a particular body. 
 It is the extension of these two orders beyond the conditions 
 of finite individuality which gives rise to the belief in their 
 original independence. Were we confined in our outlook 
 to present existence we should be unable to conceive absolute 
 dissociation, for we only conceive our mind separated from 
 our body by the artifice of imagining a new body. It is 
 because outside the limits of our individuality the material 
 order continuous with our body and the ideal order con- 
 tinuous with our mind appear to exist in complete in- 
 dependence that we come to regard our own life as 
 the association of two natures. The duality is an aspect 
 which reality must assume when we regard it from the 
 standpoint of our activity which is necessarily twofold, 
 thinking and acting. This activity involves dissociation, 
 and the dissociation leads to the hypostatization of a mind 
 which thinks and a body which acts. This dissociation, 
 extended beyond the individual, becomes a cleavage between 
 two spheres, a sphere of ends or purposes and a sphere 
 of action. What is really a dissociation appears as an 
 association.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE IDEA OF GOD 
 
 Minds are images of the Deity, capable of knowing the system of the 
 universe, and to some extent of imitating it, each mind being like a small 
 divinity in its own sphere. 
 
 The totality of all minds is the City of God, a moral world in the natural 
 world, the most exalted and most divine among the works of God. 
 LEIBNIZ. 
 
 Individual things cannot exist or be conceived without God, and yet 
 God does not appertain to their essence. SPINOZA. 
 
 We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one 
 of another. ST. PAUL. 
 
 WHEN we contemplate the unlimited perspective, radiating 
 in every direction from our standpoint of space and time 
 existence, and consider the infinitesimal range of our action 
 and the brief moment during which the infinite duration 
 converging on our finite individuality is actualized in it, 
 the possibility of giving form to the conception of God, 
 that is, to the conception of an infinite individuality com- 
 prehending what we only apprehend, appears presumptuous 
 and extravagant in the highest degree. It seems as though 
 the concept can only be a fantastic one, and that to be 
 reverent towards it, when we have formed it, is the sign 
 of a superstitious and craven spirit. Yet the conception 
 of God is one which the human mind is driven to form 
 by a need inherent in its nature, a necessity appertaining to 
 its essence. Upon its logical consistency depends success 
 in the effort to comprehend the reality of which we form 
 part. 
 
 To the philosophers of the seventeenth century God is 
 the beginning and end of philosophical speculation. It was 
 one of the striking features of the rise of modern philosophy 
 
 97 H
 
 98 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 that whatever the special subject-matter the idea of God 
 was the dominant motive. The form in which the problem 
 of the nature of God was debated gives to the arguments 
 of that period a certain remoteness from our actual 
 interests to-day. At times, too, the acrimony of the 
 disputes recalls the bitterness and repeats the ineptitudes 
 of the theological controversies of the fourth century. Yet 
 it is not difficult to see that the problem of divine nature 
 which exercised Spinoza and Leibniz is identical with our 
 problem to-day and nothing but the mode of expression 
 is changed. 
 
 The Ethics of Spinoza begins with the science of God. 
 Ethics is not for Spinoza a department of philosophy, it is 
 philosophy ; and beginning with the science of God is not 
 choosing an arbitrary starting-point from which to explore 
 knowledge and reality, nor laying down a mystical doctrine 
 as the foundation of a system : it is the deliberate adoption 
 of a method which he defends as the necessary and character- 
 istic method of philosophy. We must begin with a compre- 
 hensive grasp of the whole if we would understand anything 
 as a part, for the nature of the part is derived from its 
 relation to the whole. The whole is immanent in every part. 
 The denial of this would be the negation of system and would 
 destroy at the outset the possibility of science of any kind 
 and not only of philosophy. The cause of the failure of 
 so many philosophers who have striven for a consistent 
 theory is, he tells us, in their not having observed the order 
 of philosophical argument. "For divine nature, which 
 they ought to have considered before all things, for that it 
 is prior in knowledge and nature, they have thought to be 
 last in the order of knowledge, and things which are called 
 the objects of the senses they have believed to be prior to 
 all things " (Ethics, Pt. II. 10). 
 
 What then is the essential conception of God ? It is a 
 conception we must form because it is a necessity of human 
 thought. To understand it we must set aside any con- 
 sideration of what we are accustomed to call the attributes 
 of God. We want to know the essence of God. This 
 essence is, in the terms of the ontological argument, a being
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 99 
 
 absolutely infinite and perfect in all things. What positive 
 meaning can we assign to these terms, infinite and perfect ? 
 The whole value of the philosophical conception depends 
 on the answer to this question. The reality we know 
 directly in experience is finite and incomplete. It is finite 
 because our activity is circumscribed, it is incomplete 
 because our perspective is limited. The horizon which 
 bounds our outlook in space and time does not circum- 
 scribe our universe. We are accustomed on this account to 
 think of our individuality as finite and of our universe as 
 infinite. Yet God cannot be infinite in this meaning of 
 the term, for this would be incompatible with perfection. 
 Space and time are infinite hi the precise sense in which 
 an arithmetical series is infinite, they have no last term. 
 The argument, therefore, for the divine being must proceed 
 differently. It cannot be based on the limitations of our 
 knowledge, for then we should only be hypostatizing the 
 unknowable ; and it cannot be based on any supposed 
 necessity of reconciling the antinomies in our concepts of 
 space and time, for success would destroy the character of 
 our perspective. The argument must be based on the 
 concept of individuality itself. The finitude of our individu- 
 ality is the direct perception of a greater individuality 
 within which our individuality is included. Individuality 
 is in the very concept of it infinite and perfect. Finitude, 
 that is to say, is an imperfection of individuality, and in 
 so far as we perceive ourselves to be finite we perceive 
 ourselves to fall short of individuality, and in so far as we 
 perceive individuality to be reality, we know God. 
 
 The philosophical conception of God is therefore the idea 
 of infinite individuality, and this is not an arbitrary idea 
 dependent on the play of fancy or on creative imagination. 
 It is not the idea of a person, conceived as an object within 
 our perspective, perceiving what we perceive, understanding 
 and sharing the motives which prompt our actions, a 
 person like ourselves but transcending our limitations and 
 of an infinitely exalted character. No success in imagining 
 an agent within our perspective, acting on the plane of our 
 activity though unlimited by its range, however inspiring
 
 ioo A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 and comforting the contemplation, however solid and 
 assuring the ground, however unwavering the faith in its 
 real existence, will give us philosophical satisfaction or 
 advance us one iota towards the conception of God which 
 philosophy requires. The philosophical conception of God 
 lies on a higher plane, and it is on a lower plane that ordinary 
 religious experience moves. This is why religious arguments 
 conceal rather than reveal the necessity of thought which 
 leads us to affirm the existence of God. When we turn to 
 religion for hope and consolation in the presence of the great 
 mystery of death ; when we seek support in trial ; when 
 we are shocked at the idea of injustice and, conscious of 
 rectitude, find our motives misunderstood, our affections 
 unrequited ; we may seem to be obeying an instinct of our 
 nature when we put our trust in God. But the God in whom 
 we trust is an idol of our imagination. We construct it and 
 then lean on it for support. But even could we endow it 
 with real existence or discern in it independent activity, 
 it would be as far away as ever from the satisfaction which 
 philosophy needs. 
 
 On the other hand, the philosophical conception of God 
 is not an attempt to conceive the unconditioned, to con- 
 ceive an existence transcending space and time, causality, 
 and every category by which our experience is co-ordinated, 
 or to conceive a being who stands to the whole realm of 
 experience as its ground and source and origin. This has 
 been the main line which the arguments for the existence 
 of God have followed. These arguments have appealed 
 forcibly to theologians because they have seemed to be 
 based on a self-evident principle of reason, and so to 
 establish theology on a firm foundation. The attempt has 
 always proved illusory, for there exists no way in which 
 the unconditioned can take shape in a positive conception 
 which does not involve us in the very antinomies from 
 which it was designed to deliver us. The true concept of 
 God, which alone will give satisfaction to philosophy, 
 must present him not transcendent, but immanent in the 
 world. We have only the true idea of God if we see that 
 the world is as necessary to God as God is to the world.
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 101 
 
 This is so important that it is worth while to illustrate it 
 with some care. 
 
 There are three famous proofs of the existence of God. 
 They are named the ontological, the cosmological and the 
 teleological. It was Kant who summed them up under these 
 three heads. There are many forms of demonstration, but 
 they can all be ranged under one or other of these three, 
 and the emphasis laid on one or other of them not infre- 
 quently serves to characterize a philosophy and mark its 
 range and standpoint. In scholasticism they fall into two 
 groups representing antithetical doctrines of the nature of 
 universals which go back to Plato and Aristotle. It is the 
 antithesis between those who explain experience by the 
 concept and those who construct the concept from experi- 
 ence. In medieval philosophy those who belonged to one 
 group were named realists, they represented the Platonic 
 tradition and include St. Augustine, St. Anselm, who has 
 given his name to the ontological argument, and St. Bona- 
 ventura. The other group was that of the nominalists, who 
 were followers of Aristotle, and their system culminated in 
 the great work of St. Thomas Aquinas. To the realists the 
 ontological proof was in effect the whole basis of philosophy, 
 whereas the nominalists rejected it altogether. 
 
 The ontological argument deduces the existence of God 
 from the idea of God. Its syllogism is not a process of 
 thought, it is a didactive elucidation limited to explaining 
 the premiss there is an idea of something greater than 
 which nothing can be thought to be. This idea must include 
 existence. To the ordinary mind it sounds like a logistic 
 puzzle. As dialectic it may be unanswerable but like all 
 pure dialectic it fails to carry conviction. The syllogism 
 runs thus, God is the idea of an absolutely perfect being ; 
 perfection includes existence, for what lacks existence falls 
 short of perfection ; we have the idea of this perfect being ; 
 therefore God exists. The fool may say in his heart there 
 is no God, but in so saying he only proves that he is a fool. 
 He is self-stultified, he prides himself on putting into words 
 what is unthinkable. 
 
 Before attempting to estimate the philosophical value
 
 102 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 of the ontological argument, it is well to place the other 
 arguments beside it in order to bring out the contrast. 
 To St. Thomas Aquinas the ontological proof appeared 
 to reduce itself to the bare judgment of identity, if there 
 is a God then he cannot not-be. It did not touch the 
 case of one who really denied that there is a God. But then 
 God was not for St. Thomas an innate cognition, the only 
 innate cognitions he recognized were logical principles, the 
 law of contradiction and the like. He was confident of the 
 power of thought itself, without innate truth, without any 
 presupposition, simply by the logical elaboration of natural 
 cognition, to attain reality and know God. His proofs 
 consequently, five in number, are none of them a priori, but 
 all proceed from and depend on direct experience itself. 
 
 Three of the five proofs are forms of what Kant after- 
 wards called the cosmological proof, the other two are 
 forms of the teleological proof. They can be summed 
 up very briefly. The first is taken direct from Aristotle. 
 Nothing moves which is not moved ; movement therefore 
 supposes a mover ; the series of movements and movers 
 cannot be infinite ; therefore there must be a prime mover 
 and this is God^ The second proof is the same form of 
 argument applied to the series of causes and effects. There 
 must be a first cause and this is God. The third is the 
 argument from the contingent to the necessary. A first 
 cause cannot be contingent, it must have its being from 
 itself alone and be necessary. This necessary being is God. 
 The fourth is the argument from effect to cause where the 
 effect is the logical condition of the cause and therefore 
 itself the final cause. The world is the final cause on 
 account of which the first cause is efficient. The effect, that 
 is to say and not the cause, is the logical beginning. The 
 full explanation only appears in the fifth proof, which is the 
 argument from the evidence of design in nature. This 
 last and best known of all the arguments really gathers 
 the others into itself. Design in nature is evidence jof 
 the existence of an intelligent being. This being or mind 
 is God. 
 
 The cosmological and teleological arguments are closely
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 103 
 
 associated, and, taken together, represent a principle which 
 is directly antithetical to that of the ontological argument. 
 So that instead of three arguments of cumulative force 
 we have two directly antithetical principles which make a 
 completely different appeal, and in fact the acceptance of 
 the one generally carries with it the rejection of the other. 
 The ontological argument appeals to the intuition of existence, 
 and its dynamic character is not the syllogistic form in which 
 it affirms a necessary relation between existence and essence, 
 considered as distinct and opposite concepts, but in the 
 intuition that essence includes existence. This is not self- 
 evident, on the other hand it is directly contrary to what 
 appears self-evident. Existence appears to us the all- 
 inclusive term, within which any essence may either be or 
 not be, but which itself cannot be included within any 
 essence. When then we conceive God, what we conceive 
 is essence, and it seems to us that God like every other ideal 
 content of thought may or may not exist. The ontological 
 argument shows that in conceiving God we are conceiv- 
 ing infinite essence, which means that we conceive an 
 individuality without the limitations which attach to our 
 individuality, these limitations consisting precisely in the 
 fact that they fall within a more inclusive concept, existence. 
 God is finite like ourselves if he is included within a wider 
 concept, existence, from which he might be excluded. 
 Either, therefore, we have no theoretical knowledge of God, 
 and this was Kant's view, or else we have the concept of 
 an essence which includes existence. 
 
 There is, however, in regard to the ontological argument 
 a more important consideration than that which concerns 
 its logical power to carry conviction, the question namely 
 whether the truth which it purports to establish is of any 
 value in itself. Is the argument anything more than a 
 piece of dexterous logomachy ? Is it other than an exercise 
 in logistic, a circular argument playing around abstract 
 terms devoid of real significance ? Those who reject the 
 argument undoubtedly do so because they so regard it. It 
 is impossible to declare it false, but it can be urged that it is 
 a mere tautology repeating in the conclusion what it has
 
 104 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 imported into the premiss. Only, it will be said, if in 
 the concept of an infinite and perfect being you include 
 existence, can you conclude from the concept that God exists. 
 Those, on the other hand, who accept it attach absolutely 
 no value to its syllogistic form but only to its ground in 
 the intuition. It directs the mind to a truth about thought 
 and reality which, so far from being obvious, trivial, or 
 unimportant, is not only directly contrary to common 
 sense and scientific realism, but the very condition of 
 philosophic insight. 
 
 The cosmological and teleological arguments appeal to 
 a totally different and antithetical principle. They appeal 
 not to an intuition expressed in the content of a concept 
 but to the principle of causality which is the basis of ordinary 
 and scientific explanation. The cosmological argument 
 rests on the principle of efficient causation, which is the 
 postulate of physical science, the teleological on the principle 
 of final causation or design, which is the postulate of biological 
 and mental science. The weakness of the first is that the 
 conditions of the premiss exclude the possibility of the 
 conclusion. How can the fact of experience that every 
 cause of an effect is itself the effect of a cause support the 
 conclusion that there is a cause which is not an effect of a 
 cause but a causa sui ? The conclusion affirms a fact 
 which contradicts the fact on which the premiss is founded. 
 The teleological argument is also weak in an equally essential 
 particular. If there be evidence of design there is equal 
 evidence of unachieved purpose and imperfection. How 
 from an imperfect and incomplete and short-coming creation 
 can we argue to the existence of perfect intelligence and 
 power ? 
 
 The two currents of thought ran together in close associa- 
 tion throughout the scholastic period. They represented 
 two fundamentally different and opposite concepts of God 
 and reality. The ontological argument was not a logical 
 demonstration, those who held it had no need of logical 
 demonstration, they gave it logical form to satisfy the 
 current demand for proofs. The evidence was immediate 
 and intuitive. True cognition in their view was innate
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 105 
 
 and not derived from experience. God and reality were 
 intellectual and immanent, not transcendent. For the other 
 view true cognition was a construction of elements furnished 
 by sensible perceptions. 
 
 With the rise of modern philosophy the ontological 
 argument acquired a new significance. It was adopted 
 by Descartes, and made by Spinoza the pivot of a 
 complete system of mathematically deduced philosophical 
 propositions. It was rejected by Kant, and his refutation is 
 not only one of the most important doctrines in the Critique 
 of Pure Reason, and a notable event in the history of modern 
 philosophy, but it forms a kind of sign-post pointing two 
 divergent directions in constructive philosophy. Hegel 
 reinstated the argument. It lives to-day hi the theory of 
 the Absolute of F. H. Bradley ; in the argument so forcibly 
 expounded by Bergson in Evolution Creatrice that the idea 
 of nothing is a pseudo-idea ; and it is adopted by Croce 
 in his theory of the concrete universality of mind. On the 
 other hand, it is generally rejected, or discarded, or despised, 
 by all philosophies which rest on empirical as distinct from 
 intuitive principles and by all who are realists hi the modern 
 epistemological meaning. It has come therefore to be 
 regarded as identical with one of two divergent philosophical 
 methods. It is cherished by those who follow the a priori 
 route, rejected by those who recognize only the a posteriori. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand the greater attraction 
 to the ordinary mind of the cosmological and teleological 
 arguments when compared with the ontological. The 
 latter appeals to a cold logical formula impossible to clothe 
 with the warm flesh and blood existence our nature craves 
 for. The other arguments, however remote they may be 
 from practical interest, do at least appeal to the imagination 
 and easily lend themselves to artistic representation. We 
 can take interest in a God, clothed though he be with 
 infinite attributes, whose throne an archangel can dispute, 
 whereas a God whose essence involves existence evokes 
 no emotion and leaves us aesthetically and ethically cold. 
 Rebellion against this God is absurd, even Satan cannot 
 for one moment deceive himself with prospect of success,
 
 106 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 for the only thing of which he could deprive God would 
 be the existence on which he, Satan, himself depends. 
 The yearning of the human heart is for a God of whom 
 we can make a graven image, who can manifest himself to us 
 by some expression which we can cherish as a personal 
 token, just as we cherish the picture or keepsake of a lost 
 or absent friend. The ontological argument gives us a God 
 whose existence does not call for faith, because it admits 
 of no doubt, whom we cannot represent 'because he is ever 
 present, whom we cannot long for because he is never 
 distant or absent or separated from us. Is there any value 
 in an idea which not only leaves unsatisfied our whole 
 aesthetic nature but seems to condemn it as a positive 
 defect ? 
 
 If this be the aesthetic difficulty, a far greater difficulty 
 awaits us when we consider the ethical consequence. The 
 conception of God which the ontological argument establishes 
 negates the idea of freedom and imposes a rigid determinism 
 which in ethics inevitably leads to some form of fatalism. 
 A striking illustration of this is afforded in the form which 
 Christian theology assumed in the doctrine of Calvinism. 
 
 Calvinism is simply the acceptance of the ontological 
 argument with its full logical and ethical consequences, 
 combined with the Christian belief in an historical revela- 
 tion and in an inspired authoritative exposition of the 
 scheme of salvation in the Scriptures. It is the God of 
 Spinoza with the Pauline interpretation of Hebrew history. 
 The stumbling-block has always been its ethical consequences. 
 On what rational ground can you appeal to a man to act 
 righteously, to eschew evil and follow good, save only on 
 the presumption that he is a free agent ? Yet in the whole 
 Calvinist scheme there is nowhere left even the bare possi- 
 bility of a free act. The conception of God blocks the 
 possibility of human freedom and reduces the consciousness 
 of it to an illusion due to limited perspective. We get the 
 curious practical dilemma, the one horn of which is that 
 God exhorts us to holiness, the other that holiness is entirely 
 dependent on the grace of God. Human conduct can 
 only be judged good or bad to the extent to which man is
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 107 
 
 a responsible being, yet all responsibility rests ultimately and 
 entirely in God. It is no exaggeration to say that this 
 problem has not only exercised the human intellect through- 
 out the whole history of philosophy, but it has been the main 
 theme underlying the modern development. In the seven- 
 teenth century it took a pronounced theological form con- 
 sequent on the Reformation of the sixteenth century and 
 the revival by Luther of the Pauline doctrine of justification 
 by faith. The cleavage in theology was not confined to 
 the reformed religion, it appeared in the Catholic church 
 as well. It produced the Puritans in the one, the Jansenists 
 in the other. In philosophy to-day the theological interest 
 has been superseded by the secular interest, but it is our 
 problem still. It is, however, only when we take account 
 of the absorbing nature of the theological interest in the 
 seventeenth century that we can understand the over- 
 whelming importance which the philosophers of that period 
 attributed to the true conception of God. 
 
 It is difficult for us to-day to realize the torture which 
 the religious mind has suffered in its attempt to reconcile 
 the ethical dilemma. It finds expression in the Pauline 
 writings, but it is suppressed, deliberately thrust aside as an 
 impiety, over-ridden by the intense missionary zeal of the 
 new faith. " Who art thou, O man, that repliest against 
 God ? " In the fierce controversy which marked the 
 revival of Paulinism in the sixteenth century it found full 
 expression. It divided Christianity into hostile camps, 
 one of which exalted the conception of God and fearlessly 
 accepted its logical consequences, leaving ethics to take 
 care of itself ; the other, not disputing the conception of 
 God, but undismayed by logic, in its ardour for the gospel 
 of redemption. 
 
 It is not a little curious to study the way in which 
 Calvinism found a practical solution of the ethical dilemma 
 in its doctrine of the grace of God. Theoretically the 
 Calvinist scheme rested on the doctrine of the absolute 
 sovereignty of God and shrank from no consequence in 
 its deductions. It was open to all the denunciations 
 of impiety which critics and opponents freely outpoured
 
 108 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 on it. It might acclaim the holiness of God, but no 
 argument could save it from the charge that it made 
 God himself responsible for the sin which was hateful to 
 him. The creation with all the consequences of Adam's 
 fall was not only foreknown, but fore-ordained, eternally 
 decreed. Nothing whatever was contingent. The redeemed 
 were elected, the damned were reprobated. There was no 
 place for repentance. God had created hell and pre- 
 ordained its inhabitants and all for his own glory. To 
 the horrified opponents of the doctrine it seemed no 
 blasphemy to declare this God a devil. Yet Calvinism 
 produced saints and heroes and martyrs. It satisfied the 
 unselfish religious emotions of many generations. It is 
 doubtful if there has ever been an actually genuine instance 
 of a Calvinist " indulging in sin that grace may abound." 
 What saved their diabolical concept from disastrous con- 
 sequences in practice ? It was saved by its doctrine of 
 grace. In the first place it exalted human nature. It 
 turned faith into a means of grace instead of making it, 
 as its opponents did, an arbitrary condition of salvation, 
 thus raising the doctrine of justification by faith into a 
 rational system. But above ail in making faith a rule of 
 life and in finding in righteousness the one sure sign of 
 election, it made it a priori impossible to use assurance of 
 election as a motive for sin. The holy life, a holiness 
 which no feigning could turn to self-deception, for it con- 
 sisted not in outward observance but in purity and cleanli- 
 ness of inmost thought and sentiment, was the one and 
 only sign of election. 
 
 An illustration of the way the conception of God not 
 only formed the main problem but limited the horizon of 
 the philosophers of the seventeenth century is afforded us 
 in the correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld. 
 Leibniz had summarized the principles of his metaphysical 
 theory, not for general publication but for submission to 
 authoritative opinion. He secured means to have his 
 summary brought to the notice of the recognized leading 
 theologian of the Catholic Church, Dr. Arnauld, world- 
 famous for his wide erudition and joint authorship of the
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 109 
 
 Port Royal Logic and theological head of the Sorbonne. 
 The reason appears to have been that Leibniz was earnestly 
 endeavouring to reconcile the Protestant and Catholic 
 doctrines, with the object of making reunion possible, careful, 
 therefore, himself not to be committed to either side. 
 Arnauld received the summary entitled " Discourse on 
 Metaphysics " and at once singled out the characteristic 
 doctrine of Leibniz, the principle of individuality, and shows 
 that it makes creation as taught in the theology of 
 Christianity inconceivable, and the whole scheme of redemp- 
 tion unmeaning. " The individual concept of every person," 
 Leibniz had written, " involves once for all everything which 
 can ever happen to him, in it can be seen a priori the evidences 
 or the reasons for the reality of each event and why one 
 happened sooner than the other." " If this is so," Arnauld 
 wrote in reply, " God was free to create or not to create 
 Adam, but supposing he decided to create him, all that has 
 happened to the human race or which will ever happen 
 to it has occurred and will occur by a necessity more than 
 fatal. For the individual concept of Adam involved that 
 he would have so many children, and the individual concepts 
 of these children involved all that they would do and all 
 the children they would have ; and so on. God has therefore 
 no more liberty in regard to all that, provided he wished 
 to create Adam, than he was free to create a nature incapable 
 of thought, supposing he wished to create me." In 
 the correspondence which followed Leibniz explained his 
 meaning and defended himself from the charge that his 
 principle involved a limitation of the freedom of God. What 
 interests us, however, is the difference in the conception 
 of God, and his relation to the world in the act of creation. 
 If the world be a monadistic reality then in creating it God 
 gave existence to the monads, foreknowing their nature 
 because the concept of them was in his mind. If, on the 
 other hand, the world be a monistic reality and there are 
 no monads, the act of creation is the bringing to existence 
 of a matter or stuff which God will then mould or shape as 
 he will, and every attribute of reality will be directly 
 brought about by his act. The conception of God is thus
 
 no A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 seen to depend on two opposite concepts of the nature of 
 reality ; and conversely these opposite concepts of reality 
 lead to opposite conceptions of God. 
 
 I will state the two positions in my own words. Arnauld 
 evidently held the common opinion that what exists is an 
 inert stuff or matter created by God and fashioned or shaped 
 by him to fulfil his purposes like clay in the hands of the 
 potter. Whatever excellence created things possess they 
 receive it directly from their creator. This was the theory 
 of creation, and it had to be reconciled with two significant 
 historical events, the fall of Adam and its consequences, 
 and the death of Christ which furnished the means of 
 salvation. Leibniz, on the other hand, held that the act of 
 creation was the bringing into existence of active subjects 
 of experience. Each subject is in principle an individual 
 possessing his own perspective and responsible for his own 
 actions. These individuals were present to the mind of 
 God as concepts when he chose to create them. Creation 
 was the act which gave them existence. Their activities 
 and consequent actions, and therefore the events which 
 followed them, were present to the mind of God in the 
 concepts, but God did not create the concepts, he chose 
 among concepts, which were possibilities, those to which 
 he would give existence. 
 
 To appreciate the thought of the philosophers of the 
 seventeenth century we have to bear in mind that in one 
 particular there was a striking contrast between their 
 world-view and ours to-day. The Copernican revolution 
 of the sixteenth century and the new conception of a helio- 
 centric instead of a geocentric universe with all that it 
 involved had brought to them another world-view than 
 that of the scholastic and medieval philosophy. The 
 perspective of the universe had received an infinite extension 
 in space but no corresponding change had been brought 
 about in the perspective of time. As far as space was 
 concerned the concept of an indefinite extension with no 
 privileged centre offered the same problem to them as it 
 does to us to-day. But no revolution had occurred to effect 
 a corresponding change in regard to time. This did not
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD in 
 
 occur until the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
 and the Darwinian revolution which effected it is within 
 living memory. It has given to our outlook on time 
 the same infinity of range as there is in our outlook on 
 space. This makes it especially difficult for us to enter 
 into the problems of the seventeenth century as they took 
 form in their world-view. Practically every one of account 
 in their intellectual world not only found it easy to accept, 
 but had no ground for doubting, the general opinion that 
 the world had come into existence as an event in what 
 seems to us the quite incredibly recent past, and was destined 
 to go out of existence as a more or less dramatic event in 
 what seems to us an absurdly inadequate concept of the 
 future. We have therefore to keep this limitation in view 
 if we would appreciate the form which the problem assumed 
 and use it to throw light on our problems to-day. Both 
 Leibniz and Arnauld, for example, were agreed that human 
 experience must have come definitely into existence as an 
 event which they denominated creation and attributed to 
 the act of God, antecedent to which act was the purpose 
 conceived in the mind of God. In common with the 
 generally accepted and undisputed opinion they believed 
 this event could be dated, though many with Newton 
 questioned the chronology of the Old Testament. Both 
 sought from their knowledge of the nature of a world they 
 held to have been created, to determine the nature of the 
 antecedent act of creation. 
 
 The special merit of Leibniz is that he grasped the 
 principle of individuality with a clearness which has never 
 been surpassed, and which is without equal in the service 
 it has rendered to philosophy. He saw that to create an 
 individual is not to bring to existence an inert stuff and 
 shape it to move in certain ways, or to endow it with definite 
 powers of response to external influence, for in the concept 
 of the individual is already involved its perspective and its 
 activity. Leibniz thought indeed that the monads might 
 be created or annihilated, and he conceived God as haying^ 
 beiore^him the concepts of all possible- worlds, and^choosmg 
 from them the best, a nptipj^mercilesslyLsatirized in Voltaire's
 
 ii2 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 Candide. If we with our time-perspective accept Leibniz's 
 principle of individuality, we must reject his notion of 
 creation, for it is plain to us that the concept of an individual 
 not only involves the sequence of the events which will 
 follow but the infinite series of events of which it is the 
 consequence, that in fact an individual holds in his present 
 activity an accumulated past as well as an unrealized future. 
 We must therefore conceive God differently, we must con- 
 ceive him not as transcendent but as immanent, not as a 
 super-individual creating or annihilating finite individuals 
 as he chooses, but as an infinite individual, the complement 
 of finite individuality. 
 
 This brings us to the modern problem. I have already 
 referred to the two different theories held by philosophers 
 to-day as to the nature of finite individuality the sub- 
 stantive and the adjectival theories. The substantive theory 
 is monadistic, but conceives the monads in one essential 
 respect differently from the way in which Leibniz conceived 
 them. The individual is held to be exclusive and to exist in 
 his own right, but his range of activity is limited not by his 
 inner nature and perspective, as Leibniz conceived, but by 
 other individuals substantially distinct to whom his relation 
 is external and with whom he acts and interacts. Indi- 
 viduals in this view are objectively and not only subjectively 
 distinct ; they are actually separate one from another. 
 The adjectival view is that the individual is wholly con- 
 stituted by its relations to, and inclusion in, the universal 
 absolute experience. Individuality in this view consists in 
 the fact that the absolute or infinite individual appears or 
 expresses itself in finite centres of activity. Finite indi- 
 viduality is therefore a mode of the expression of a reality 
 which is one and universal. These two opposite views may 
 seem to repeat with hardly noticeable difference the theories 
 of Leibniz and Spinoza, but the line of demarcation is 
 different. The theory of the Absolute, when fully 
 expounded, though apparently a monistic theory, yet in 
 its concept of substance as subjective activity and not as 
 an inert substratum, and in its insistence on inclusiveness, 
 resembles Leibniz's concept of the Monad rather than
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 113 
 
 Spinoza's concept of God ; whereas the pluralistic theory 
 with its interacting individuals requires for its background 
 the notion of substance as inert extension. 
 
 In ordinary experience our conceptions are formed by 
 purely practical considerations, and individuality is no 
 exception. The urgency and primal necessity of preserving 
 at every moment and from moment to moment the form of 
 our activity ; the convergence of our whole being on present 
 progressing action ; the continual dispersion and restoration 
 of our store of necessary energy ; the disturbance from 
 moment to moment of our equilibrium and its continued 
 maintenance ; impose upon us an attitude of forward-looking 
 attention which makes our immediate environment and the 
 first form of our apprehension of things the type of reality 
 to which the hidden aspect must of necessity conform. We 
 are as unconscious of the strain and burden of this attention 
 to life as we are unconscious of the weight of the atmosphere, 
 of the attraction and repulsion of the earth's centripetal 
 and centrifugal forces due to its movement. At every 
 moment and from moment to moment the living organism 
 is called on to act, and if the response fail, life fails, for life 
 consists in unceasing adaptation, yet we pass our lives in 
 ignorance of it. It is the body which by its structure seems 
 to give us the power to act, yet of the activity required to 
 maintain the structure we are wholly unconscious. Indi- 
 viduals appear to us as primarily and essentially a plurality ; 
 plurality seems to depend on definite structure ; and 
 structure is wholly dependent on the spatial concept. Even 
 a structure which is not spatial, such as a symphony or poem, 
 can only be conceived by the aid of a spatial scheme. Our 
 direct and immediate relations with other individuals in 
 ordinary experience are with the bodily presence of our 
 fellows, for only by bodily movements do we interpret 
 their minds. Men's bodies, therefore, as definite structures, 
 rather than their minds, seem to determine their individu- 
 ality. The world of action is a spatial world, individual 
 agents present a sameness of type in bodily structure and 
 functions, and spatial relations come to be regarded as the 
 basis of existence. Individuality therefore to ordinary 
 
 I
 
 H4 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 thought means plurality, plurality means repetition, the 
 complete separation of numerically different structures 
 identical in type. 
 
 A completely different aspect of individuality is presented 
 to us, however, when instead of regarding the body we 
 study the mind. The ideal structure of an individual mind 
 is wholly constituted of its relations to other individuals. 
 The essence of mentality is to comprehend and be compre- 
 hended. No two minds are numerically different and 
 structurally identical in the same sense in which two bodies 
 may be. Individual minds derive their individuality not 
 from mutual exclusiveness but from mutual inclusiveness. 
 They qualify or characterise an absolute, without com- 
 posing or constituting it by aggregation. That is to say, 
 no means exist of circumscribing individuality when you 
 intend purely and only the mind. Test it in what way 
 you will, by introspection or by observation, there is no 
 way of detaching, or dissociating, or even of ideally articulat- 
 ing, the relations, personal, family, social, sensual, in- 
 tellectual, emotional, aesthetical, logical, ethical, which 
 are fused together and interpenetrate one another in an 
 individual mind. A mind is not a thing which has these 
 relations, it is these relations and they are the mind. There 
 is no scheme by which it is possible to dissect the mind 
 in the same or in a similar way to that in which we dissect 
 the organism. 
 
 The moment we turn our attention to this contrast 
 between the individuality presented under the spatial form 
 of the organism and the individuality presented under the 
 non-spatial but distinctive form of the mind, it becomes 
 dear that we are not dealing with two individualities, or 
 with two forms of individuality, but with one individuality 
 presenting two aspects : for the mind must have embodiment, 
 and the body must have consciousness, not in association 
 with one another or as a property or quality one of another, 
 but because the essence of function involves structure and 
 the essence of structure involves function. 
 
 It is this perception of the necessary unity of mind and 
 body, of the impossibility of the conception of individuality
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 115 
 
 save only as mind acting through body, and body serving 
 mind to give the efficacy of action to its activity, and the 
 perception that what holds good of the microcosm must 
 apply with equal force to the macrocosm, which is the basis 
 in human thought of the idea of God. It seems to me 
 moreover that this was the driving force in the philosophy 
 of Spinoza and Leibniz. But whether this be so or not, I 
 mamtauijthaljtjs^not the cosmological or the teleological 
 or any other lo^caj_argiinient from which^as^prung: our 
 idea of God but from the deep intuition of the essential 
 
 unity of \~hiQh+ anrj artinn. mind and body, in nnr pvppri- 
 
 ence as finite individuals. 
 
 If this be so, if it be the mind-body unity, and not 
 some extraneous deduction or induction from the objective (^ r* 
 order presented to the mind in experience, which is the n /^_ ui> 
 intuitive basis of the God-concept, the God-concept will 
 in its turn throw light on the mind-body unity. In other 
 words, not only does the relation of mind and body in the 
 finite individual suggest to us, by a kind of unconscious 
 analogy, the relation of God to the universe, but it also 
 indicates to us the direction in which we must seek the 
 solution of the persistent and continually recurrent problem 
 of philosophy the interaction of mind and body. 
 
 It is significant at least that anthropologists are generally 
 agreed in tracing the origin of the idea of God to the 
 animistic notions of primitive man. This, however, does 
 not carry us far or help us much. Animism tends to 
 emphasize the complete dissociation of mind and body. 
 The fundamental fact in which I seem to discern the in- 
 tuitive source of the innate necessity of thought which 
 becomes the concept of God, is rather the fact of the in- 
 separability of mind and body, notwithstanding the dual 
 aspect which our finite individuality presents. This 
 individuality involves two antithetical principles, and as 
 viewed from our human standpoint the principles are not 
 only mutually contradictory and opposed, but each seems to 
 rest on an order of reality extending indefinitely beyond 
 the range of the finite individual. The one, the body, 
 secures to the individual complete exclusion, it is a principle
 
 n6 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 of division and separation, it assigns us a boundary in space 
 and time, and inserts us in the vast, boundless, universe of 
 physical nature. The other, the mind, secures to the 
 individual complete inclusion. It is a principle of com- 
 prehension. It knits us in internal relations. It brings 
 the universe within us instead of securing our insertion in 
 the universe, it relates us to the whole of existence and the 
 relations are not external but constitutive of our being. 
 While my body separates me from all the rest of the universe, 
 cutting the universe in two, the portion without and the 
 portion within my skin, my mind not only shows me myself 
 in the universe but the universe in me. It not only brings 
 me into relation with other minds, as my body brings me 
 into relation with other bodies, but it makes me a member 
 of the community of minds in a quite different order of 
 existence to that in which my body makes me one of the 
 things in the spatial universe. In the actual mind-body 
 of the finite individual I have these two principles not in 
 association, not even in an a priori synthesis, but in the 
 absolute unity of living experience. What to my intellect 
 cannot but appear as two distinct and antithetical orders, 
 to my living experience is indissolubly one. This is what 
 I find finite individuality to be. It is precisely this that 
 I believe infinite individuality to be. The idea of God 
 arises, I believe, in the intuition of the unity of 
 
 ^ 
 
 of thought_and action, of functionaiid structure, in 
 the activity which alonejsjgality. 
 
 Let me try to be still more precise. In the moment of 
 experience mind and body are not two things but one. 
 It would be impossible even to make the distinction 
 were experience confined to the actual, without outlook 
 on the past and on the future. When we conceive 
 universal activity in the same mode in which we con- 
 ceive our individual activity, hi the living intuition in 
 the moment of experience, then we have the idea of 
 God. And we must think universal activity as existing 
 in this mode, because, when our consciousness takes the 
 form of reflexion and attention, the moment of experience 
 becomes for it the meeting-point of two distinct orders of
 
 CHAP, v THE IDEA OF GOD 117 
 
 existence, an ideal order and a real order, the one continuous 
 with our subjective consciousness, the other with our object- 
 ive activity, and each order is determined by its past and 
 determines its future. If then the unity of these two orders 
 in the moment of experience is real, their duality in the 
 time-perspective is appearance. It is the fact, then, that 
 our experience though finite is continuous with an activity 
 that envelops it, which compels us to conceive a unity 
 beyond finite experience. It can only be the unity of 
 infinite individuality, because it is the incompleteness of 
 finite individuality which necessitates the concept. That 
 is to say, mind and nature are separate realms in our per- 
 spective, but a unity without distinction in the intuition 
 of the actual moment of experience. If then we conceive 
 their ultimate unity we can only conceive it on the principle 
 of the activity we know in the moment of experience. In 
 this way we conceive God not as transcendent but as im- 
 manent hi us. I do not mean that nature is God's body, 
 or even that it is God's garment, to use the language of 
 poetry, and I do not mean that behind nature we may 
 recognize God's mind, in the way that our neighbour reveals 
 his mind by his bodily actions. To imagine God in this way 
 is to limit God to an object in our perspective, whereas philo- 
 sophy requires that if we conceive God we conceive him as 
 he is in himself, in his infinite individuality. What I do 
 mean is that we can only conceive universal activity on the 
 same principle as we conceive our individual activity in the 
 moment of experience. We can form no image of God 
 but we can and must conceive him. 
 
 I will briefly recapitulate the argument. In modern 
 philosophy the idea of God is part of the general problem 
 of individuality. In the seventeenth century the theo- 
 logical concept of God was the beginning and central 
 point of speculation. This was due to the strong human 
 interest aroused by the religious reformation of the six- 
 teenth century, and particularly to the revival by Luther 
 of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. There 
 are two divergent lines in philosophical speculation as 
 to the nature of God and the proof of his existence. The
 
 n8 A THEORY OF MONADS PART i 
 
 one tendency is to regard the knowledge of God as an 
 innate intuition of the human mind, the other is to make 
 it depend on a reasoning process. The famous three argu- 
 ments or proofs of the existence of God, the ontological, 
 the cosmological, and the teleological, are not cumulative 
 in force but antithetical and opposed in their direction. 
 Those who rely on the ontological proof have no need of 
 the other two, and these add nothing to its force ; on the 
 other hand, those who rely on demonstration usually reject 
 the ontological proof. 
 
 There are two views in modern philosophy as to the 
 nature of the finite individual. One is the adjectival view, 
 according to which the individual is wholly constituted of 
 his relation to a universal experience, the Absolute. His 
 individuality consists in the fact that the absolute appears 
 or expresses itself in temporary centres of activity. Indi- 
 viduality therefore is a mode of the expression of a universal 
 reality. The other is the substantive view, according to 
 which the individual is exclusive and exists in its own 
 right. Its range of activity is limited by other individuals, 
 but its relation to these is external and it is substantially 
 distinct. The ordinary view of individuals is that they 
 are a plurality. There is a practical ground for this. In 
 ordinary thought we take men's bodies rather than their 
 minds as the definite structure which determines their 
 individuality. We contemplate the world as a spatial 
 system. Men's bodies present to us a sameness of type 
 in structure and function, and spatial relations become in 
 consequence the basis of existence. Individuals appear as a 
 many. When we attend to the mind structure, individuals 
 seem constituted of their relations to one another. Indi- 
 viduals seem to derive their reality from inclusion in a 
 greater individuality. 
 
 Existence has a different meaning therefore according 
 to whether we predicate it of the body or of the mind. 
 When we say that a body exists, we mean that it 
 adversely occupies space during some interval of time. 
 When we say that a mind exists, we mean that it is an 
 activity enduring through continual change. There are
 
 CHAP.V THE IDEA OF GOD 119 
 
 no spatial outlines which limit minds and prevent their 
 interpenetration. When we make the finite individual the 
 subject of a judgment, if the spatial body be the subject 
 then we have the concept of substance or thinghood. 
 It involves the idea of present existence. A thing to be 
 definite must be here and now. If, on the other hand, the 
 mind be the subject, its present existence is not actuality 
 but potentiality. 
 
 In individual activity there is no dissociation of body 
 and mind, of thought and action, of function and structure. 
 Mind and body cannot even be said to be united in their 
 activity, for the activity is a unity which precedes distinction. 
 When we reflect on our activity from the standpoint of its 
 process, it appears as though the moment of experience 
 must be a unity brought about by the association in that 
 moment of the mind and the body. Yet the intuition 
 of our reality hi that moment is the intuition of original 
 unity. My theory is that the unity is original and not an 
 association ; and that the distinctions which arise in the 
 process of our activity are a dissociation. It is the intuition 
 of this unity which is the basis of the necessity of thought 
 which posits the idea of God, the idea of a higher unity, the 
 infinite individual whose essence involves existence.
 
 PART II 
 
 PSYCHOLOGICAL : 
 THE ACTIVITY OF THE MONAD 
 
 I2T
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 And then he drew a dial from his poke, 
 
 And looking on it with lack-lustre eye. 
 
 Says very wisely, "It is ten o'clock : 
 
 Thus may we see," quoth he, "how the world wags: 
 
 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine ; 
 
 And after one hour more 'twill be eleven ; 
 
 And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, 
 
 And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot, 
 
 And thereby hangs a tale." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS or pure knowing accompanies a very in- 
 finitesimal portion of our whole activity and seems attached 
 to it by a very inconstant bond. It is certainly not the 
 whole monadic activity. Only in the higher monads does 
 it exist at all. If we agree with Leibniz in describing the 
 whole monadic activity as perception then we must allow 
 that perception is not only possible where consciousness is 
 absent but for the most part perception is altogether devoid 
 of consciousness, that is of consciousness in the pure sense 
 of knowing. In us consciousness appears as a halo of 
 illumination playing round the focal centre of our activity. 
 It is intense at the point and at the instant of progressing 
 action, but it fades away in a penumbra as we move 
 from the focal centre. It seems to have no dividing line. 
 It is very intense and concentrated when our action demands 
 effort or has to deal with a new and unwonted situation. 
 When the progressing action is ordinary and habitual or 
 automatic, consciousness is relaxed and dispersed. Actual 
 consciousness or knowing seems concerned with our activity 
 at the focus where action is forming, to be gathered together 
 and concentrated on the progressing action. It appears 
 
 123
 
 124 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 indeed as though the action itself produced a kind 
 of phosphorescence called forth by the nature and need of 
 the action itself and as though the intensity of the illumina- 
 tion were relative to the need. We may then describe 
 consciousness, in its specific meaning of knowing or aware- 
 ness, as an intensity at the focus thinning off till it fades away 
 at the periphery, and neither at the focus nor at the periphery 
 having any clear outline or distinct division. Or, in other 
 words, consciousness is distinguished internally only by its 
 degree of tension or concentration. 
 
 When we consider the content of this consciousness, or 
 the action which it illuminates, consciousness then itself 
 seems to be distinguished by its clear and distinct outline. 
 The chief aim of knowing seems to be to give precision to 
 the form and matter of what is known. If knowing is the 
 indefinite light dispersed or concentrated, the known is 
 that which the light serves to delineate. Knowing and 
 knowledge, consciousness and content of consciousness, are 
 not two things brought into relation but one thing inter- 
 nally distinguished, and the distinctiveness of knowledge 
 characterizes knowing, the clearness or obscurity of the 
 content of consciousness characterizes consciousness. We 
 represent in fact consciousness as itself divided crisply 
 into moments of experience, which, when distinguished as 
 now and then, are conceived with definite, precise and 
 absolute outlines. Consciousness may seem incapable of 
 delimitation into moments, just as flowing water seems 
 incapable of resolution into distinct drops, but as flowing 
 water is decomposable into drops so is consciousness resolv- 
 able into moments, on any principle and according to any 
 order. We have therefore another and opposite character 
 of consciousness. It is gathered into moments, each with 
 its own cognitive content, its own emotional quality, its 
 own feeling tone, its own perfect individuality. Each 
 moment of experience corresponds with the actual centre 
 of activity in the progressing action of the subject, but 
 it marks a distinct and definite state of progress of the 
 action, a state which when past is accomplished and unalter- 
 able. It seems therefore that consciousness or knowing
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 125 
 
 is itself articulated ; the joints may not be easy to trace 
 and the association of states may be in a measure indefinite, 
 but they are clearly marked off from one another and 
 exclusive. We have therefore a second characteristic of 
 consciousness. Consciousness consists of states only one of 
 which is present; every present state of consciousness is 
 separated by a distinct and definite outline from every 
 remembered or anticipated state ; and the quality and content 
 of its present state will in some form attach to it when it 
 ceases to be present and is only remembered. 
 
 In this twofold characteristic of the individual conscious- 
 ness, first, that it has only internal distinction and difference 
 in degrees of intensity, and second, that it consists of states 
 exclusive of one another and different in kind, we may see 
 a close and significant analogy with individual existence 
 itself. Every individual creature in his range of activity 
 is distinct and separate and exclusive and therefore different 
 in kind from every other individual, and yet every individual 
 is only a focus of the activity of a reality which has no 
 divisions or boundary lines and which differs only internally 
 in the degree of its tension or extension. No one with our 
 modern world-view and the knowledge which science has 
 developed, whatever particular theory of our origin and 
 destiny he may hold, can doubt that the living individual 
 is one with all that lives and with all that has lived. Every 
 living form, animal or vegetable, is the expression of an 
 activity which is not theoretically or abstractly or collec- 
 tively one activity but essentially and indivisibly one. 
 Whether life be a property of certain forms or combinations 
 of inert matter under certain special conditions as some 
 suppose, or not, it is hardly disputed that the actual 
 phenomenon of life is one in its origin and in its manifesta- 
 tion. Yet this activity manifests itself in myriad special 
 forms each possessed of that absolute exclusiveness which 
 belongs to the moment of experience in the individual 
 himself. If this analogy hold, if it be really the case that 
 in the moment of experience we have not merely a 
 phenomenon repeated in myriad centres of activity but 
 the very principle of life itself ; if the moment of experience
 
 126 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 be to the individual what the individual is to the universe ; 
 then it follows that the situation of consciousness at the 
 centre of our system, at the point of focal intensity, and the 
 consequent inconceivability of transcending the system 
 and viewing it from without, so far from being a disadvan- 
 tage and handicap in our effort to comprehend reality is a 
 positive privilege of philosophy, enabling us at once and 
 with certainty to know reality as it is in itself. 
 
 In the moment of experience, then, we have the actual 
 focus of individual activity. The activity which is spread 
 over the whole life of the individual is there seen at the point 
 at which action is progressing. By studying it we are turn- 
 ing our attention on the very centre of the reality we are 
 seeking in philosophy to understand and raising the meta- 
 physical problem of its ultimate nature in its clearest and 
 most definite form. 
 
 What, then, is the moment of experience ? It is the 
 present moment, the moment in which what we are actually 
 experiencing is contained, as distinguished from an abstract 
 mathematical moment of time which has no content at all. 
 Whatever we experience is now, and only what is now is 
 immediate experience. But the word " now," as used in 
 ordinary discourse, is vague. Any one unexpectedly asked 
 to say what length of clock-time he associates with his 
 moment of experience would probably hesitate and be in 
 doubt whether to assign to it three or four minutes or some- 
 thing less than a second. The moment of experience is not 
 vague, however, when its content is considered ; it is then 
 sharply distinguished from all other moments. It is the 
 moment during which experience is sense experience. It 
 is the only moment the experience of which may be analysed 
 by the psychologist as it occurs, and the experience which 
 occurs in it is the only experience which exists as immediate 
 experience. 
 
 It is in the moment JiLexperience, therefore, that the mind 
 ancLthe world are immediately related. This moment has 
 duration, and yet all that occurs within it is present, nothing 
 that occurs within it is past or future. It is altogether now, 
 no part of it is then or when. The moment is also distin-
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 127 
 
 guished by the special character or quality of its content, 
 sensation. This quality is unmistakable, but it is indefin- 
 able otherwise than by reference to the experience itself. 
 The moments of our past which we remember, or the moments 
 of our future which we anticipate, contain remembered or 
 imagined or inferred sense experience, in the present moment 
 only is the experience actually sensed. 
 
 These are familiar facts, and the problems they give rise 
 to are familiar problems. There is the problem of the relation 
 of psychological to mathematical time, or, as some prefer to 
 state it, the problem of the distinction of mental time from 
 physical time. Also, there is the problem of the ultimate 
 nature of sensation and its relation to other forms or modes 
 of knowledge. These are problems of psychology as well as 
 problems of philosophy, but while psychology is concerned 
 to make clear the distinctions they involve in order to free its 
 subject-matter from confusion (the psychological interest 
 being the definition of terms and classification of empirical 
 facts), for philosophy the problems are vital, they go to the 
 very root of the question of the ultimate nature of knowledge 
 and its relation to reality. The philosophical importance of 
 these problems, and not their mere dialectical interest, 
 should appeal to us. The whole possibility of a consistent 
 theory of life and knowledge depends on the power of 
 philosophy to solve them, and the metaphysical solution 
 seems to me clearly to depend on our power to interpret, 
 or rather to make explicit what is implicit in the concept 
 of a moment of experience. 
 
 I will begin with a particular problem on the common- 
 sense plane, a psychological problem which involves no 
 principle of philosophy at all. When we see a shooting 
 star we have the visual sensation of a luminous line drawn 
 across a more or less extensive region of sky. It endures 
 a very short though appreciable time, and, although it seems 
 to begin to disappear at the point at which it began to appear, 
 there is a certain time during which the whole line is simul- 
 taneously present to our consciousness, otherwise it would 
 not be experienced as a line. It appears to us, when we 
 describe it, as though a star previously fixed in the firmament,
 
 128 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 or having suddenly come into view, had moved across the 
 sky, leaving a trail of light behind it, and that when it had 
 reached the end of its journey and before it had disappeared 
 the whole trail was present to sense. We believe that this 
 is an illusion of the senses : that is to say, that what appears 
 to sense does not actually exist, and that it is explained 
 by the faculty the senses have of retaining or remembering 
 what has excited them. We believe, on what we accept 
 as scientific evidence, that when the trail is present to 
 consciousness, nothing in the physical world is stimulating 
 the sense organs ; in fact, that the trail of which we are 
 conscious has no physical reality external to the organism 
 corresponding to it. We believe that the external reality 
 is a point of light, not a line of light, and that whether the 
 movement of that point is due to its own translation or to the 
 translation of its observer consequent on the earth's move- 
 ment through space, or to both, the point always was in 
 only one position at one instant and not simultaneously at 
 every position in the line. Were, then, our sensation of the 
 falling star strictly limited and rigorously correspondent 
 to the actual conditions of the physical cause, we should 
 never be able to have the ordinary experience of it. Were 
 our consciousness to begin and cease when the physical 
 occasion begins and ceases, there could be no duration in the 
 psychological meaning, no continuity of the past, no carrying 
 on of the past into the present. Consciousness would be 
 of the instantaneous present and this would be a point 
 without duration. 
 
 Assuming the occasion of the sensation to be as science 
 teaches, we have to explain the illusion in the sensible 
 appearance. I can think of only three ways in which a 
 psychologist might suggest an explanation. First, he might 
 suppose that it is due to the mechanism of sensation and 
 that this includes some sort of contrivance such as the 
 photographer's sensitive plate, but not necessarily material 
 something like what the older psychologists imagined when 
 they called the mind a tabula rasa. Our sensations would 
 be of the impressions made upon it, and these being a 
 mechanical effect would not be restricted to the actual
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 129 
 
 duration of their cause. What we sense would be the 
 marks or impressions left, not the actual cause of them, 
 and these impressions might exist after the cause had ceased 
 to exist. Secondly, he might suppose that the line of light 
 is not a pure sensation but a combination of sensation and 
 memory, that, in fact, it is only the point and not the line 
 which is sensed, and that the hue is really made up of our 
 recollections of the sensations of the light when it was at the 
 different points of the line. Or, thirdly, he might suppose, 
 and this is, I imagine, the usual explanation adopted in the 
 text-books, that the mind has a faculty or power of retaining 
 sensations for a short but appreciable time after the excita- 
 tion has ceased, and hence excitations which physically 
 are a true succession, one past before the next is, may 
 coalesce or overlap in sensation. Some sensations may be 
 simultaneous, at least as to parts of them, although their 
 excitations are not. 
 
 I think all three explanations are wrong. What renders 
 them, in my opinion, one and all futile is the assumption 
 which underlies each, that the experience of movement or 
 change is not itself a simple sensation, a single sense-datum, 
 but something which can only be explained as a relation of 
 numerically distinct sensations, or at least of numerically 
 distinct sense-data within a sensation. All sensation, in 
 my view, is of change. Movement or change is immediately 
 given to us in sense experience. The change from A to B 
 is not experienced as two sensations, one of which is " first 
 A " and the other " then B " ; " first A " is not only present 
 when " then B " is future, and " then B " is not only present 
 when " first A " is past, but both are present in an indivisible 
 sensation, and the distinction is an after-result of reflexion 
 and intellectual discrimination. Before I try to formulate 
 and defend this thesis, I will give a specific reason for 
 rejecting each of the three explanations I have indicated. 
 
 The first explanation that we truly sense the line, 
 although there is no line in reality, because the line forms 
 part of the mental picture which represents the reality is 
 a theory which appeals to common sense on account of a 
 somewhat striking analogy. A moving point, such as we 
 
 K
 
 130 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 suppose the shooting star to be, appears as a continuous 
 line in a photograph. This seems to suggest that the 
 retina may perform the same function as the sensitive plate 
 in photography. The analogy is very striking when we con- 
 sider the structure of the special sense-organs, particularly 
 those of sight and hearing, and the functions of their various 
 parts. A photographic camera is a simple replica of the 
 mechanical apparatus of the eye, by which rays of light 
 from the external scene are condensed by the lens to form 
 a small image on the sensitive retina. In like manner the 
 waves of sound are condensed into vibrations of the small 
 tense membrane which forms the drum of the ear, a 
 mechanism imitated in the receiver and transmitter of the 
 telephone. If the formation of an image of the external 
 scene is a necessary condition of the perception of the external 
 object, and if it is this image which is the object of the 
 sensation, then it seems natural to account for the difference 
 between the inferred cause of the sensation and the sensation 
 by the conditions of the formation of the image. A moving 
 point in the external scene might be supposed to form a line 
 in the image, as in fact does happen when we photograph 
 a changing scene. Is there such an image intermediating 
 between the external reality and the mind ? Psychologically 
 there is no ground for supposing it and, so far as theory 
 of knowledge is concerned, no advantage in supposing it. 
 
 The problem of knowledge is not simplified by supposing 
 the object of knowledge to be a picture of reality projected 
 on a sense-organ rather than the external reality itself. 
 Philosophically it would complicate the problem of real 
 existence by substituting a representative for a presentative 
 theory. The only ground for supposing that the object of 
 visual sensation is an image of reality and not the reality 
 is the fact that theoretically we can obtain an image behind 
 the lens of the eye and also that if we look into the eye of 
 another we can see reflected back to us the image there 
 formed. But because an image always exists theoretically 
 and because it can be reflected back to another it does not 
 follow that it is, or could possibly be, an object to the 
 mind itself. Not only is the image we may see in the eye of
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 131 
 
 another person never the image that other person sees, but 
 there is no reason in the fact that we see it to lead us to 
 suppose that the mind must be conscious of an appearance 
 of reality distinct from reality itself. We may therefore 
 reject the view that a picture of external reality is the 
 immediate sensed object and that this picture may have 
 characters which the original has not. 
 
 The second explanation is that the line is not really 
 sensed at all, but that only a point in the line is sensed, that 
 the moment the point has moved its position the sensation 
 produced at that spot has ceased and a memory-image has 
 replaced it. It may then be supposed that quite recent 
 memory-images are as vivid as sensations, or so nearly so 
 as to be indistinguishable from them. Hence the line is 
 supposed to be simply a fusion of quite recent memory- 
 images with the actual sensation. Such a view will not 
 stand any psychological test. By every criterion of sensa- 
 tion the line is sensed not memorized. A memory-image 
 is under control in a way that a sensation is not. I can 
 call it to mind, keep it in mind, let it pass out of mind. I 
 have no control over a sensation, I am dependent for it 
 on the actual stimulus of a sense-organ. Judged by this 
 criterion the line is a true sensation, there is no such differ- 
 ence between one point and another as there is between 
 sensation and memory, but the memory-image of the 
 line when I remember it is entirely different in the nature of 
 my experience from the line when I sense it. Were part of 
 the line a memory I ought to be able to keep it and prolong 
 it indefinitely, or at least to keep it in mind until fatigue 
 should overcome me. I cannot do this. There is, more- 
 over, no difference of quality within the line, it is only the 
 duration of the experience which enables me to imagine the 
 possibility of a difference. The mark of sensation is to be 
 actually present experience in the meaning that there is 
 present modification of the organism. As any sensation 
 which endures has a beginning and end, it seems possible 
 to deny that the beginning is still sensation when the end 
 is reached, because it is then past not present. Such an 
 argument would defeat itself by depriving sensation of all
 
 132 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 content whatever. The sensation would be merely a point 
 marking the limit of memory. 
 
 The third explanation I can best illustrate by a quotation 
 from Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology (ii. 186). 
 " It is a familiar fact that all impressions on the senses, and 
 visual ones among the number, continue for a certain brief 
 period after they are made. Hence when the retinal elements 
 forming the series A to Z (different sensitive points on the 
 retina) are excited in rapid succession, the excitation of 
 Z commences before that of A has ceased, and for a moment 
 the whole series from A to Z remains in a state of excitement 
 together." The quotation is from an argument to prove 
 that the notion of space may arise out of the notion of 
 simultaneity, and that simultaneity may be the direct sense 
 experience of a rapid succession. It is very apposite to the 
 present case, and illustrates exceedingly well the problem 
 of the perception of change. It seems self-evident that if 
 sensation be instantaneous we must exclude from it 
 whatever is past, and yet if nothing within the sensation 
 is past how can it have duration ? Hence the attempt to 
 account for the direct consciousness of change by supposing 
 that sense impressions last longer than the stimuli which 
 excite them, so that a rapid series of stimuli are a true 
 succession, each over before the next is, while the sense 
 impressions they cause overlap and are experienced as 
 simultaneous. (To avoid misunderstanding, it should be 
 remarked that this lasting or enduring of the sensation 
 beyond the duration of the stimulus is not the technical 
 meaning of the terms retention and retentiveness in psycho- 
 logy. Retentiveness in psychology refers to the power 
 of remembering a past sensation, not to the power of 
 prolonging a sensation in present experience.) What then 
 is the reason for rejecting the view that the sensation 
 of the line is due to the retention of the sensations of the 
 points so that some have not ceased when others have 
 commenced ? How far it may be physiologically true that 
 the experience of simultaneous visual points, such as the 
 series of points in a luminous line, is due to an excitation 
 of numerically distinct points on the retina I do not know,
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 133 
 
 but that successive excitations of different points overlap 
 seems to me to bring us up against formidable difficulties. 
 In the first place it supposes the retina immobile, but, as 
 we know, the eye moves, and therefore, if the eye follows 
 the moving point, one point of the retina will be alone 
 continuously excited, and in this case it would seem we ought 
 not to see a line but an increasingly brilliant point. And 
 in the second place, what is still more important, were it 
 proved true of one sensation that in one respect, namely, 
 duration, it does not correspond to its exciting cause, what 
 ground should we have to argue that it corresponds in any 
 respect ? 
 
 In my view the explanation of the appearance is 
 neither physical nor physiological but psychological. We are 
 conscious of a rapidly moving luminous point as a line of 
 light, not because all or some of the points in the successive 
 series excite sensations which overlap the other points in the 
 series, but because the whole series is within the moment 
 of experience and therefore a present sensation. The 
 moment of experience is limited in duration and limited in 
 discrimination, but within the moment every point of a 
 series, whether it be within or beyond the limit of dis- 
 crimination, is present to sense, whatever be its relation 
 of before and after to the other points of the series. A 
 point or instant is not past because it is before another 
 which is present, nor is it only present when the preceding 
 member of the series is not present. It is present while it 
 remains within the moment of experience, and so long as it 
 is present it is not even fading away. The moment of 
 experience has within it no distinction of past and present, 
 but it has within it the distinction of before and after. The 
 limit of its duration is where memory takes the place of 
 sensation, the limit of its discrimination is where before is 
 indistinguishable from after. Within the moment, whether 
 the interval separating two points in a succession is discerned 
 or not, each point is present and sensed, no point is 
 remembered or imagined. 
 
 So far I have not touched on philosophical difficulties, 
 I have tried to think how psychologists might deal with
 
 134 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 a purely psychological problem without raising questions of 
 the validity of knowledge. Before I leave the psychological 
 consideration I will try and indicate exactly in what the 
 difficulty lies and what to me seems the way of escape. 
 A sensation is only, wholly, and always, present. The 
 object of a sensation, the sense-datum, has for its essential 
 mark that it is given at the present time. Yet though it is 
 present it seems that it must have within it what is not 
 present but past. A movement or change may be a sense- 
 datum, for we know movement or change as present fact, 
 and not as inference from present fact. A sensation whose 
 sense-datum is a movement must have duration, what has 
 duration must begin and end, beginning and ending cannot 
 be simultaneous, one is before, one is after, the other. But, 
 as we have seen, a sensation is altogether and entirely 
 present, therefore the beginning and ending, the before and 
 after, within the sense-datum must be together and simul- 
 taneous. There is here undoubtedly a metaphysical problem 
 which I will state directly, but it need not disturb the 
 psychologist. In the sensation of the shooting star the 
 line of light is not an illusion, the movement is a sense- 
 datum, and a movement can only be present in a sensation 
 as a line, for it is indivisibly and wholly present. To 
 suppose that the sensation of movement is not really one 
 sensation, but an infinite series of sensations, in each of 
 which a different point of space is sensed at a different 
 instant of time, is not only a psychological impossibility 
 but a denial that movement is a sense-datum at all. 
 
 Consciousness, then, is the experience of a present actual 
 now, this now is momentary, and the succession of these 
 moments is a time series. Also the object, the reality of 
 which we are aware in consciousness, is a succession of events, 
 each of which has its moment of present existence, and the 
 succession of these moments is a tune series. But there is 
 a difference between the moments of consciousness and the 
 instants of physical events. The difference is in what we 
 name duration. The moments of consciousness endure. 
 The now of experience is not a point or division between 
 what is past and what is future in the time series, but a
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 135 
 
 time span with definite content. It holds within it what in 
 the physical series may be already past or even not yet. 
 This present actual moment of experience has been called 
 a specious present to distinguish it from a mathematical 
 present. A specious present is a reality of psychical nature 
 with no counterpart in the physical universe, and whenever 
 we represent it as existing physically we find that we are 
 in fact introducing into nature what has meaning only in 
 consciousness. 
 
 The specious present or moment of experience is the 
 moment in each conscious subject's experience which while it 
 endures he calls now, and within which are his sensations. 
 It is the grasp or apprehension of a reality ceaselessly flowing 
 away and ceaselessly being renewed. It is not a moving 
 point, it resembles rather a field of vision with fixed limits, 
 across which a panorama moves. The quality of the moment 
 is to be wholly now. It is distinct from past moments 
 which were once now, and from future moments which will 
 be now. We feel to this present moment that it alone is, 
 and that all that really exists is in some way in that moment, 
 while all past moments are known as a memory of what was 
 and all future moments as an imagination of what will be. 
 Yet this " specious present " is not a boundary line between 
 past moments and future moments, it is itself an actual 
 duration, and therefore has difference within it, as well as 
 being itself different from what is excluded from it. The 
 distinctions within it are of two kinds, which by a natural 
 analogy we think of under the forms of time and space. The 
 duration of the moment involves a time distinction within 
 it. The extension of the moment, that is to say, the diversity 
 of its content, the fact that all the different senses present 
 objects to the mind in one and the same moment, and the 
 fact that the mind in attention can select one or another, 
 can wander over a practically unlimited field, can turn aside 
 from sense to memory and imagination, all within the 
 moment of experience, involves a distinction which can 
 only be presented as spatial. Mental activity in all its wide 
 range falls within the specious present. 
 
 It is very important, at this point, to be on our guard
 
 136 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 against a loose meaning of the phrase, the specious present. 
 In ordinary discourse we speak of long and indefinite periods 
 as present, whenever these periods form part of the unity 
 which the action in progress supposes, or when they embrace 
 the whole set of conditions of a present activity. Thus we 
 speak of the present conversation, the book we are at 
 present reading, or we may include vast periods of time 
 as when we speak of the present age, the present geological 
 period, or the present condition of the solar system as 
 compared with its supposed condition in a nebula. This, 
 of course, is not for our consciousness the specious present. 
 Yet this application of the term present has an important 
 bearing on its notion, for our very power to think these 
 vast periods as present depends on our power to imagine a 
 mind for which they would be a moment of experience. In 
 effect we imagine the present moment, in which feeling and 
 sensation are immediate, so extended as to embrace these 
 long periods. And also our imagination serves us in the 
 opposite direction. We can suppose our specious present 
 contracted to exclude all but an infinitely small portion 
 of its content, so that the other portions should be 
 relegated to a past or a future as vast as the periods 
 to which we have just imagined it extended. Just as in 
 the words of the Psalmist, " A thousand years in thy sight 
 are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the 
 night," so also is it equally true that yesterday may be as a 
 thousand years. We cannot mean, then, by the specious 
 present some definite quantity of abstract moments, for 
 there are none ; we must mean some constant ratio of 
 conscious apprehension to the variable moments which form 
 its content. 
 
 Let us suppose that we are looking through a microscope, 
 and let us suppose also that our (theoretically perfect) 
 instrument has an adjustable objective, so that any object 
 under observation may be indefinitely magnified. The 
 field of vision will not vary, but will remain constant both 
 in duration and extension whatever is within it, but less or 
 more of the object will come within the field as the magnifica- 
 tion is increased or diminished. That is to say, whether
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 137 
 
 in relation to unassisted vision the magnification be 50 or 
 500 diameters, the field is the same, the time required to 
 attend to anything within it is the same, the number of 
 parts or divisions in it is the same ; all these are constant, 
 and what is variable is the quantity of the object which 
 will come within the field. This constant field of vision, 
 irrespective of the varying quantity of the object observed, 
 illustrates the nature of the specious present. But we may 
 get a better illustration still. A microscope effects only 
 a visual magnification, and the difference between an object 
 seen under the microscope and the same object as it exists for 
 unassisted vision is experienced as a discrepancy between 
 sight and touch. Imagine, then, that some instrument could 
 be contrived which would effect an exactly corresponding 
 increase or decrease in the discrimination of all the senses 
 to that which the microscope effects in the case of vision. 
 Suppose that such an instrument were not limited as the 
 microscope is to magnifying the object so that less of it 
 occupies the field but could also diminish the object so that 
 more of it would occupy the field, and suppose that with 
 every alteration of visual magnitude there were an accom- 
 panying corresponding alteration in the tactual, auditive and 
 other senses and, with every alteration, a constant field. 
 Such a field in which all the senses would be co-ordinated is a 
 fairly exact analogy of the specious present. If we had such 
 an instrument it would enable us to pass from our system of 
 reference to any other we might choose and to preserve our 
 identity through every change. By making a larger or 
 smaller quantity of the object of our present experience 
 occupy the constant specious present of consciousness and 
 by adapting all our senses to the alteration, it would be 
 as if we ourselves became proportionately larger or smaller 
 in relation to our normal world. 
 
 The moment of experience, or the specious present (the 
 two terms are for me synonymous), is then the span of 
 consciousness throughout which the reality known is 
 immediately present as sense experience, and within which 
 the activity of the mind in sensation, memory, and imagina- 
 tion, is in being. Theoretically there is no limit to what may
 
 138 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 occupy this moment, but the moment is itself constant and 
 not variable, however variable in extension and intension its 
 content. This content, however, though theoretically un- 
 limited, is practically defined in its range by our organization, 
 and by the mode of our activity, to a certain system of refer- 
 ence. Thus my whole life from my birth might conceivably 
 be the content of one moment of experience, that is to say, 
 it might be entirely present to me not as memory but as 
 immediate experience. This would not imply the enlarge- 
 ment of the moment of experience but a variation of the 
 system of reference. This at least is the view I hold. 
 Against it may be urged the undeniable fact that we are 
 able to and actually do measure this moment of experience 
 by a purely objective standard. A certain definite period 
 of our clock-time enters it, and neither less nor more. My 
 reply is that such measurement does not determine the 
 moment of experience, but the system of reference within 
 which and in relation to which the consciousness is 
 functioning. 
 
 Whether the view of the moment of experience which 
 I have just given, that it is constant while its content is 
 variable, not in the sense that it is a series or succession of 
 ever new experience, but in the profounder sense that all its 
 objective characters, including space and time, are variable, 
 and relative to a system of reference, be accepted ; or 
 whether the ordinary conception of an absolute space and 
 time and a variable moment of experience be held ; in either 
 case the concept of a moment of experience gives rise to 
 fundamental problems of philosophy. These problems fall 
 naturally under two heads, one formal, the other material. 
 One is the problem involved in the duration of the moment 
 of experience, the other in the nature of its content, that is, 
 of sense-data. The first problem is the relation of psycho- 
 logical duration to mathematical time, the second is the 
 problem of the status of a sense-datum. 
 
 It is evident to every one who reflects that the moment 
 of experience is not the mathematical instant which 
 divides the past from the future. It is quite obvious that 
 while the mathematical instant may fall within the moment
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 139 
 
 of experience, the latter cannot fall within the former. 
 The reason is clear. The mathematical instant is a point, 
 the moment of experience is a line, the first has no dimension, 
 the second has one dimension. If mathematical time be 
 represented as a series of instants, one of which is present 
 and the others of which are past, then the moment of experi- 
 ence holds within it some instants which in the mathematical 
 series are past, and these in the psychological series are still 
 present. This I think no one disputes. But the mathe- 
 matical instant is also the limit of a series or succession of 
 instants which are future. Do any of these future instants 
 fall within the moment of experience, so that some instants 
 which in the mathematical series are future, in the psycho- 
 logical series are present ? Or, is the present mathematical 
 instant the limit of the series of instants which falls within 
 the moment of experience, so that in respect of all future 
 instants the mathematical and psychological series corre- 
 spond in a present point common to both ? This latter 
 alternative is the generally accepted view, because, while it 
 seems there are many forms in which instants mathe- 
 matically past may be psychologically present, it is difficult 
 to conceive any form in which instants mathematically 
 future can be present at all. Mathematically future time 
 seems therefore definitely excluded from the specious present. 
 Does, then, the future differ from the past in such way 
 that the one cannot while the other can exist in the present ? 
 So far as the concept of mathematical time is concerned 
 the future is on the same plane as the past. So far, that is to 
 say, as we consider physical events determined by a time 
 order, forming a series standing to one another in a relation 
 of before and after, there is no difference in our concept of 
 time future and our concept of time past. If we suppose 
 that some micromegas of a supra-world, for whom our sun 
 is an atom, were to cause the earth to fly out of the solar 
 system as an electron may be shot out of an atom, 
 it would upset all our astronomical predictions no doubt, 
 but it would not affect our concept of time future. If, 
 then, the moment of experience overflow the mathematical 
 instant, there is no a priori reason why it should be
 
 140 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 only over the series behind us and not also over the series 
 before us. Yet it seems difficult, and even in a certain 
 sense paradoxical, to suppose that the present moment of 
 experience can embrace instants mathematically future, as 
 well as instants mathematically past. Why ? I think it 
 is due to an assumption. We naturally and unconsciously 
 assume that the mathematical instant is original and inde- 
 pendent of experience, and that the moment of experience 
 is the comparative failure of consciousness to grasp or 
 apprehend this reality in its purity. The moment of experi- 
 ence is then the more or less successful attempt to get a sharp 
 focus of a reality which itself possesses ideal precision. On 
 such an assumption there are two very strong reasons for 
 holding that the moment of experience is the stretch of time 
 from the present mathematical instant back through a 
 certain series of past mathematical instants and never 
 forward into the future. The first reason is the law of 
 parsimony. If the mathematical instant is what conscious- 
 ness is striving to grasp, everything which can be excluded 
 from it will be. In other words, experience will strive to 
 make its moment coincide with the mathematical instant, 
 and so far from darting in front of it will lag behind it as 
 little as possible. The other reason is that the past mathe- 
 matical instants, having already been experienced, can be 
 retained in the present, whereas future instants, not having 
 occurred, cannot be retained. 
 
 It seems to me that to assume the independence and 
 originality of the mathematical instant is without any 
 justification. Also it leads to a kind of absurdity, for if the 
 mathematical instant be real then the real has no duration, 
 and the experience of duration is illusion. There can be 
 no ground for such an assumption, just because experience 
 is itself the highest court of appeal. On the other hand, 
 to hold that the moment of experience is original and 
 absolute is not an assumption, because experience is itself 
 the ground of all implications, inferences and assumptions 
 whatever. The mathematical instant is not an absolute 
 reality, because in the first place it is abstract, not concrete, 
 and in the second place it is part of an intellectual scheme.
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 141 
 
 This scheme is a device by which we represent reality. If 
 reality be activity we can only present it to the mind as a 
 continuity of change, and this must appear as a division 
 between what is formed, or acted, or made, and what is 
 forming, or acting, or making, and the moving centre of the 
 activity will be represented in thought as a point or limit 
 dividing past and future. The point will be the ideal 
 abstract centre of the activity, and the moment of experi- 
 ence will be the concrete concept of the activity, and will 
 therefore of necessity hold within it something which in 
 the abstract is past, in the sense that it is before the abstract 
 centre, and something which in the abstract is future, in 
 the sense that it comes after the abstract centre. But only 
 in the abstract meaning of mathematics will past and future 
 be distinguishable parts of the moment, and, as so dis- 
 tinguished, past, present and future are unreal abstractions 
 synthesized in the concrete concept. 
 
 We are not, however, entirely dependent on analysis of 
 the concept of present activity to prove that mathematical 
 instants abstractly future form part of the moment of 
 experience. There are actual facts of experience which 
 are difficult to explain if it be not so. In the case of all 
 expressive action gesture, speech, writing, etc. the whole 
 meaning to be expressed is intuitively present in every 
 moment of the expression as it proceeds. Were it other- 
 wise, we should be in the impossible position of striving 
 to express what did not exist to be expressed. A musical 
 melody, a proposition, a sentence, even an exclamation, will 
 occur to every one as cases in point. If, then, expression 
 imply intuition (I am not using the word intuition here in 
 a technical sense), it is impossible to schematize the moments 
 of the expression unless they can advance beyond the 
 mathematical present instant. For example, can I suppose 
 that when I am pronouncing the word " London " the 
 second syllable is not within the specious present until I 
 have completed the pronunciation of the first, although 
 the first is admittedly within the present when I am pro- 
 nouncing the second ? Psychological analysis of the act 
 of reading has brought out the fact quite convincingly
 
 142 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 that mental apprehension is always ahead of the actually 
 sensed word. 
 
 There is also another familiar experience which appears to 
 me to throw considerable light on the nature of the duration 
 of the moment. Every one has probably at some time had 
 the experience of being awakened from sleep by some sense- 
 excitation, such as a knock at the chamber door, a word 
 spoken into the ear, or a touch on some part of the body, 
 and experiencing this sense-excitation as the conclusion 
 of a long, intricate and complex dream. Unless we are to 
 suppose in such cases a miracle of coincidence, we know for 
 certain that the sense-stimulus was the occasion of the 
 dream of which it seemed to form the natural climax. Does 
 not this show that a long-enduring psychical experience can 
 take place during what in normal waking life we call a 
 moment, and also that this duration can appear to the mind 
 as preceding the event which we afterwards know has 
 occasioned it ? The least such facts show is that we can 
 have no more ground for excluding future instants from the 
 moment of experience than we have for excluding past. 
 
 I will now try and present the problem of the duration 
 of the moment of experience in complete dialectical form. 
 The concept of duration has formal diversity or difference 
 within it. This difference consists of two elements, past 
 and future, each of which in the abstract, and apart from 
 the unity of the whole concept, is a pure negation. The 
 past is not, the future is not, and all that is not past is future, 
 and all that is not future is past, there is no present. The 
 concrete concept in which these contradictory elements are 
 synthesized is the moment of experience. The formal 
 problem therefore may be solved in the manner of the 
 Hegelian logic. We have a dialectical triad exactly ful- 
 filling the conditions of Hegel's first concrete category, in 
 which becoming is the synthesis of being and nothing. Let 
 us give it the full Hegelian form. The thesis is the duration 
 we affirm to be present. The antithesis is the past and 
 future of which all duration entirely consists, and both 
 are opposite and contradictory to the idea of present. 
 The synthesis is experience, every moment of which holds
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 143 
 
 together the abstract contradictions of thesis and antithesis 
 in a concept which is concrete, universal and real. But 
 this is only a first degree of reality. The moment of experi- 
 ence implies more than bare union of the abstract con- 
 tradictions, past and future, in a duration span. It implies 
 a higher concept, that is the concept of a higher degree of 
 reality, in which past and future are not independent 
 elements, held together by the external relation of the 
 apprehending consciousness. This higher degree of reality 
 we find in the concept of activity. The moment of experi- 
 ence is the moment of conscious activity. In the concept 
 of activity, past, present and future are a systematic unity, 
 essential elements of an organic whole. The elements are 
 organically present in the whole, that is, the past is not 
 merely past, it is contained in the present, and the future 
 is not merely future, it is being fashioned in the present. 
 Past and future are therefore in the concept of activity 
 no longer abstract contradictions, but essential to the unity 
 of the concept. Before I attempt to point out the further 
 implications of the concept of activity I will consider the 
 second problem I indicated, that which concerns the quality 
 or matter of the moment of experience, as distinct from its 
 quantity or form. 
 
 The moment of experience is one of a series of moments. 
 We distinguish it from the past moment we remember and 
 from the future moments we imagine. So viewed, it appears 
 to us to endure so short a time that we find it practically 
 impossible to realize that it is, before it has already passed 
 into the series of moments which can only be remembered. 
 Yet the fact is that as experience the moment is continuous, 
 it is only from the standpoint of its content that it is for ever 
 ceasing and for ever being renewed. The objective mark 
 of the moment of experience is therefore the special nature 
 of the content. It is only in the moment of experience we 
 have the kind of knowledge we call sensation. Every one 
 recognizes it and knows that it is different from every other 
 kind of knowledge whatever. All knowledge is, for the 
 subject of experience, within the moment of experience, even 
 the kinds of knowledge we call memory and imagination,
 
 144 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 but the objects to which memory and imagination or fantasy 
 refer are not within the moment of experience as the objects 
 of sensation are. The object present to the mind in sensa- 
 tion is therefore named by some philosophers the sense- 
 datum, and the moment of experience is defined by them as 
 the period of time within which an object must lie hi order 
 to be a sense-datum. 
 
 The problem, then, is this : Are sense-data objects in 
 their own right, objects which stand to the mind in a 
 relation of direct acquaintance, and is it these objects which 
 give to the moment of experience its privilege ? Or, is it 
 the nature of conscious activity, the nature of the mental 
 grasp or apprehension of reality, in a word, the nature of 
 life, which gives to the moment of experience its special 
 character of unmediated reality ? According to one view 
 sense-data are certain definite objects which at a certain 
 moment are or may be present to a mind, and the moment 
 we call now, or the specious present, is distinguished from 
 other moments before and after, by the fact that it is the 
 only moment in which sense-data are so present. We 
 need not object that the moments are described in spatial 
 terms, there is no other way of expressing the meaning, for 
 in this view sense-data are not events which occur, but 
 objects which appear. The opposite view is that sense-data 
 have no independent status : they cannot be treated as 
 a class of entities separable or distinguishable from the 
 moment of experience as its apprehended content, for there 
 are no objects which are not events. 
 
 Let us be clear, too, as to what the problem is not. It 
 is not the question of the real existence of physical objects, 
 nor is it the question of the validity of the inference from 
 phenomena to a cause of phenomena. It is not, that is to 
 say, the question of the independent existence of the objects 
 or material things which physical science is supposed to 
 require as its postulate, nor is it the question whether the 
 fact of sensations involves the concept of an independent 
 cause of sensations. Sensation so far as we are concerned 
 is ultimate fact, it supposes a sensing mind and a sensed 
 object, these are part of its notion, but it does not necessarily
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 145 
 
 suppose that either mind or object is anything at all outside 
 or independent of the sensation. 
 
 Let us then consider the quality of the moment of 
 experience, sensation. If we analyse sensation into act 
 of sensing, sense-datum, and relation of acquaintance ; or, 
 into subject-mind, object-datum, and knowing-relation ; or, 
 in any way which enables us to treat the sense-datum as 
 constant and the relation as variable, we have a psycho- 
 logical difficulty which it is impossible to ignore. This is 
 that the variety and multiplicity of sense-data, and their 
 quality or character in the moment of experience, are not 
 due only to the variety, multiplicity and character of the 
 sense-excitations, and the multiplicity is not only due to the 
 amount of clock-time the moment covers ; there is a quali- 
 tative and quantitative difference in sensations themselves 
 depending on the nature, organization, situation and special 
 function of the sense-organs. To the ordinary view this 
 offers no difficulty, but on the other hand serves to explain 
 many facts. We classify sensations by their source in the 
 different sense-organs before we classify them by what we 
 may call their apport. But the apport is everything, is 
 fixed and absolute, if the sense-datum is constant, and in- 
 dependent of the act of sensing. 
 
 There is a still greater difficulty for the view that sense- 
 data are constant, in the fact of attention. The mind can 
 be attentive or inattentive to its sensations and in any degree. 
 I may listen to what some one is saying, my eyes the while 
 fixed on his gesture and action, and be wholly inattentive 
 to what I am seeing and attentive only to what I am hearing, 
 or wholly inattentive to what I am hearing while attentive 
 to what I am seeing, or I may be actively attentive to both 
 at once. In fact I can turn my attention off and on, I can 
 concentrate it on one minute sensation or expand it to take 
 in the whole range of my senses at once, and all within the 
 moment of experience. How am I to express all this if I 
 take the standpoint of objective sense-data to which the 
 relation of the mind is acquaintance ? A sense-datum can 
 admit no difference of degree, nor yet can the relation of 
 acquaintance. But attention introduces an infinity of 
 
 L
 
 146 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 degrees in my actual sense-data. The difference between 
 attention and inattention will, on the view I am considering, 
 have to be explained away as an illusion or subjective 
 appearance, for the difference apparently due to attention 
 must be an actual difference of sense-data themselves. 
 
 This leads me to my chief criticism of the sense-datum 
 theory, I mean the theory that a sense-datum is constant. 
 If we adopt it we cannot possibly explain the perception of 
 change, and we must suppose that what we perceive and call 
 change is not what we conceive change to be, but an illusion 
 produced in us by the succession of sense-data. What we 
 suppose to be change must really be the simultaneous sensing 
 of sense-data which are themselves successive. And there 
 is another fact which we cannot explain on this theory, 
 the special privilege which attaches to the moment of 
 experience. This moment stands out in our lives not only 
 as possessing special and overwhelming importance to 
 ourselves, because in it we are acquainted with the objects 
 which out of that relation we can only describe, but because 
 into that moment is crowded the whole of reality. Outside 
 that moment there is only what did exist or will exist, 
 nothing that does exist. 
 
 These two facts, first that in the moment of experience 
 we perceive change, and second that into this moment of 
 experience in some way, not only our own reality as minds 
 knowing, but the reality of things known, is gathered, 
 demand of human thought that it should seek to discover 
 their metaphysical ground. They present to us a problem 
 which can only be solved by the method of philosophy. 
 This method is the analysis of the concept to discover its 
 implications, then to follow those implications into the 
 system which gives us their reality in a higher degree. 
 
 We have seen that in the concept of activity the contra- 
 dictions to which the duration of a present moment gives 
 rise are overcome in a systematic unity. Activity implies 
 that past and future are together in organized union in 
 the present. The moment of experience is the moment of 
 activity. The concept of activity implies change. Change 
 is not mere succession, the alternation of existence and non-
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 147 
 
 existence, it is becoming, the becoming actual of what was 
 potential. Change implies continuity. The new creation 
 which constitutes it is the new form or order which the 
 old undergoes. Where there is real change, existence and 
 non-existence have no place as categories of reality. The 
 categories of change are, making, acting, doing, opposed 
 to which are, made, acted, done. If reality be change, 
 reality cannot cease to be, cannot give place to nought. 
 The absolute expression of it is " making itself." Past 
 and future are therefore no longer the distinction of what 
 is not from what is. 
 
 We have an illustration, we might even say an exact 
 application, of this metaphysical doctrine in the scientific 
 concept of energy. Energy is in modern scientific theory 
 the ultimate concept of reality, and the law of its conserva- 
 tion is not a description of facts nor is it the formulation of a 
 probability based on the observation of invariable sequence. 
 So far as empirical facts are concerned, they are diverse, 
 disconnected, independent of one another. We can classify 
 them more or less conveniently ; group them into the 
 phenomena of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc., we 
 can even, by observing sequences, predict them with more 
 or less confidence, but all that experience warrants us in 
 saying is that they are or that they are not. Physical 
 science has replaced this idea of existence and non-existence 
 with the concept of a reality which cannot not-exist, and 
 which preserves its identity throughout complete change 
 of its form or order. When energy completes its cycle of 
 change it does not cease to exist, it passes from the kinetic 
 to the latent order. It may be said that this concept of 
 conservation is not a fact but only a convenient generaliza- 
 tion. It is a generalization, however, implied in the very 
 possibility of physical science, and which cannot be even 
 called in doubt without destroying the basis of scientific 
 explanation. 
 
 Strict empiricism would in fact as effectually destroy 
 physical science as it destroys philosophy. Observation of 
 fact which abjures implication is sterile. So in philosophy, 
 if we be content to conceive reality as a panorama or moving
 
 148 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 procession and the mind as a spectator contemplating the 
 passing show, then the moment of experience has no intrinsic 
 privilege, its apparent privilege is due to the fact that it 
 happens to be the moment at which we are spectators, and 
 our sense-data are what happens to be offered to us at that 
 moment. But conceive reality as change and one moment is 
 at once raised to the privilege of actuality with respect to 
 every other moment. 
 
 The concept of change appears to me, therefore, to be of 
 capital importance in philosophy. If change be original, 
 that is to say, if change be the necessary logical antecedent 
 of things, and if fixity in every form be the work of the 
 mind, and if it be this original change which we perceive 
 in the moment of experience, then both the nature and the 
 form of that moment are made manifest. The moment of 
 experience is the moment of activity ; activity is the moment 
 of change ; change is the continuity of the past in present 
 creation. Change is not succession but self-making. The 
 apprehension of change in a moment of consciousness 
 implies therefore the holding together, in that moment, 
 past and present, and past as present, an activity of self- 
 making or creation. This is the concept of life. 
 
 This concept of life is the highest concept we can 
 reach, for in it we grasp intellectually the reality we know 
 intuitively. In the moment of experience we live as well 
 as know, and we know in living the very reality we objectify 
 in knowing. The whole process of living thought, as distinct 
 from the life itself, is the making explicit, the expressing 
 in the concept what is implicit in the intuition. But as 
 intuition life is all-inclusive, whereas the moment of experi- 
 ence is essentially exclusive. It is an infinitesimal fraction 
 even of our individual life, whatever be its relation to 
 universal life. The moment of experience is the concen- 
 tration of consciousness on a small and quite dispropor- 
 tionate part of the full reality of the individual life of the 
 conscious experient. What is the principle of this concen- 
 tration of consciousness on a fraction of the whole, or of this 
 contraction of all reality into a moment ? The moment 
 of experience is the moment of attention to life.
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 149 
 
 The moment of experience is for us a moment of con- 
 sciousness. When we speak of our conscious moments we 
 distinguish consciousness from life, and consciousness then 
 appears to us as a form of vital activity, a phenomenon 
 which supervenes on life itself. The moment of conscious- 
 ness is not a moment of life, that is to say, life is not a 
 multiplicity of moments or composed of momentary elements, 
 some conscious, some not. An infinitely small portion of 
 the individual life comes within the moment of conscious- 
 ness when compared with the duration of memory and the 
 extension of sense perception. In the activity of attention 
 consciousness moves over a wide range of past and present, 
 lighting up in its brief duration some selection from the 
 memories of past experience, some selection from present 
 sense experience. Life is itself infinitely wider than con- 
 sciousness, and the moment of consciousness is not the 
 moment of life but the momentary consciousness of life. 
 
 If, then, we recognize that consciousness has supervened 
 on life, and ask ourselves what is its nature and its relation 
 to vital activity, two views are possible. We may suppose 
 that consciousness is just awareness, and that the life 
 which has acquired it has thereby endowed itself with a 
 power of contemplating and representing itself and its 
 environment. In that case the momentary character of 
 consciousness will be altogether mysterious, a fact to be 
 accepted but impossible to understand. On the other 
 hand, we may see in its momentary character its true 
 significance. Consciousness is momentary because it arises 
 at the call of a certain kind of activity. It is as it were a 
 light shed on the focus or centre of activity to serve the 
 action going forward. The terms we have to employ light, 
 focus, centre, etc., are of necessity metaphorical. Con- 
 sciousness is the unique experience we know as awareness. 
 There is nothing contradictory in supposing that our whole 
 life with its continuous past, its full present, and its pro- 
 spective range and activity might be through and through 
 conscious, an awareness evenly dispersed over the whole 
 range of activity, not concentrated round the focus, but 
 such consciousness would not serve the mode of activity
 
 150 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 for which our whole organization seems contrived. This 
 organized activity requires that all which does not interest 
 the particular action we are engaged on shall be shut out 
 from our consciousness in order that attention at the centre 
 may have full illumination. Biology confirms this. It 
 shows us, throughout the whole range of life, species 
 organized for characteristic action within a definite zone or 
 sphere of activity. Every living creature is fixed in an 
 attitude of attention to life, an attitude bending it forward 
 to the action which is forming before it, closing behind it 
 and shutting out from its consciousness whatever is not 
 calculated to serve or to contribute to the efficiency of its 
 special activity. To the extent that its action is chosen 
 and free the life must become conscious, and the mode of 
 this consciousness determines the range of its freedom, and 
 the form or mode of the activity conditions the objective 
 order of reality in the experience. 
 
 We are able then to deduce the momentary character of 
 consciousness from the nature of life. But on the other 
 hand our whole knowledge of life rests ultimately on our 
 experience in the moment of consciousness. It is only, 
 therefore, by the implication of the concept of a moment, 
 itself an actual experience, that we reach the concept of a 
 reality wider and more fundamental than the moment, yet 
 identical with it. This reality is life. It is the philosophic 
 concept of an original activity, not conditioned by the 
 moments of experience, which are the form in which it comes 
 to consciousness, nor by the content of those moments, 
 that is, by sense-data which are the objective aspect of the 
 experience, but itself conditioning the order of experience 
 and the content of experience by the mode of its own 
 activity. We reach the concept by the same process which 
 led Kant to affirm the reality of the thing-in-itself, but 
 unlike the concept of Kant it is not a reality by its very 
 definition unknowable ; on the contrary, it is known in 
 its immediacy and its form is not arbitrary but deduced 
 from its nature. 
 
 There is the alternative theory. We may say, and many 
 philosophers do, that what is implied hi the moment of
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 151 
 
 experience is not an original activity creating an objective 
 order, but the independent reality of an objective order. 
 The moment of experience in this view brings the mind 
 into direct relation with the real continuity of a spatial and 
 temporal order and with an arrangement of physical elements 
 within that order. This seems to agree with pre-philosophic 
 common sense. It is well, therefore, to follow out the logical 
 consequences of such a theory. 
 
 In order to appreciate this alternative theory let us 
 briefly recall the fact. We all acknowledge that normal 
 experience consists of a present moment which endures 
 for a period variously estimated to occupy from 3 to 
 12 seconds of clock- time. Within that moment we dis- 
 criminate spatial extension and temporal duration. There 
 is a limit to the discrimination, and many laboratory ex- 
 periments have been devised for the purpose of deter- 
 mining it. It is said, for instance, that for the visual sense 
 the extreme discrimination is an interval of y^^th of a 
 second. The character or quality of the moment of experi- 
 ence is sensation. It is only in that moment that we have 
 sensation. We perceive and remember in that moment, 
 but it is the sensation, to which what we perceive or 
 remember is attached, which gives the moment its distinc- 
 tive mark. The whole content of that moment is dis- 
 tinguished as present experience from what is past and 
 future, yet within it, though all content is present, there is a 
 distinction of before and after. This in general terms is the 
 scientific and psychological description of the fact we name 
 the moment of experience. What, then, is the problem ? 
 The problem is the nature of the unity of the moment and 
 of the continuity of the elements we discriminate within it. 
 If the reality be the three to twelve seconds of mathe- 
 matically measured instants and the definite number of 
 sense-data this period covers, then the moment of experience 
 is nothing more than the limit of the mind's span of an 
 objective succession. The continuity of that moment will 
 be the mathematical continuity of points in a line and 
 instants in a succession. The continuity of an extension 
 in mathematics means that between any two points another
 
 152 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 can be found, so that there is never a next point to any point, 
 and similarly the continuity of a duration means that there 
 is never a next instant to any instant, but that between any 
 two instants another can be found. What, then, is the 
 logical consequence of adopting this view ? It is that there 
 can be no numerical identity between the moments, the 
 series or succession of which corresponds with our lives. 
 The reality of life must consist of a series of distinct move- 
 ments, whose instantaneity and continuity are mathematical. 
 Life imaged as psychical duration must be an illusion. 
 
 This then is the position to which the alternative theory 
 leads. It was, I suppose, practically the position of 
 Descartes, of Malebranche, and of Berkeley, and it did 
 not dismay them, but then they could fall back on the 
 philosophical concept of a deity. Each perishing instant 
 called forth in their view a new act of creation by God. 
 But there is no place in present-day philosophy for such a 
 concept. It is not on this account that I reject it, but 
 because mathematical continuity and scientific causality 
 seem to me wholly insufficient factors to account for the 
 living activity I am directly conscious of in the moment 
 of experience. 
 
 Consciousness, then, in its special form of knowing or 
 awareness, illuminates our activity at the central point of 
 progressing action. It is concentrated in a focus of atten- 
 tion when the activity is intense and the situation is novel. 
 It is dispersed and relaxed when the situation is familiar 
 and the action automatic. There is a zone of consciousness 
 within which knowing is sense experience. This is the 
 present which we distinguish from past and future. Mathe- 
 matically the present is a point without duration and without 
 special privilege ; the last instant of a series going back 
 into the past and the first of a series going forward 
 into the future. Psychologically the present is a duration, 
 very brief in comparison with the vista of the past and the 
 prospect of the future but with definite content. The 
 moment of experience is a specious present ; it is not 
 an instant without duration but a determinate span of 
 duration.
 
 CHAP, vi THE MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE 153 
 
 The moment of experience enables us to understand 
 how history can be altogether present. The moment of 
 actual sensing has beginning and end, its parts are all 
 in the relation of before and after one another, yet the whole 
 moment is distinguished by its content as present existence 
 from past and future moments. In the moment of experi- 
 ence before and after are not past and future but altogether 
 present in the meaning that they are sensed and not 
 remembered or anticipated. There is nothing absolute in 
 the limitations of a moment of experience, yet the moment 
 is circumscribed and its circumscription is in fact specific 
 in living creatures. It is relative to the range of activity. 
 It is the moment of attention to life and the point of insertion 
 in reality. The moment of experience with its grasp of 
 duration is an essential condition of activity. The concept 
 of activity presupposes the past retained in the present and 
 forming the future. Organic activity is the past acting in 
 the present. Activity is inconceivable as mathematical 
 continuity. The beginning and end of an action are not 
 divisible into separate events and the action cannot be 
 dissolved into a series of instants. There is only activity 
 where the past is present with a hold on the future. 
 
 Reality is history and history is self-creative. We see 
 the process in being in the moment of experience. Knowing 
 is not awareness of what is or is not, but the grasp or appre- 
 hension of becoming. In the immediate knowledge of the 
 moment of experience, what we are aware of is change, and 
 the object of awareness is an event.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MEMORY THE FUNDAMENTAL FACT IN EXPERIENCE 
 
 To touch the reality of spirit we must place ourselves at the point 
 where an individual consciousness, continuing and retaining the past in a 
 present enriched by it, thus escapes the law of necessity, the law which 
 ordains that the past shall ever follow itself in a present which merely 
 repeats it in another form and that all things shall ever be flowing away. 
 BERGSON. 
 
 THE moment of experience is a true duration. It is not 
 a succession of instants one of which alone exists while the 
 rest are non-existent and remembered or not yet existent 
 and anticipated. It is true duration because within it the 
 whole content is present and existing. That is to say, there 
 cannot be within the moment of experience a distinction 
 between what exists and what does not exist, for to exist 
 is to be within the moment of experience ; to be present, 
 or now. Psychologists, as we have seen, have recognized 
 this fact, to a certain extent, in the theory of the specious 
 present, but only partially and without accepting its full 
 significance. It is clear, for example, that an event, however 
 brief its duration, in order to be an event must have unity. 
 It seems, however, that this unity can only consist in the 
 mental image the mind forms of the event. For an event 
 has beginning and end, and these cannot be simultaneous, 
 they are the first and last instants of a series of constituent 
 instants which in reality are essentially discrete and 
 unconnected. Physical science seems to confirm this, for 
 the briefest period hi which we can discriminate an event as 
 a unity (for a visual event something approaching the T ^th 
 of a second) is demonstrably composed of hundreds of billions 
 of discrete events and there is no possibility in thought of 
 
 154
 
 CHAP, vn MEMORY 155 
 
 setting a limit to this discreteness. If an event be thought 
 of in this way, if we distinguish the discreteness of its 
 instants as its reality, from the mental image as its unity, 
 then we are forced to the absurd conclusion that in reality 
 nothing exists, for all the component instants of the event 
 apart from the mental image are past or future and there- 
 fore non-existent, and the present is only a limit between 
 the two series and therefore neither an event nor part of an 
 event. Psychologists have recognized the impasse and in 
 the theory of the specious present have reformed the 
 concept of an event. The now of experience is not for them 
 the mathematical present instant, it contains with this a 
 bit of the past and a bit of the future united or held together. 
 But if past and future are non-existent their union will not 
 produce existence. Adding nought to nought will yield 
 nought. In other words, if the event be real and be con- 
 stituted of discrete elements, the discrete elements must 
 be existent not non-existent. If past and future are non- 
 existing their union or inclusion will not constitute an 
 existing present. 
 
 Is there not however a way of getting round the difficulty ? 
 It is not, it will be said, the actual past and future instants 
 which are held together in the specious present, but their 
 apport or content, which the mind retains in an ideal form 
 when they are non-existent. Let us admit that the past 
 was but is not, that the present is without duration, 
 and that the future is not but will be ; have we not the 
 fact that the past has been, and the future will be, and 
 may not the present be the actual passing of the will-be 
 into the has - been ? Is not this fact, which in the 
 moment of experience we may be said actually and 
 directly to observe, enough to constitute the reality 
 of the event ? This is not a way of escape. An 
 event is wholly existent and wholly one, it is not partly 
 existent and partly non-existent. What I perceive as 
 existing now is not made into an event by my remembering 
 what existed before. Something more is necessary. The 
 actual past must be existing in what is present. It admits 
 no breach however infinitesimal. Equally it holds that the
 
 156 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 future not merely will be but is actually existing in the 
 present. Let past and future be in any sense non-existent, 
 or, if you will, non-present, and the event is non-existent. 
 Posit the mind and over against it a formless manifold, 
 suppose the mind the sole agent, support, and substance of 
 events, and then the events indeed may be considered 
 as composed of non-existence, but the mind is wholly 
 present and existent, and the problem of past, present and 
 future arises immediately in regard to it. Or again we may 
 conceive God performing the function which Berkeley con- 
 ceived necessary, keeping our perceptions in existence 
 when we are not perceiving them, but then again we 
 shall have the problem of past, present and future in 
 the continuity of God. Try in what way we will, we shall 
 find it a priori impossible to constitute existence out of 
 non-existence. 
 
 We are all acquainted with reality in the fact that we 
 are living, sensing, thinking, willing, acting, beings. It 
 certainly seems to us that the primary characteristic of this 
 reality is that there is a present moment sharply distinguished 
 from past and from future moments, and this sharp dis- 
 tinction seems to lie in the fact that the present is existent, 
 the others non-existent. We are sensible of the present, 
 we remember the past, we imagine the future, but our 
 memory of the past and our anticipation of the future are 
 both within the sensible present. So then even if we 
 admit that in a sense within the moment of experience past 
 and future are present and there is no distinction of existence 
 and non-existence, yet between the moment of experience 
 and other moments there is the fundamental distinction 
 between existence and non-existence. Clearly if there be 
 no difficulty in conceiving the moments external to the 
 present moment as non-existing, there can be no difficulty 
 in thinking the instants within the moment non-existing. Is 
 it then a fact that between the moment of experience and 
 the preceding and succeeding moments there is this dis- 
 tinction ? Directly we face the problem from the point of 
 view of the concept of life we see that the concept of past, 
 present and future as a distinction of existing from non-
 
 CHAP, vn MEMORY 157 
 
 existing moments is a contradiction. The concept of life 
 involves the existence of past and future in a present 
 moment and involves their existence not in the shadow form 
 of memory-images and ideas but in the concrete and com- 
 prehensive and fundamental meaning which we give to the 
 word existence. How come we then to view reality as a 
 passing of existence into non-existence and a coming of 
 non-existence to existence ? How come we to class past, 
 present and future as a series of moments distinguished 
 fundamentally by the predicate of existence ? It cannot 
 be a fundamental distinction in reality but it is a way in 
 which by our very nature and the mode of our activity we 
 view reality. It is an artifice or device which characterizes 
 our intellectual mode of activity, and in proof that it is not 
 fundamental we need only appeal to the logical principle 
 itself, ex nihilo nihil fit. It is unthinkable that non- 
 existence can be the ground of existence. 
 
 What then is the fundamental fact in experience ? If 
 the foregoing argument is sound the fundamental fact hi 
 experience is memory. But in this case memory is not a 
 faculty which some species of living creatures have acquired ; 
 it is real existence and the basis of living activity. Con- 
 scious experience depends on memory as its condition. By 
 this is not meant merely that knowledge implies a power of 
 remembering the past, much less that memory is the present 
 recollection by the mind of the non-existent past ; what is 
 meant is that memory is the actual and active existence 
 in the present of what has been acting and indeterminate, 
 but now is acted and determined. Memory can no more be 
 detached from experience and experience remain, than the 
 stuff of which anything consists can be detached from the 
 thing which consists of it. 
 
 This is not a view that we find at all easy to accept. It 
 seems opposed to the plainest direction of the science of the 
 mind. It appears self-evident and clear to the most ordinary 
 reflexion that the fundamental fact in consciousness must be 
 sensation. Almost instinctively psychology begins with the 
 description of sensation, and it not only seems that nothing 
 is more ultimate and more fundamental, but that it could
 
 158 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 exist unsupported and is itself the basis of all experience and 
 the primitive psychical fact out of which the higher powers of 
 the mind have been evolved. We may discover that sensa- 
 tion depends on physiological conditions of organization ; 
 that it comes late if not last in the biological order ; but so 
 far as knowing is concerned it is first, the foundation from 
 which all knowledge is raised, and last, for the ultimate 
 constituents into which the most developed knowledge can 
 be resolved are sensations. The primary purpose of sensa- 
 tion appears to be responsive action by the organism, and 
 this seems to develop into a higher power, that of perceiving 
 present existing external reality ; and superposed on per- 
 ception, as a kind of extension of it, there seems to have 
 been developed the still higher power of memory, which by 
 enabling us to retain the perception in the form of an image 
 or idea, gives us the means of organizing experience. The 
 order of genesis of experience seems therefore to be, first, 
 sense impressions accompanied by specific responses ; 
 second, the perception of the objects which are the occasion 
 of the sense impressions and the formation of images ; 
 third, the retention and recall of the images formed in 
 perception. And this last endowment of the organism, 
 memory, enables us to organize experience into systems 
 of science which give us control over the environment. 
 This seems to us not only the natural order in which the 
 special phenomena of conscious experience have evolved, 
 but the very principle of evolution itself which proceeds 
 from the simple to the complex. 
 
 Why then are we called on to reject this clear and straight- 
 forward account, supported as it is by the whole of natural 
 science, and the whole of mental science as represented by 
 psychology ? Because we find that it will not stand the 
 test of a philosophical principle. When we submit this 
 process to philosophical analysis we discover, generally to 
 our astonishment, that not sensation but memory is the 
 fundamental fact in experience which conditions everything. 
 Perception is then seen to depend upon memory and not 
 vice versa, and sensation to depend on perception. It seems 
 a paradox. It seems equivalent to affirming the con-
 
 CHAP. VII 
 
 MEMORY 159 
 
 tradictory proposition that there may be memory (not 
 merely as a potentiality, but as an actuality) when as yet 
 there is nothing to remember. When however we analyse 
 the concept of perception we see that what is essential in 
 it is recognition, and recognition supposes memory. This 
 problem of recognition is a problem of philosophy for it 
 is concerned with concepts. It brings out clearly that, not 
 merely theoretically but in actual fact, memory is the funda- 
 mental condition of conscious experience, the most concrete 
 fact in experience, while sensation is bare abstraction 
 incapable of being self-subsistent experience. 
 
 In the problem of the nature of recognition two ques- 
 tions arise which it is advisable to treat separately. 
 The first concerns the nature of the modification of a 
 cognition which constitutes it a recognition. This is the 
 problem of recognition, so far as its source is within the 
 individual's experience. The second is the question how 
 there can be recognition, as there appears to be, when 
 there is no conscious memory of the prior cognition. 
 This is the problem of recognition so far as its source is 
 beyond the individual's experience and in his ancestral 
 experience. The two questions together form one problem, 
 the nature of intelligent and instinctive recognition and their 
 relation. 
 
 In recognition there is, as distinctive of the experience, 
 an element we may describe as againness. It is the experi- 
 ence " had before," " seen already." The first question 
 concerns, therefore, the nature and genesis of the experience 
 of againness. The second question inquires how there can 
 be, as there certainly appears to be, recognition in the first 
 performance by an animal of an instinctive action. 
 
 These two questions may appear to be quite distinct and 
 to have nothing whatever in common, and some may object 
 that while the first is a question which can only be resolved 
 by subjective or introspective analysis and is therefore in 
 the full sense a question of philosophy, the second is merely 
 a question of descriptive natural history, and any theory 
 founded on the description can only be of quite secondary 
 philosophical importance. It must rest, they will say,
 
 160 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 almost entirely on analogy and if treated philosophically 
 cannot avoid the taint of anthropomorphism. I shall try 
 to show that this is not so. The two questions are in my 
 view very closely associated and are indeed part of one and 
 the same metaphysical problem. At the same time I propose 
 to keep them distinct. 
 
 There may be no pure cognition. Every cognition may 
 be a recognition, and a pure cognition may be a limiting 
 concept. In a developed consciousness such as ours, were 
 there only pure cognitions and no recognitions, there would 
 be no acquirement of meaning and therefore no experience in 
 the ordinary sense of the word. The recognitions hi present 
 experience may be the cognitions on which future recogni- 
 tions depend, and so likewise the cognitions on which present 
 recognitions depend may themselves have been recognitions. 
 Pure cognition, however, is theoretically conceivable, and 
 as an abstract possibility it forms part of the concept of 
 experience as a concrete reality. Logically and etymologic- 
 ally cognition is presupposed in recognition. Cognition is 
 the ground or condition of recognition. 
 
 If the second apprehension of an identical object or of an 
 identical event were a repetition of the first apprehension and 
 only numerically different from it, recognition would simply 
 be the addition of memory and judgment to the mental 
 act of apprehension. But plainly this is not the fact, for 
 there are cases of recognition in which there is no repetition 
 of any experience at all, and in most cases of recognition, 
 if not in all, even though there may seem to be a similarity 
 between a present experience and a past experience on which 
 a judgment of identity can be based, there is no similarity 
 in fact. If this be disputed it is at least certain that there 
 may be recognition where there is not even similarity 
 between the present recognized object and any previous 
 experience of that object whatever. 
 
 The term recognition, as distinct from the term cognition, 
 connotes that the meaning, or content, or implication of a 
 sense presentation is in some way already known : it is 
 the direct immediate apprehension of familiarity with the 
 object presented to us. The nature of this apprehension
 
 CHAP, vn MEMORY 161 
 
 of a mark of our own past experience in an object present 
 to sense or to thought is the problem of recognition. How 
 far can we directly observe the process of recognition at 
 work the process by which cognition acquires the modi- 
 fication which makes it recognition ? 
 
 Let me begin by taking some definite instances of what 
 every one would accept as cases of recognition. This 
 appears an easy thing because recognition is a perfectly 
 familiar experience. It is however peculiarly difficult, 
 and the difficulty is of a quite paradoxical nature, due to 
 a veritable embarras de richesse. I can find nothing else in 
 my cognitive experience but recognitions, and I cannot 
 therefore establish by a clear example what is a recognition 
 in distinction from what is only a cognition. Nevertheless 
 for practical purposes we make a clear and well-marked 
 distinction between what we term recognitions and the 
 cognitions on which they depend. It is only when we 
 analyse these cognitions that we find that they in their 
 turn are also recognitions. When we push our analysis to 
 the point of imagining the simplest conditions of cognition 
 and the absolutely unanalysable character of a first cognition 
 we are driven to hypostasize some theoretical being like 
 Condillac's statue and endow it with sense-organs one at a 
 time, and follow out the gradual complications of sense 
 experience from its hypothetically simple origin. It is 
 logic or epistemology which spurs us to the attempt, not 
 psychology. 
 
 (1) The young chick at first pecks instinctively at all 
 small objects. But experience very rapidly teaches it that 
 it is pleasant to peck at some things, such as yolk of egg, 
 or cabbage-moth caterpillars, and very unpleasant to peck 
 at others, such as cinnabar caterpillars or bits of orange peel. 
 The young chick profits by experience and thereby comes 
 to recognize objects. The latter experience we should call 
 recognition of objects in distinction from the earlier experi- 
 ence, and this earlier experience we should call cognition 
 in contrast to the later experience. 
 
 (2) I arrive at a town I have not visited before and take 
 a first stroll through its streets. All that I notice is new 
 
 M
 
 162 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 to me and I set to work to find my way about. After a 
 time or on a second stroll I am familiar with my surround- 
 ings, and I recognize what I see. The later cognitions I call 
 recognitions, as distinguished from the earlier ones on 
 which they depend, and which I then think of as cognitions 
 merely. 
 
 (3) Two friends are walking in the country for the enjoy- 
 ment of the exercise. Each is experiencing the same 
 exhilaration from the crisp air, the bright sunshine and the 
 beauty of the surroundings. One is an engineer, the other 
 a naturalist. Their recognitions are entirely distinct. The 
 one recognizes gradients, strains, actual or possible con- 
 structions, and the details of locomotive devices, which to 
 his companion are merely roads, banks, valleys, hills, 
 engines, etc. The other recognizes the character of the 
 vegetation, the nature of the soil and subsoil, the various 
 species of animals, which to his companion are merely green 
 grass, hedgerows, woods, and singing birds, etc. Here then 
 we have a practical difference between recognition and 
 general awareness. It is only part of experience which we 
 distinguish as recognition, and one man's recognitions are 
 different from another's, even when the sense stimuli of 
 each are, so far as they are external influences, identical. 
 
 (4) A favourite book of mine is Fielding's Tom Jones, but 
 the enjoyment it never fails to give me is due to something 
 literary and perhaps to something sympathetic in the author, 
 not to an interest in the plot. Yet I distinctly remember 
 the delightful surprise I experienced on the first reading 
 as the plot unfolded itself. This enjoyment can never 
 recur, and in this respect recognition, in giving me againness, 
 leaves me poorer. It illustrates, however, and this is why 
 I cite it, how recognition may depend upon an experi- 
 ence, the repetition of which the recognition itself renders 
 impossible. 
 
 With these illustrations of the use of the term recognition, 
 let me try and define it. Recognition is the whole content, 
 meaning, or significance, of a sense presentation in so far as 
 we have learnt that content, meaning, or significance, by 
 experience. What is recognized, or what we call objectively
 
 CHAP, vn MEMORY 163 
 
 the recognition, is what we have learnt by experience, and 
 learning by experience is a subjective process, by which I 
 mean an activity of the mind. I think we always mean this 
 by recognition. We perceive in what is present to sense 
 what we have learnt to know is this, that, or the other, and 
 the perception gives to the sense presentation the mark of 
 " already seen," " had before," " againness." Against this 
 definition it may be objected that we also use the term recog- 
 nition in describing purely instinctive behaviour, behaviour 
 which we characterize as action which is perfect at its very 
 first performance and therefore excludes the notion of learning 
 by experience. We say, for example, that animals recognize 
 their prey, or recognize their kin, or recognize a menace to 
 their life or to that of their offspring, and we apply the term 
 even to creatures which, like most of the insects, begin their 
 individual life without having known their parents and 
 whose knowledge cannot possibly have been acquired by 
 individual experience at all. Undoubtedly the use of the 
 term recognition in cases of pure instinct is derived from its 
 use in cases of rational knowledge, and many no doubt will 
 deny that there is any identity of fact underlying the use 
 of the term in the case of instinct. I think it is a right term 
 to use, although primarily it only means that the creature 
 acts as one acts who has learnt by experience and therefore 
 already knows. The difference between instinctive recog- 
 nition and intelligent recognition is that the mark of the 
 past in instinctive experience cannot be explained by 
 individual but only by racial experience ; it is innate or 
 congenital. Recognition always implies that there has 
 been past experience and that the individual has learnt 
 by it, though the past experience is not in cases of instinct 
 the individual's individual experience. 
 
 A more fundamental objection, however, will be raised. 
 To explain recognition as learning by experience is to 
 explain what is difficult to understand by something more 
 difficult to understand. Even if it be granted that recogni- 
 tion always depends on our having learnt by experience, 
 this will bring no solution of the problem. It simply over- 
 whelms the difficulty of accounting for a modification of a
 
 164 A THEORY OF MONADS PART u 
 
 present datum of experience by a mark of past experience 
 with the far greater difficulty of conceiving a process by 
 which the past can modify the present. I admit this 
 difficulty, and the main purpose of the present study is to 
 make it explicit. Recognition implies that we learn by 
 experience, and learning by experience implies mental 
 process modifying the data of knowledge. It implies also 
 that there are no unmodified data as ultimate constituents 
 of the reality we know, for if there were they would be 
 unrecognizable. 
 
 Many philosophers will also, I know, reject my order of 
 implication ab initio. Learning by experience, they will 
 say, implies recognition, and wholly depends upon it, whereas 
 recognition does not imply learning by experience, for it is 
 theoretically possible in minds whose knowledge is purely 
 contemplative. Indeed, such must necessarily be the order 
 of implication for those who hold that knowledge is essentially 
 contemplation. Recognition will be for them a perception 
 or a judgment of a relation between two terms one a 
 present sense-datum, the other a memory. 
 
 Recognition is immediate experience. The process which 
 has made it recognition is already past, and not to come. 
 The sense-datum, if we use that term to denote the actual 
 object present to the mind, has not to wait for the judgment 
 or perception of a relation, in order that it may become, 
 what as yet it is not, recognition. Take then any one of 
 my four cases and attempt to reduce it to the perception 
 or judgment of likeness between a present sense-datum 
 and remembered sense-data, and you will soon discover the 
 failure is absolute. Not only is there no identity (this is 
 obvious we might, perhaps, posit an identity of unperceived 
 substances, if that would help us at all, but there can be 
 no identity of sense-data), there is not even similarity. 
 Take the chick which first pecks the cinnabar caterpillar, 
 then afterwards rejects it, while it continues to peck the 
 cabbage caterpillar. The sense-data are entirely different 
 the second time, for the chick has learnt to distinguish the 
 objects, which as physical objects are unaltered ; that is to 
 say, the resemblance between the caterpillars, so far as the
 
 CHAP, vii MEMORY 165 
 
 resemblance is objective, has not disappeared on the second 
 occasion. The important thing is, that whatever the chick 
 knows about the caterpillar when, meeting it a second time, 
 it rejects it, is something it has learnt the first tune. If 
 it has learnt nothing the first time it will learn nothing by 
 repetition. Only if it has learnt something the first time 
 will it modify its action the second time. I have chosen 
 this particular illustration for its simplicity, as an instance 
 of intelligent, not of instinctive recognition. No one sup- 
 poses that logical processes take place in the mind of the 
 newly hatched chick. It is possible they do, but it is a 
 possibility most people would ignore. Now we may suppose 
 that recognition is the condition of learning by experience, 
 or we may suppose that it is the conditionate. If it be the 
 condition, we must suppose that there is a mental process, 
 involving a memory-image, an act of comparison and a 
 judgment or perception of a relation, as well as the present 
 perceptual matter. It seems to me highly improbable ; 
 but even if I suppose there is, learning by experience does 
 not necessarily follow ; whereas, if I suppose the animal 
 learns by experience, recognition is a necessary consequence. 
 Take the other illustrations. Unless I am learning by 
 experience in my first stroh 1 in the strange town, my second 
 stroll will be equally strange, there will be no recognition. 
 The sense-data will yield nothing on which a judgment of 
 identity can be based, for they are not the same nor similar. 
 So with the third and fourth illustrations, the recognition is 
 not the observation of a relation of likeness between sense- 
 data, I shall search for ever and in vain for any likeness. 
 Recognition is due to a progressive work of the mind 
 exercised at and from the beginning of experience, and con- 
 tinually throughout experience. It is not an external act 
 of comparison of the experience of one moment with that 
 of another and earlier moment, possibly only at the later 
 moment, and dependent simply on the power of the mind 
 to retain and revive a memory-image of the earlier moment. 
 I recognize in the later moment only what I have learnt 
 in the first moment, but to be able to recognize I must have 
 been learning by experience. Learning by experience is
 
 i66 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 not something which happens only on the repetition of a 
 particular experience, it is a primary process taking place 
 on the first occasion. 
 
 Learning by experience presupposes a distinction between 
 the mind and its objects. The expression itself implies that 
 there is something obstinately objective in the reality 
 opposed to thought, stubborn fact which the mind may 
 turn to practical advantage by understanding it and adapt- 
 ing conduct to it. It also supposes that what is past can 
 still, though past, modify present action. This seems to 
 be effected by the blending of memory with sensation in 
 perception. Learning by experience, further, positively ex- 
 cludes the notion of pure repetition. Every fresh instance 
 comes before the mind modified by previous experience. 
 
 The problem as it affects theory of knowledge may be 
 presented then as an inquiry into the a priori conditions of 
 recognition. What are the conditions of an experience in 
 which there is no repetition, but a continual modification 
 of the present by the past ? What is the meaning in such 
 an experience of " againness " ? What mental factors are 
 necessarily supposed and how do they bring about the 
 result ? And what do they imply as to the ultimate nature 
 of mind and reality ? The factors seem to me to be these : 
 (i) Retention. (2) Revival. (3) Discrimination. (4) Selec- 
 tion. (5) Habit-memory. (6) Pure Memory or Recollection. 
 
 I will briefly indicate what I mean by each : 
 
 (i) Retention is presence together in consciousness of 
 what is before with what is after in experience. It is the 
 holding together in a present duration-span of an experience 
 itself successive. 
 
 This duration - span of consciousness I have already 
 described as the moment of experience. The retention 
 implied in that phrase is the essential character of the 
 mind which makes connected experience or consciousness of 
 duration possible. Without it experience is inconceivable. 
 Were there no retention in this primary meaning, sense 
 impressions, did they exist, would be fleeting and perishing 
 as the stimuli which occasion them. 
 
 Retention appears to me the most direct and the most
 
 CHAP, vii MEMORY 167 
 
 obvious instance of the reality we name mind and the 
 clearest manifestation of its essential character. 
 
 (2) Revival is the recall of an experience after it has ceased 
 to be retained in present consciousness. It also is named 
 retention, because it implies that experience which has 
 passed out of consciousness is still retained. It is different, 
 however, from what I have called retention, for the revived 
 experience comes to consciousness without the peculiar 
 character of being present to sense and with the ghostly 
 character of a memory-image. It is revival which makes 
 the past appear to us a continuous objective reality, to any 
 part of which we can turn our attention, in the same way 
 as that in which we turn our attention to any part of the 
 objective reality we call spatial. 
 
 (3) By discrimination I mean that experience can be dis- 
 sociated or disintegrated on any principle and the elements 
 so dissociated can be associated and redintegrated in any 
 order and on any principle. I include under discrimination 
 both disintegration and redintegration, for they seem to me 
 to form one mental activity. Each of our individual minds 
 seems distinguished from every other mind, not by its 
 objective experience, but by its own special centre of interest 
 and the standpoint from which it orders and arranges its 
 experience. 
 
 (4) By selection I mean the suppression or the exclusion 
 from consciousness, or the neglect by consciousness, of some 
 aspects of experience, or of some influences, which if 
 admitted would modify experience, or of some data which, 
 if attended to and not neglected, would tend to make 
 experience an undifferentiated whole instead of a discrete 
 reality. The discreteness of the objective world of our 
 knowledge is due to the mental work of selection. The 
 selection is exercised automatically in the first instance by 
 the sense-organs, and by many of the neural mechanisms 
 of the brain, but also directly by the mind itself. 
 
 (5) Habit-memory fixes past experience by setting up 
 motor dispositions in the brain. It is a memory which 
 repeats or re-acts the past as distinguished from a memory 
 which surveys it.
 
 168 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 (6) Pure memory, or recollection, is the past preserved 
 as a record. It enables us to date our experience. It is 
 more than schematization in a tune order and space order. 
 It apprehends an absolute or integral time order, every 
 part of which is in an indissoluble relation of time and 
 circumstance with every other part. 
 
 These seem to me the essential factors of recognition. 
 They are not hypothetical, but the essential facts in our 
 experience which enable us to form concepts of mind and 
 of the modes of its activity. I do not conceive the factors 
 I have distinguished as separate activities assembled in 
 the mind or in the organism, or as separate characters or 
 attributes of the mind sometimes present in, sometimes 
 absent from, its activity. And I do not conceive mind 
 as a general term, or class-name, to denote these specific 
 activities, for they imply a real substance and a real life. 
 All the activities I have distinguished, but especially the 
 last, pure memory or recollection, imply that the past is 
 recorded, that a register of it exists. Recollection is in- 
 conceivable as a fact and must be pure illusion unless there 
 exists a register of the past. The register seems to be 
 integral and independent of actual recollection. I do not 
 propose to enter on a full exposition of this theory. There 
 can be no doubt, I think, that there exists a register, for a 
 fact such as recollection is conditioned by it ; the only 
 question can be whether this register is in the mind or 
 the brain. In my view this register or record is the 
 substance of mind. I use the term substance only in 
 order to distinguish between mental stuff and mental life. 
 Memory is this stuff, but mind is not mere receptivity, a 
 growing record of external material, it is an active process. 
 
 The life of the mind is a continuous organization of 
 experience. The mind is not passive, waiting on experience 
 and passing judgment on it reflectively as it flows past. 
 The mind advances to meet experience, its attitude is not 
 contemplative but expectant. It is forward-looking, ready 
 prepared, ready organized to receive the external influences 
 reaction to which is the primal necessity of life. This 
 attitude has been named attention to life. It characterizes
 
 CHAP, vii MEMORY 169 
 
 mind wherever in the animal world we meet it. It deter- 
 mines in advance the form the coming experience will 
 assume. Nothing is less like the mind than the old-time 
 image of the wax tablet on which the objects of the external 
 world make imprints. The mind, as I conceive it, is an 
 active power of organizing experience, and lives by assimi- 
 lating the experience it organizes. 
 
 A good illustration of this work of the mind is afforded 
 us by the physiology of the organism. The digestive organs, 
 the stomach and intestines in particular, were, before the 
 days of scientific physiology, regarded as more or less 
 mechanical receptacles for food, supplied with the necessary 
 acids and ferments for reducing it, and fitted with a kind 
 of filter apparatus for letting the nutriment pass into the 
 blood stream, and all these contrivances had nothing else 
 to do but passively wait for supplies which, when they 
 came, were mechanically and automatically reduced and 
 utilized. Modern physiology gives us an entirely different 
 notion of the vital activities at work in the digestive process. 
 A vast system of co-ordinated activities, each with its distinct 
 function, is ready prepared to receive and deal with the food. 
 The supply of the food is not in its control, neither the 
 quantity nor the quality, but though dependent on external 
 supply, the result of the process is not determined by the 
 external supply. It is regulated and delicately adjusted by 
 the pre-adaptation of the digestive processes themselves, which 
 exercise selection and discrimination. The result is the 
 maintenance of the living body in a state of efficiency and 
 equilibrium as one organic unity. The mind appears to me 
 as a spiritual organism, which maintains itself in the same 
 way. Experience is, as it were, fed to it, but the mind is 
 not a passive receptor. It does not contemplate the reality 
 which flows past it, it incorporates it. It meets experience 
 with a ready-prepared organization to deal with it. Its 
 various activities are those I have named retention, 
 memory, selection and the rest. The result is the main- 
 tenance of an individual soul, the unity of a personal 
 character. 
 
 Let me now return to the direct problem of recognition.
 
 170 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 This problem is to account for the occurrence of againness 
 in experience even though nothing is repeated, to account 
 for the feeling of " seen before," " this again," " had 
 already," directly attached to the object of cognition. 
 This feeling requires explaining, because, in fact, there is 
 no repetition, and can be no repetition, for experience is a 
 continuous change. 
 
 What happens, then, when a totally new sense- 
 presentation arises ? How can it have, in addition to its 
 own apport, the perception or judgment which refers it 
 to the past and declares it to be " this again " ? It 
 sounds a paradox. My theory of the mind gives me 
 the explanation. Recognition is the form which prior 
 cognition gives to new experience. The mind receives 
 the new presentation into a ready prepared organiza- 
 tion of past knowledge and incorporates it. Recognition 
 is the expectancy with which the mind grasps the novel, 
 the unknown, the unforeseen. By this I mean not only 
 that recognition has prospective value the whole attitude 
 of life is forward-looking and all value seems to be 
 prospective. I mean more than this. The past, as from 
 being present it becomes past, gives form and substance 
 to the present activity and is carried along in it. It is this 
 incorporation of past experience in present activity, and 
 not repetition, and also not resemblance of present experi- 
 ence to past experience, which constitutes recognition. 
 And this explains why and in what way all cognition is of 
 necessity recognition. The life of the mind, the mental 
 process, consists in, and is sustained by, the continual 
 reception of the yet unknown into the frame or organization 
 of the already known. We modify reality by impressing 
 on it a mark of the past in the present act by which we 
 grasp it, and with every new addition there goes a corre- 
 spondent modification of the frame or organization which 
 is the mind. Thus it is that all new experience comes to 
 us bearing as it were already on it the mark of the past. 
 The mind stamps reality with this mark in the very act of 
 apprehension, not because the mind receives the manifold 
 of sense into stereotyped frames or categories, as Kant
 
 CHAP, vii MEMORY 171 
 
 supposed, for the frames also are being -subtly and continu- 
 ously modified by the mutual adaptation of the mind to 
 its experience and of experience to the mind. There is no 
 absolute repetition of anything, either of mental act or of 
 physical object, there is continual new invention. This, 
 then, in my view is the modification of experience which 
 makes all cognition recognition. 
 
 This process, with the various activities I have dis- 
 tinguished in it (not presented as exhausting it but as 
 characterizing it), is the a priori condition of the possibility 
 of recognition. It is not a condition of recognition that a 
 memory-image, general or particular, should be present to 
 the mind, challenging comparison with, or provoking a 
 judgment on, the sense-datum. 
 
 Let us now turn to the second part of the problem. 
 So far we have been considering rational or intelligent 
 recognition only, and not instinctive recognition, or rather 
 we have been considering only the recognition which appears 
 to be explicable by the experience of the individual. If 
 my theory be true, recognition is an effect of the continuity 
 of mental process. Nothing in the phenomena of ordinary 
 recognition suggests that the explanation is in bodily 
 structure rather than in mental activity. We have, in 
 fact, no need to raise the question of the relation of mind 
 and body, because, whatever be the nature of this rela- 
 tion, recognition is concerned only with mental facts. But 
 when we come to study instinctive recognition, there seems 
 to be no mental continuity such as we conceive necessary to 
 constitute an individual mind, and we seem to be left with 
 one kind of continuity only the material continuity which 
 links, by the living protoplasm in the germ, one generation 
 of conscious individuals with another. It will not be dis- 
 puted that instinctive behaviour, however we account for it, 
 presents the appearance of recognition as one of its essential 
 traits. An instinctive act is the act of one who already 
 knows and is therefore familiar with the conditions and 
 circumstances under which it is acting. This is true, even 
 of the first performance of an instinctive action, and whether 
 or not repeated instinctive performances show any advance
 
 172 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 on, or essential difference from, the first performance, the 
 familiarity with the conditions we are describing as recog- 
 nition is not dependent upon repetition. In intelligent 
 behaviour there is no repetition, but in instinctive behaviour 
 there is practically perfect repetition, or rather a specific 
 character of invariability in the repetitions, but this 
 repetition in instinctive actions marks something negative 
 so far as mentality is concerned. It implies that there 
 is no learning by experience. If, then, one peculiar mark 
 of instinctive behaviour is invariability in repetition, and, 
 consequently, an absence of " learning," must not recognition 
 as a description of such behaviour be unmeaning ? We 
 seem to be driven for an explanation of instinctive knowledge 
 to the bodily organization rather than to the mental organiza- 
 tion. Instinct suggests something structural in the nervous 
 system. Now clearly, as it seems to me, if it should prove 
 possible to explain instinctive knowledge as a phenomenon 
 of physiological process without mind, there would be a 
 strong presumption that intelligent knowledge could also 
 be explicable in the same way. So that the whole 
 problem of the nature of knowledge may be said to 
 depend on the problem of the genesis of instinct, and it 
 is important therefore to show why we cannot explain 
 instinctive knowledge without supposing the continuous 
 activity of mind independently of physiological process. 
 I will try to give reasons for this view. 
 
 An example of instinctive behaviour is hardly required 
 for the purpose of my argument, but it may be useful to 
 refer to a definite case. I cannot do better than take 
 Professor Lloyd Morgan's classical experiment with the 
 incubated moorhen. I need not go into the details. The 
 little creature, after many failures of the experimenter 
 to induce the characteristic diving action, performed it 
 at once in response to the stimulus, absolutely novel in 
 its individual experience, of a romping puppy. In this 
 behaviour every one will, I suppose, admit that there was 
 conscious awareness, though many will deny that there 
 was anything whatever in it which can rightly be called 
 recognition. Yet the familiarity with surroundings, the
 
 CHAP. VII 
 
 MEMORY 173 
 
 evident feeling at home in the environment, the absence of 
 strangeness and embarrassment which was exhibited in its 
 action, is, so far as its nature is concerned, indistinguishable 
 from what I call recognition in my own experience. It is 
 immediate knowledge, but so in my view is intelligent 
 recognition. If then there be no difference of nature 
 between intelligent and instinctive recognition, is the differ- 
 ence in the genesis ? Is the view I have put forward of the 
 genesis of intelligent recognition inapplicable to instinctive 
 recognition ? We know that the creature's ancestors have 
 behaved in this characteristic way throughout a long series 
 of past generations, and that the immediacy of the response 
 is due to a congenital disposition to act in this way. But 
 the individual moorhen does not know this, unless we 
 suppose that its memory goes back to those previous per- 
 formances of its ancestors and that it has, as part of its 
 congenital disposition, the power to revive memory-images 
 of them. This seems improbable to such a high degree 
 that we may as well reject it outright. 
 
 Here then we have a creature manifesting all the signs 
 of mentality and of mentality in a highly developed form. 
 It acts as if it remembered what it is impossible that it 
 can remember, for there is no continuity of consciousness 
 between its action and the source of that action in past 
 experience. The only unity and continuity manifest to us 
 is the physiological process which has carried it from the 
 fertilized germ through the stage of unconscious life in the 
 egg to separate individual activity. Does the creature's 
 mind somehow bridge this gulf which separates its individual 
 brain from the brains of its progenitors ? Before we can 
 answer this question we must form some concept of the 
 creature's mind and its relation to the creature's body. 
 
 It is unnecessary in this connexion to review the 
 theories of the relation of mind and body, whether it is a 
 relation of interaction or of parallelism. There is an aspect 
 of the terms and of their relation which presents itself 
 to every one independently of any theory. There is a 
 certain unity of life which characterizes the complex and 
 infinite variety of physiological processes which constitute
 
 174 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 the individual organism. Let us understand that this 
 is meant when we refer to the body. There is also a 
 certain unity of conscious processes which makes awareness 
 of every kind part of a personal experience. Let us under- 
 stand that this unity of conscious personal experience is 
 meant by the mind. This is what we ordinarily mean when 
 we contrast body and mind, that is to say, we mean the 
 living body, not the dead material body, and the thinking 
 mind. It is different from the contrast between body and 
 mind when what is meant by body is a certain disposition of 
 molecules or atoms or electrons. The distinction is rather 
 between life and mind, between living process and conscious 
 process. This distinction of mind and body is, I think, 
 practically the same as that of Descartes. The mind thinks, 
 the body lives. The body, being an extension, is automatic 
 and mechanical and determined ; the mind, being inextended, 
 is independent of the body which it guides and controls, 
 and is free in the sense that it is without and not within the 
 series of mechanical actions and reactions which modern 
 physics have formulated in the principle of the conservation 
 of energy. I do not mean that body and mind are two 
 substances as Descartes held, but that from the standpoint 
 of a living creature endowed with conscious awareness, 
 living body and thinking mind are, as Descartes conceived 
 them, two completely distinct realities, each with a quality 
 which excludes the other, each a unity and individual. 
 From this point of view, namely, that of a distinction between 
 living and thinking, it is possible to regard the living body 
 as a self-regulated automaton distinct from the thinking 
 mind or the soul, a view which Descartes held, and which 
 seems to accord with many recent physiological discoveries. 
 Let me try and illustrate what I may call the mutual 
 convergence and divergence of these two individual system- 
 atizations, living body and thinking mind. 
 
 The first part of the digestive process is the mastication 
 of the food ; it is followed by deglutition, then by the many 
 varied processes which are carried out by stomach and 
 bowels. The divisions between these various stages or pro- 
 cesses of digestion are merely convenient, all form part of
 
 CHAP, vn 
 
 MEMORY 175 
 
 one complex but co-ordinated systematic process. Parts only 
 of this process are accompanied by consciousness or aware- 
 ness, in the form of sentience. Mastication is accompanied 
 by the special forms of sentience, taste and smell ; and all 
 the muscular actions of the tongue and palate and the closing 
 of the glottis during deglutition are also accompanied by 
 awareness ; but from that stage in the digestive process 
 sentience ceases, and most, nearly all, of the succeeding 
 stages, peristaltic action and the like, are devoid of sentient 
 accompaniment altogether. Now we may say that sentience 
 where it occurs in mastication and deglutition is useful to 
 the creature, it serves the purpose of incentive to obtain 
 food and of discrimination in the food procured, and 
 equally we may say that insentience where sentience does 
 not occur is useful. So far, however, as the efficiency 
 of the process is concerned, there seems to be no need for 
 its existence whatever. It may serve a purpose, but the 
 purpose is no part of the actual process which it accompanies. 
 Yet though from the point of view of the digestive process 
 the sentient accompaniment is fragmentary and sporadic, 
 sentience itself is not fragmentary and sporadic, it is one and 
 continuous with the conscious awareness exercised by the 
 unity we call a man's mind or soul. So when we describe 
 a man's taste as refined, or cultivated, or debased, using the 
 word taste in its original meaning to indicate his pleasure 
 in what he eats, the fact, so far as the man's body is in 
 question, concerns only a small part of a complex physio- 
 logical process, which process is indifferent to it ; so far as 
 the man's mind is in question it concerns the whole of that 
 unity we call personal, it is continuous with a man's 
 character. From the physiologist's point of view therefore 
 sentience is an epiphenomenon accompanying a certain 
 specific living process, and exercising no efficiency ; from the 
 psychologist's point of view sentience is an inseparable 
 element of another and altogether different order of reality 
 and kind of unity. These two continuous processes meet 
 for a brief moment in the functioning of a taste bulb 
 The true image of them is that of two spheres which when 
 they meet touch only at a point common to both, but
 
 176 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 which by moving on one another have a series of points 
 successively common. 
 
 These two self-centred unities, thinking mind and living 
 body, if from our individual standpoint they appear as two 
 complete systems, are from another standpoint not self- 
 centred, but each continuous with a larger system of reality. 
 We know that we directly continue in our body the life of 
 countless generations of ancestors, and that we shall hand 
 on this heritage to succeeding generations. We also know, 
 though it is not so easy to envisage, that our mind is not 
 formed within our individual lifetime and anew for each 
 individual. It is continuous with the experience of past 
 generations and has been formed out of it. Each individual 
 living centre bears along in the focus of its activity the 
 impulsion as well as the construction of an illimitable past. 
 Now, although we suppose that this past was always like 
 the present, that each individual of a former generation 
 united in his action, as we do, a thinking mind and living 
 body, yet when we think of these two systems transcending 
 the individual life, it seems to us impossible that the original 
 source is twofold. What makes the original impulsion 
 seem single is that mind and body appear to have evolved 
 pari passu, every increase in mental range being co-ordinated 
 with a complexity of brain structure, while what makes the 
 dualism in the individual seem pronounced is the complete 
 disparity between the two orders. From the standpoint 
 of evolution we are naturally, I think, attracted to Spinoza's 
 idea of mind and body as two modes of one substance. 
 Whether with Spinoza we name this substance God, or with 
 Bergson elan vital, we have to recognize that, though the 
 source may be single, the manifestation is always twofold 
 the living body and the thinking mind. 
 
 This brings us at once to the main problem how is this 
 twofold continuity carried over from one generation to the 
 next ? Let me first notice one question, which may for 
 many people have a decisive bearing on the solution. Is the 
 difference between the individual mind of an animal whose 
 behaviour is predominantly instinctive, and the mind of 
 a man whose behaviour is predominantly intelligent, a
 
 CHAP, vii MEMORY 177 
 
 quantitative difference only, or is it a qualitative differ- 
 ence also ? It seems to me, relying wholly on analogy, 
 direct proof being obviously impossible, that the mind of 
 the lower animal is in every respect like the human mind, 
 differing only in its range. There seems to me every 
 reason to suppose that the moorhen's mind differs from 
 mine in the ratio that its brain differs in complexity from 
 mine. Its brain registers, so to speak, its range of action, 
 as my brain registers mine, and it is not likely, again judging 
 by analogy, that its mind is inadequate or more than 
 adequate, to its range of action. If this be so, then the mind 
 of the lower animal is, like mine, a continuity of personal 
 experience, and must stand to the continuity of physiological 
 process, the living body, in the relation I have schematized 
 by imagining two spheres in contact. There is in that case 
 no difference in kind between human behaviour and that 
 of the lower animals, there is only a difference, which may 
 be very deceptive, in the proportion of their behaviour which 
 we describe as instinctive and that which we describe as 
 intelligent. 
 
 But is it necessary to suppose that an animal has a 
 mind ? Can we not class instinctive actions under vital 
 actions ? We associate with mind the creation of aesthetic, 
 logical and ethical values, and we find it very difficult 
 to suppose that there is anything even corresponding to 
 these in the mind of the animal. Yet it seems to me that 
 in instinctive action, though these be absent, there are 
 mental elements which are not merely vital. These are (a) 
 sentient enjoyment, or simply sentience, indicating con- 
 scious awareness of action in progress ; (b) familiarity, 
 indicated by the absence of strangeness in the behaviour 
 (this is what I call recognition) ; and (c) pre-awareness, 
 a certain readiness of attention or alertness, indicated by 
 a forward-looking attitude towards the action. All of 
 these, if they are present, and to the extent to which 
 they are present, are mental characters in the full sense 
 of the term mental, and it seems to me further that 
 the animal mind must depend as ours does on imagery. 
 What this seems to imply is that all these characters are 
 
 N
 
 178 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 continuous with, and derive meaning from, the fact that they 
 enter as constituent elements into a mental organization, 
 the unity of an experience. 
 
 It is a twofold continuity, then, which has to be carried 
 from one generation to the next. The link which joins the 
 generations is neither living body nor thinking mind, 
 neither brain nor soul, but a germ. The germ neither acts 
 nor thinks, at least not in any ordinary meaning of those 
 terms ; it undergoes development, and it holds within it the 
 potentiality of developing a living body and a thinking 
 mind. We are led, therefore, it seems to me by logical 
 necessity to the concept of life not life the mere abstract 
 idea of an attribute common to processes we class as living, 
 but life the concrete idea of a reality of which living body 
 and thinking mind, organic activity and personality, are 
 modes. 
 
 The thesis, then, which I have endeavoured to establish 
 is that recognition is knowing what we know already. 
 It is the mark of our past experience which a present 
 and entirely novel sense-presentation bears, and this mark 
 is immediately apprehended as part of the presentation, 
 and is not inferred from it. It implies prior cognition but 
 it does not imply that a memory-image of the prior cognition 
 is present in consciousness together with the recognition ; 
 and a fortiori it does not imply a mental process of com- 
 parison with a prior cognition or the perception or judgment 
 of a relation of similarity. It is the resultant of learning 
 by experience ; the conditionate, not the condition. It is 
 not by recognizing that we learn by experience, but having 
 learnt by experience we recognize. Learning by experience 
 is not dependent on repetition, and in experience there is, 
 in fact, no repetition. Learning is the mental process by 
 which the mind incorporates and assimilates experience. It 
 is an activity which begins with, and continues throughout, 
 experience. Recognition may be intelligent or instinctive. 
 Both are of the same nature. Each is the immediate appre- 
 hension of entirely novel sense-presentations with the mark 
 of prior cognition. In intelligent recognition we can by 
 reflexion bring to the mind the factors of the process, and
 
 CHAP, vii MEMORY 179 
 
 so, in a manner and within a limited range, reconstitute the 
 process. We can bring to mind memory-images of the 
 prior cognition so far as the prior cognition falls within the 
 memory range of the individual experience. This gives 
 rise to the illusion that recognition is dependent on this 
 reflective thought. We think we recognize after reflecting, 
 whereas in reality we reflect after recognizing. In in- 
 stinctive recognition, on the other hand, we cannot recon- 
 stitute by reflexion the prior cognition, because it does not 
 fall within the individual's experience. It lies in the 
 ancestral experience. 
 
 The problem of recognition is the same for intelligent 
 as for instinctive recognition how can new sense-presenta- 
 tion be known as what is already known ? The solution 
 suggested rests on a distinction between life and mind, 
 or living body and thinking mind, and a comparison between 
 the activity of each. They are distinct self-centred organic 
 continuities ; sentient experience enters each system, but 
 the systems are tangential to one another. The mind is an 
 organization of experience. All past experience has not 
 only contributed to it but is incorporated within it, giving 
 it character and individuality. New sentient experience 
 can only enter by receiving the mould or mark of this 
 organization. This constitutes recognition. Instinctive 
 recognition raises a larger problem. How is mental con- 
 tinuity established and maintained between one generation 
 and another, since generations are separated by a state in 
 which there is neither living body nor thinking mind ? 
 The living germ has neither brain nor soul, but is the 
 potentiality of the development of both. The solution 
 suggested is the concept of life, not an abstraction from 
 living process, but a pure, universal, concrete concept.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE DIVERSITY IN UNITY OF BODY AND MIND 
 
 Propterea ad determinandum quid mens humana reliquis intersit, 
 quidque reliquis praestet, necesse nobis est ejus objecti, hoc est, corporis 
 humani naturam cognoscere. SPINOZA. 
 
 IN conscious experience I am aware of two realities which 
 in a sense are antithetical to one another, in a sense also 
 are complementary to one another, and each of these realities 
 in its full extension comprehends the other. I am aware 
 of nature and of life. I recognize this twofold reality at 
 every moment which I call " now." The recognition takes 
 the form of an affirmation, an " I am " which admits of no 
 negation. There is no intelligible form and no means of 
 expression by which I can affirm the proposition " I am not." 
 Certainly I can conceive my non-existence. I do so, however, 
 simply by suppressing in thought one of the antithetical 
 realities in my conscious experience, and then conceiving 
 the other self-subsistent. In imagination I can suppress 
 
 life altogether and find nn difficulty in prpsfptigff: jrmf rirp 
 
 unaffected by its absence. When I make explicit the full 
 implication of this twofold existence, which I affirm in every 
 moment of experience, it seems to involve : (i) Space or 
 extension ; (2) Time or duration ; (3) Definite objects and 
 actual events ; (4) Myself, here and now, actually and 
 actively participating, contemplating objects and controlling 
 events. 
 
 It jeemsjtojne, however, that I participale-Jn_a_purely 
 
 jvithout anyj^lation to its 
 
 existence. On the other hand, an external and independent 
 
 1 80
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 181 
 
 reality seems absolutely to condition my activity so that if 
 in thought I suppress this external reality there is nothing 
 on which it can take hold and its self-subsistence is practically 
 if not theoretically inconceivable. 
 
 Nature accordingly appears to me to be self-subsistent 
 in a way that life is not. It is this one-sidedness of the 
 antithesis, this emphasis on, or bias towards, the reality 
 characterized by opposition to life, which unfits science to 
 comprehend life itself. It could only comprehend life by 
 including it within the objective system of nature, and this 
 is impossible because the objective system is never without 
 its relation to the subjective system. The known can never 
 detach itself completely from the living subject for which 
 it exists, and physical reality is never pure reality completely 
 independent of psychical conditions. Science is always 
 haunted by the spectre of a reality which it cannot compre- 
 hend because it is for this reality that it exists. At the 
 same time that we recognize the impossibility of compre- 
 hending knowing itself in the ordered and orderly system 
 of the known, we feel that the ideal of our science is balked 
 by this very disability. Physical science while drawn 
 irresistibly toward the objective aspect of reality is for ever 
 finding itself vainly trying to include an elusive reality 
 without which it is truncated and incomplete. This is 
 where philosophy diverges from science. It is this elusive 
 consciousness or life which philosophy seeks to systematize, 
 not by bringing it under an objective order to which it is not 
 amenable, but by taking it in its first intention as a com- 
 prehensive activity from which the subject-matter of the 
 sciences is derived by abstraction or by schematization. 
 The great difficulty of the task is that we have to work 
 against the strong current which draws our mind away from 
 attention to itself and its own activity towards the action 
 which is the object of that activity. It is a most significant 
 fact that whenever philosophy yields to this attractive force, 
 when it adopts scientific method, it tends inevitably to take 
 up a negative attitude towards the psychical reality which 
 has called for its exercise and subordinates consciousness to 
 an aspect or adventitious quality of physical reality.
 
 182 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 The strong and ineradicable tendency in science to treat 
 objective nature as fundamental and self -subsist ent, and 
 to reduce psychical nature to a dependent, conditioned, 
 shadow-phenomenon, is in complete accord and perfect 
 harmony witli_nnr nature. We feel that in science and 
 in scientific method we are simply letting our mind follow 
 the natural disposition and direction of its activity. In 
 philosophy, on the other hand, we feel that we are struggling 
 against the stream, striving to reverse the natural inclination 
 of the mind. We have only to pause for a moment in our 
 task, whatever it be, to be conscious how completely 
 dominated we are by the overwhelming sense of the objective 
 reality of the physical world of ordinary experience. We 
 know that science completely transforms its aspect, present- 
 ing to us as apparent and evanescent what we had at first 
 taken to be solid and substantial, replacing definite sensible 
 objects with insensible atoms and molecules, not even letting 
 us rest in these intelligible objects but resolving them into 
 electrical charges, and yet however far we travel along the 
 scientific road we jjgjngvei^allowed to losejour grasp of a 
 definite objective reality. Philosophy raises strange doubts 
 which even the plain man cannot wholly exclude, and if we 
 follow its lead it seems to undermine our whole common- 
 sense notion of reality until in the end all that we have 
 ordinarily regarded as certain or self-evident is left without 
 support and what was sure science is replaced with total 
 theoretical scepticism. YejLjnature is too strong for jus, 
 practically we are helpless. " Nature," says Hume, " by 
 an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined 
 us to judge as well as to breathe and feel ; nor can we any 
 more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and 
 fuller light, upon account of their customary connexion 
 with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves 
 from thinking, as long as we are awake, or seeing the sur- 
 rounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards them in 
 broad sunshine." 
 
 It is incumbent on us, therefore, as a first task in 
 philosophy to understand what this bias towards the reality 
 of the object denotes. Science is practical. It does not
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 183 
 
 interpret reality, it describes, classifies and systematizes 
 it. It seeks uniformities, it makes abstractions, it analyses. 
 It regards sameness and identity, it disregards difference. 
 It replaces the richness and infinite variety of the real with 
 an abstract and simple order. In this process of discovering 
 order and uniformity in experience it is not only rendering 
 service to human activity, it is doing far more than that, it 
 is actually developing human activity along lines naturally 
 marked out for it by the human intellect itself. The failure 
 of science to interpret life is not a defect of science, and the 
 task of philosophy is not to take up the work of science at 
 the point which for the moment marks the limit of its 
 achievement. Science is practical activity on the lines 
 which the intellect itself has marked out, while philosophy 
 is the comprehensive grasp of intellect in its relation to 
 life. This " absolute and uncontrollable necessity " is the 
 significant fact for philosophy. It reveals to us, not that the 
 bias in our nature is due to an illusion or that it is a falsifica- 
 tion of reality, but that the truth we discover in scientific 
 inquiry is relative to our needs and determined by the 
 range and mode of our activity. 
 
 There is yet a question to ask. How comes it that physical 
 science, even if we allow that it can never complete itself, 
 cannot satisfy us with its concept of reality ? Is it 
 merely embarrassed because this elusive shadow-thing we 
 call life or consciousness escapes it ? Clearly we have to 
 look deeper for the cause of dissatisfaction. This deep-seated 
 cause is that science has no principle by which it can account 
 for the uniformity it discovers everywhere in nature. This 
 uniformity of nature is for science an axiom and postulate. 
 Nature does not reveal the ground of it in confirming the 
 fact of it, and science has to accept or rather assume it. 
 Science itself therefore, in the very principle on which it 
 rests, sets a problem for philosophy. It is a problem of 
 philosophy because no extension of scientific knowledge 
 could attain its solution. Science depends on our regarding 
 nature as a system and as one system. Yet the mere concept 
 of external, independent, self-subsistent reality does not 
 carry the necessity of order, or system, or unity. On the
 
 184 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 contrary, it makes order extremely improbable if not 
 absolutely inconceivable. Chaos is not inconceivable, nor 
 even irrational, but the concept of nature as chaos is the 
 concept of nature as impossible science. Manifoldness is the 
 essential character of nature. Every part of the material uni- 
 verse is external to every other part and there is no limit to 
 its divisibility. Uniformity or unity of this manifold is not 
 essential to the concept of a material universe. If uniformity 
 of nature be a necessary assumption of physical science it is 
 not because it can be deduced from the concept of external 
 reality. On the other hand, the essential character of 
 life is indivisibility. The manifoldness which characterizes 
 living forms and individual minds is not a manifoldness of 
 life or of mind but of physical nature. The individuality 
 of life or mind is not dependent on spatial division or 
 limitations, and its continuity or indivisibility is primarily 
 the character which marks it as spiritual or psychical in 
 distinction to material or physical. Consequently we seem 
 to know two kinds of reality, each in the abstract dis- 
 tinguished by characters which are the direct contrary of the 
 other, an abstract physical reality, distinguished by mani- 
 foldness, discreteness, divisibility, separability; and an 
 abstract psychical reality, distinguished by indivisibility, 
 concreteness, comprehensibility. Reduced, therefore, to its 
 most abstract form the problem of philosophy is the problem 
 of the one and the many. If we approach it from the side 
 of physical reality it is how are the many one ? We accept, 
 that is to say, the essential manifoldness and inquire into the 
 nature of the uniformity it exhibits. If we approach it 
 from the side of psychical reality, life or mind, the problem 
 is how the one is many. We accept, that is to say, the unity 
 of consciousness and search for the principle of diversity. 
 
 There seem to be only two alternatives. They are 
 directly contrary so that the truth of one must imply the 
 falsity of the other and there is no via media. The alter- 
 natives are that either the uniformity of nature is a character 
 inherent in the manifold and we discover it because it is 
 there to be discovered and discoverable, or the uniformity 
 is the work of the mind, a condition of knowing and not a
 
 CHAP, vni BODY AND MIND 185 
 
 character of the existence known. The manifold according 
 to the second alternative is the real existence, in itself it 
 is without order or system, but it is capable of entering 
 into order or system and this is what happens to it when 
 the mind apprehends it ; order, that is to say, is imposed 
 by the mind in the act itself of apprehending. Let us 
 follow out, then, the two alternatives. 
 
 According to the first alternative the uniformity of 
 nature is in nature as an existence. In this case we must 
 suppose the mind to be in presence of a mystery in its very 
 nature inexplicable, which must ever remain a mystery, 
 how far so ever knowledge extend, because no principle can 
 give us the clue. We are and we feel ourselves to be in the 
 presence of facts, we may amuse ourselves in framing 
 hypotheses of origin, we may have and we have a physical 
 science for there is no limit to discovery or description, 
 but though our science is secure we cannot have a philo- 
 sophy. If we are wise we shall take as our motto Hypo- 
 theses non fingo and content ourselves with describing, in 
 the most objective form we can command, the facts, which 
 we shall accept at their face value without questioning their 
 conformability to laws of thought. When fact is irrecon- 
 cilable with reason we can find comfort if not satisfaction 
 in the truth that " there are more things in heaven and 
 earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." We may 
 still have scientific research, and it may meet with no small 
 measure of success, but if we push inquiry or challenge 
 the criterion we cannot stop short of total scepticism. 
 Naturalism as a philosophy rests on agnosticism. Such is 
 the first alternative. 
 
 If we turn from this to the second alternative, we get a 
 philosophy of nature, but apparently only by sacrificing or 
 at least by undermining the foundation of physical science. 
 We begin, it is true, by recognizing a manifold upon which 
 the mind imposes order and which it moulds in frames to 
 present a systematic unity, but this manifold soon proves 
 useless to assure the objectivity which physical science 
 demands. The laws of nature all fall within the subjective 
 aspect of knowing. The a priori conditions of knowledge
 
 186 A THEORY OF MONADS PART u 
 
 are in the knowing mind, not in the matter known. This 
 matter which began by being the reality itself, in and for 
 which, and to apprehend which, knowledge came into 
 existence, tends more and more to become useless, then 
 meaningless, till finally as the empty or idle concept of 
 the unknowable thing-in-itself it fades out of the picture 
 altogether, or remains in the unsubstantial form of a concept 
 of limit. Such is the second alternative. 
 
 Are these our only alternatives ? Yes, so long as we 
 accept the concept of reality on which the opposite theories 
 are based there is no way of escape from the dilemma to 
 which they lead us. Once committed to the concept of a 
 reality distinct from life and knowledge, a reality which 
 conditions life and on which the activity of life depends, a 
 reality which is a merely objective existence contemplated 
 by a knowing mind, once committed to this and philosophy 
 has only the two alternative directions. One is realism, the 
 other is idealism. If both turn out to be blind-alley paths 
 of speculation then the concept on which they are based 
 stands self-condemned and progress depends on reforming 
 the concept of reality. 
 
 Such a reformation is not an undertaking to be entered 
 on by arbitrary critical analysis. Our concept of reality 
 is not under our control, it is not a notion we have framed 
 capriciously or acquired by any kind of reasoning from 
 experience. It is the expression in thought of what is 
 rooted in fact. There is only one possible condition on 
 which we can reform our concept of reality and that is that 
 we should be able to discover something in human nature 
 itself which determines our concept. Such a discovery 
 would in itself bring to view a more fundamental concept. 
 We should find the ground for a new start in a new 
 concept. And philosophy itself demands of us this new 
 task. It is not enough to see that realism and idealism 
 must end in scepticism, for scepticism is not an end but a 
 warning-notice showing that we have taken a false route. 
 
 The theory of monads is based on a different concept 
 of reality from that which leads to realism and idealism. 
 It is not a theory which corrects some false step in the
 
 CHAP, vin BODY AND MIND 187 
 
 realist or idealist argument. It is an alternative theory 
 but only in the meaning that it replaces the concept of 
 reality from which they start with a concept in regard to 
 which both are meaningless. But their concept was not 
 arbitrary, it was rooted in the fact of existence. The new 
 concept must in the same way rest on fact of existence as 
 distinct from reasoning. It must not present itself as a 
 matter of choice. In fact, the discovery that the old concept 
 is irrational at once and necessarily brings to view the new 
 concept. Descartes 's new concept came to light in the 
 discovery that the senses are not primarily intended to 
 instruct us in truth but to protect the organism from 
 destructive injury, so our new concept comes to view 
 with the discovery that our intellect is not primarily insight 
 into reality but a mode of conscious activity evolved for the 
 service of life. Before I try to point out more clearly what 
 in actual experience has led to the formation of the false 
 concept and indicate wherein we get the clue to the new 
 concept, I will illustrate the general principle by reference 
 to an instructive analogy in the history of philosophy. 
 
 The more I study the philosophy of the seventeenth 
 century the more striking appears to me the analogy between 
 their problem and ours to-day. I have continually illus- 
 trated this in regard to the nature and origin of the problem 
 of philosophy, I want now to show that the analogy is also 
 very remarkable in regard to the development. When 
 the Cartesian philosophy had run its course a similar 
 dilemma occurred to that which we find to-day in regard 
 to the theories of realism and idealism. Descartes had 
 started with the concept of two substances, thought and 
 extension, and this concept seemed the natural and necessary 
 basis of the realities of experience, mind and matter, and 
 the ground of knowledge and existence. It produced the 
 principle of clear and distinct ideas and it led to one of the 
 most concentrated and definite efforts of philosophical 
 construction in the whole history of human thought. It 
 failed, however, and the failure became more marked as it 
 developed, to solve the initial problem how and why the 
 idea represents the reality. The movement ended in the
 
 i88 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 monistic theory of Spinoza. Without questioning the 
 dualistic concept of reality which gave to the whole move- 
 ment its problem Spinoza maintained the unity of substance. 
 His problem, therefore, though resting on the same concept 
 became the direct antithesis of that of Descartes. The one 
 starting with dualism strove to explain the unity implied 
 in knowledge, the other taking unity as a necessary pre- 
 supposition strove to explain the diversity which exists in 
 fact. Mind and matter, Spinoza held, are parallel modes 
 in which two infinite attributes of a universal substance 
 manifest themselves. Here, then, was a dilemma from which 
 there seemed no escape, from which indeed there was no 
 escape. Accept the concept of reality as twofold, that 
 there are two independent substances, or two mutually 
 exclusive attributes of one substance, and that these two 
 substances or attributes are in a relation which brings it 
 about that one represents the other and that other is 
 representable to it, and there are two alternatives. Either 
 the duality is fundamental existence, how then explain 
 unity ? Or the unity is fundamental existence, how then 
 explain diversity ? Leibniz saw that there was no issue 
 from this dilemma and it indicated to him falsity in the 
 underlying concept. He reformed the concept of reality 
 by a new definition of substance. He rejected the static 
 principle which the old concept implied and replaced it with 
 a dynamic principle. A simple substance is a monad, a 
 subject of experience, an active centre into which a universe 
 is mirrored, whose activity consists in perception and 
 appetition. From this reformed concept a whole new 
 advance was possible. The point I wish to call attention 
 to, however, is not the new concept itself but rather the 
 fact in experience which had furnished the clue. This was 
 the mind-body relation. Descartes and Spinoza had con- 
 centrated attention on this problem. Each had sought to 
 interpret it by studying the two existences in their complete 
 separation and sought in the nature of the two realities the 
 principle by which in the living individual they act harmoni- 
 ously. Leibniz started with the principle of individuality, 
 with the unity in fact of mind and body.
 
 m BODY AND MIND 189 
 
 I do not propose to enter on a criticism of Leibniz's 
 concept of substance as monad nor to follow the historical 
 analogy further. It is intended only to make clear my own 
 theory. This is that the common-sense and scientific 
 concept of reality is the necessary and natural consequence 
 of the fact that our attention in ordinary life is primarily 
 directed on, and hi a certain sense fixed to, the matter 
 which lies outside the percipient's own organism and on 
 the life and conscious activity which are distinct from the 
 percipient's own life and conscious activity. Everything 
 material or spiritual which is brought completely within 
 the acting agent's own instrumental organism, that is, 
 everything which forms part of the mind-body individuality 
 itself is as it were withdrawn from attention. Since, then, 
 our attention is fixed on a nature and life outside our 
 individuality ; and since we are by our own nature rendered 
 unable to direct conscious attention on the processes and 
 structural content of our own organism ; and since of the 
 far greater part of our physical and psychical nature we 
 cannot even by a direct act of attention or by any effort 
 become conscious ; it cannot but appear to us that the unity 
 of this outside world is independent of us and conditions us, 
 and that life and knowledge are dependent on physical 
 matter. We go further, for when we come to see that our 
 own individuality is of the same stuff and continuous 
 with the activity of this outer world and life, it then seems 
 to us that portions of these two antithetical realities are 
 brought together and, either by natural agency or by the 
 power of a transcendent God, have been blended into a 
 cunningly contrived conscious mechanism man. Because, 
 in other words, the reality which is presented to our conscious 
 attention consists of a distinct and separable inert matter, 
 and a distinct and separate activity, life or consciousness, 
 we conclude that we ourselves are compounded of two 
 natures hi relation, mind and body. In biblical phrase, 
 man is dust of the earth formed hi God's image, into which 
 God has breathed the breath of life. The new concept 
 arises when by an effort which seems against nature we turn 
 our attention inwards, then we are led to recognize that we
 
 igo A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 are not at points where two realities converge but at points 
 where two directions diverge ; that the mind-body is not 
 two things associated but one thing dissociated. Then 
 the ultimate concept of reality is not a reality which 
 conditions life and knowledge but a reality which essentially 
 is life and knowledge. What had previously appeared as 
 the condition of life now becomes an opposition which 
 conditions the activity of life. 
 
 I propose, then, to ponsider the relation of mind and 
 body from this new standpoint, a standpoint for which, as 
 I shall endeavour to show, modern physiological research 
 has prepared the ground. 
 
 To ordinary observation there appears to be constant 
 and continuous interaction between mind and body, but the 
 great obstacle to the formation of a scientific theory of inter- 
 action is the inconceivability of a causal chain in which 
 ideal or psychical facts are interlinked with mechanical 
 or physical facts. Psycho-physical interaction cannot be 
 merely an extension of the sphere of physical causation. 
 Ideas will not do work like the expanding gas in the cylinder 
 of the heat engine. The propagation of a movement cannot 
 be the interchange of energy between corporeal and spiritual 
 things. If there is mind-energy, if the term denotes an 
 actual energy of mental things and is not simply a metaphor 
 derived from a concept of physical science, this mind-energy 
 is not convertible into physical energy, it is confined to a 
 spiritual chain, just as physical energy is confined to a 
 corporeal chain. This incompatibility between mechanical 
 forces and spiritual forces has been the stumbling-block in 
 the path of all interaction theories and has driven philo- 
 sophers and psychologists to take refuge in theories of 
 parallelism. 
 
 The important factor in framing a new theory of inter- 
 action is the fact, which we may take to be now established 
 beyond any question, that some disorders of the psycho- 
 physical organism are primarily due to mental lesions, 
 to what is called a mental trauma. What is now known 
 technically as " functional " disease is, at least in some cases, 
 purely psychological in its origin, whatever physiological
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 191 
 
 derangements may be its accompaniment . This was unknown 
 and unimagined by the older theorists. The recognition of 
 it completely alters our conception of the nature of the 
 individual mind or soul. It is impossible any longer to 
 regard the mind as the concomitant of certain neurological 
 processes in the body. The mind has a structure of its own. 
 It is an integration of co-ordinated psychical elements or 
 processes personal memories, tendencies, desires, wishes, 
 and the like, which mutually repress or inhibit one another, 
 or, as the case may be, interplay with and evoke one another. 
 This psychical matter has an organization as complete, and 
 a unity of living process as perfect, as the physiological 
 matter of the body. The mind is not an intermittent 
 consciousness lighting up with awareness certain states of 
 the organism and dependent on particular physiological 
 processes. It is a structure which can suffer injury, derange- 
 ment or disorder, independently of the physical derange- 
 ment of the body. If, then, there be interaction between 
 soul and body, it by no means follows that parts or con- 
 stituents of the soul must interact with parts or constituents 
 of the body ; it may be that the whole soul, or the soul as 
 an individual, interacts with the whole body as a self- 
 controlled unity of co-ordinated mechanisms. I wish to 
 discuss whether such interaction is conceivable, and, if it 
 be, in what manner it is possible to represent it. 
 
 Let me give an example in order to make my meaning 
 unambiguous. I will quote Mr. McDougall's instance of the 
 telegram in Body and Mind (p. 268), for illustration only, 
 and without any reference to the author's purpose in the 
 context. " A man receives from a friend a telegram saying 
 ' Your son is dead.' The physical agent to which the man 
 reacts is a series of black marks on a piece of paper. The 
 reaction outwardly considered as a series of bodily processes 
 consists, perhaps, in a sudden, total and final cessation of 
 all those activities that constitute the outward signs of life : 
 or in complete change of the whole course of the man's 
 behaviour throughout the rest of his life." A causal inter- 
 action theory would schematize this occurrence somewhat 
 as follows : (i) Physical stimulus (the black marks on the
 
 IQ2 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 paper), (2) excitement of the neurones of the visual area of 
 the cortex, (3) vision, (4) excitement of the neurones of the 
 perceptive area of the cortex, (5) perception of physical 
 sign, (6) excitement of the neurones in the association centres 
 of the cortex, (7) perception of the significance of the sign, 
 (8) evocation of memories and projection of memories in the 
 form of imagination, (9) excitement of vaso-motor centres 
 of the cortex, (10) emotions, (u) expression of emotion in 
 glandular activity and skeletal movements, and so on. 
 
 In this scheme interaction is conceived as a continuous 
 interplay of physical and psychical factors. The single 
 event, the reading of the telegram, is conceived as a series 
 of separate and independent events in causal connexion. 
 They are stages of a process, and each of the stages might 
 itself in its turn be resolved into a series of independent 
 events. The words, for example, might be considered as 
 preceding the sentence and the letters as preceding the words, 
 and each stage we might choose to mark off in the process 
 would then prove to be neither wholly physical nor wholly 
 psychical, but a series of events some physical and some 
 psychical. 
 
 The interaction of mind and body is in my view of an 
 entirely different nature. It is always the adaptation of an 
 attitude of the body to a disposition of the mind. It is 
 therefore the interaction of one system with another system 
 where both co-operate in a common end. I should therefore 
 schematize the occurrence in this way : 
 
 (1) An existent attitude of body adapted to a disposition 
 of mind, determined by a long history, modified by new 
 experience. (The reception of the telegram.) 
 
 (2) Profound change in the mind. 
 
 (3) Change in the attitude of the body adapting itself to 
 the change in the disposition of the mind. 
 
 The difference between my scheme and the last is that 
 the reading of the telegram is not two events, first a purely 
 physical action, giving rise to, second, a purely psychical 
 experience. It is one single indivisible event which affects 
 and modifies at one and the same time, though in completely
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 193 
 
 different ways, two systems. Interaction is always an action 
 of the whole mind on the whole body, or an action of the 
 whole bodily system on the mind. Not only in great shock 
 experiences but in ordinary and insignificant experience 
 there is the same process. Every new experience modifies 
 the whole mind, and the modification of the whole mind 
 entails an altered attitude of the whole body. 
 
 The principle can be illustrated equally well if the 
 initiation of the experience be an action instead of a passive 
 stimulation. Suppose I am the sender of the telegram. 
 The execution of the action involves bodily movements of 
 inexhaustible complexity, but the action is simple and 
 indivisible. The state of my mind also while I am perform- 
 ing the action may resolve itself on analysis into an inex- 
 haustible complexity of feelings, thoughts and wishes. But 
 the physical action and the mental purpose are not composite, 
 and the composite parts do not interplay with one another 
 in the causal chain. The whole body or the body as a whole 
 mechanism is at the disposal of the whole undivided and 
 indivisible mind. 
 
 What, then, are the two systems ? The mind consists of 
 those factors or constituents or characters of the psycho- 
 physical organism which form its personality. The re- 
 searches of modern psychologists who have specialized in 
 abnormal psychology have revealed to us that personality 
 is a complex organization of psychical or spiritual con- 
 stituents or factors, of a different order from physical or 
 corporeal matter, and dynamic hi their nature. Also this 
 personality or spiritual unity may suffer dissociation, and 
 then we have the phenomenon of a divided or of a multiple 
 personality. Such dissociations are due to a derangement 
 or re-arrangement of psychical matter such as memory, or 
 to a failure or deficiency or deflection of will power. In any 
 case personality can only be expressed in psychical terms, 
 and the psychical constituents to which these terms apply 
 are totally different from, and possess an existence of another 
 order than, that which we express in the concepts of physical 
 matter and energy. 
 
 On the other hand, the investigations of the physiologists 
 
 o
 
 194 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 reveal to us that the body is a perfect machine, the life of 
 which consists in constant and continuous action and re- 
 action to physical stimuli, brought about by the integration 
 of innumerable co-ordinated muscular actions by means of 
 a perfected system of neural communications. The physio- 
 logical processes are cycles of physical and chemical changes, 
 and the whole mechanism is resolvable into material con- 
 stituents and physiological processes, a system of interchange 
 of energy. The initiation of the working and its direction 
 is performed by the mind ; the carrying out into action 
 by the body. The corporeal cycle is a closed system : it 
 receives its energy from the physical world and returns the 
 exact equivalent in work and heat. 
 
 Physiologists are not agreed as to whether the life of 
 the body can be expressed in the mechanical terms of 
 the particular vital processes. The life belongs to the 
 processes as a centrally controlled, centrally co-ordinated, 
 whole. But the life is not the mind, and there is a life of 
 the mind as there is a life of the body. Whatever be the 
 nature of the vital principle it is included in our concept 
 of body when we distinguish body from mind. It is not 
 the corpse but the living body which we distinguish from 
 the mind when we consider the interaction of mind and 
 body. In the actual psycho-physical organism there is a 
 living unity of physiological process, and a living unity of 
 psychical experience. 
 
 It is important to keep distinct the problem of the relation 
 of life and matter and that of the relation of mind and body ; 
 or rather to distinguish the life which we oppose to matter 
 from the mind which we oppose to body. When I speak 
 of body in this relation, I always mean living body and not 
 its physical constituents in contrast to its life. The two 
 problems resemble one another, inasmuch as both life and 
 mind stand for a unity which confers concrete individuality on 
 the manifold particular processes it co-ordinates. The differ- 
 ence is that life gives individuality to a group of material 
 constituents undergoing a cycle of physiological processes, 
 while mind gives individuality to the experience, that is, to 
 the conscious or attentive processes of the living organism.
 
 CHAP, vui BODY AND MIND 195 
 
 The narrower problem may lead up to and depend upon 
 the more general, but for our present purpose we are con- 
 cerned only with the particular problem of mind and body. 
 We may, then, state the problem of interaction as the 
 reconciliation of the two following propositions : 
 
 (1) The constituent factors of the mind and the con- 
 stituent factors of the body are absolutely heterogeneous, 
 and there is no common factor in psychical and physiological 
 process. 
 
 (2) There is a continuous adaptation of mind and body, 
 so that a change in the disposition of the one entails a 
 change in the disposition of the other. 
 
 It may be thought that the first of these propositions of 
 itself negatives the theory of interaction and compels us to 
 adopt the alternative theory of parallelism. There seems to 
 me a simple reply to this. We can point to two facts which 
 themselves are facts of interaction. Interaction is therefore 
 not a theory to account for facts but a fact to be reconciled 
 with other facts. The two facts are, first, that all changes 
 in the mind are mediated by the living body ; and, second, 
 that all actions of the living body carry out the purposes of 
 the mind. To go back to the illustration of the telegram, 
 the mind is absolutely dependent on the body for the 
 recipience which makes the purely spiritual change ; and 
 the body bears in all its subsequent actions the direction and 
 characteristic expression which the mind has imposed. The 
 body is the avenue to the mind of the experience which 
 changes it, and the body is the outlet to the mind of the 
 action which expresses that change. There is no parallelism 
 here but interaction, whatever be the nature of the inter- 
 action. In neither case is the physical fact parallel with 
 the psychical. In the first, the psychical fact is responsive 
 to the physical fact ; in the second, the physical fact is 
 responsive to the psychical fact. 
 
 Let us then inquire, what is the nature of soul or mind 
 as it is revealed to us in the objective study of psychical 
 phenomena ? Also what is the nature of living body as it 
 is revealed by the study of physiology ? And then what 
 is the nature of the synthesis or union of these two natures ?
 
 196 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 Let us begin, then, by considering the nature of mind 
 or soul. It is useful to retain both terms, even though 
 we mean to indicate by them an identical reality. When 
 we use the term " mind " we seem to throw emphasis on 
 the intellectual side, while when we use the term " soul " 
 we seem rather to emphasize the sentient and emotional 
 side of our spiritual nature. We are not in the first instance 
 conscious of the mind as an object distinct from the 
 body, we apprehend it rather as a distinct kind of quality 
 which some objects have and others have not. We are 
 accustomed to use the term " mind " simply to indicate 
 mental qualities, and the term " soul " to indicate the 
 individual character of the whole of these qualities. Then 
 again we use the term " soul " to comprehend the psychical 
 as distinct from the physical qualities of every material 
 object which is living, and we further distinguish the rational 
 soul from the animal soul and the animal soul from the 
 plant soul. The soul or mind which I am now opposing to 
 the living body is the rational soul. It seems to consist in 
 and depend upon the possession by a living creature of two 
 faculties, one passive, a faculty of being conscious or aware, 
 the other active, a faculty of desiring or willing. The first 
 is a specific knowledge of the body and its environment, the 
 second a specific tendency to responsive action by the body. 
 In each case a mental quality seems to characterize a 
 sensible object, and the soul seems to be the common term 
 for these mental qualities. In other words, it seems as 
 though the soul may be the phenomenon of consciousness 
 or awareness, exhibited by certain living material objects, 
 possessing a definite kind of organic structure, together with 
 the power of purposive action which such endowment brings 
 with it. When we consider the nature of this consciousness, 
 however, it becomes evident, and can be clearly and directly 
 proved, that consciousness is not the quality of a sensible 
 object but the manifestation of an individual, spiritual, that 
 is, of an immaterial, object. This definite immaterial object 
 is the soul. What is the proof of this ? And why, if true, 
 is it not immediately evident ? 
 
 The reason why, if true, it is not immediately evident
 
 CHAP, vm BODY AND MIND 197 
 
 is clear when we consider the conditions in which our 
 own individual consciousness arises. The world presents 
 itself to our mind in the first instance as an aggregate or 
 congeries of distinguishable spatial objects, each having a 
 nature of its own. We are each of us one among these 
 juxtaposed and displaceable objects. The object I call 
 " me " possesses a special quality of consciousness or aware- 
 ness. Other objects also seem to possess this quality, but 
 not all. The vast majority, indeed, seem by their pure 
 passivity to be without it. What, then, does this quality 
 of consciousness appear as ? It seems at first extremely 
 simple. Consciousness is my awareness that I am an object 
 among other objects. This seems to be a passive quality 
 in so far as it is an affection of the object " me " ; and 
 an active quality in so far as it relates me to other 
 objects which are not me. If I assume the existence of these 
 objects, then one way of imagining what consciousness or 
 awareness is will be to represent one of the objects as 
 possessed of the quality of being aware of the presence and 
 nature of the others. My knowledge will seem to depend 
 on a faculty in me to contemplate what exists. 
 
 When, however, I look more closely at the nature of this 
 knowledge, and make no assumption about existence, I see 
 that it is not and cannot be contemplation. That is to say, 
 knowledge may include contemplation, but cannot itself 
 simply be contemplation. It is of a different and altogether 
 more complex character than contemplation ; it is recogni- 
 tion. The immediate contemplation by one object of 
 another object or of other objects, granting there may be 
 such a thing, would not be what we call knowledge nor 
 even consciousness or awareness. To be conscious or aware 
 of an object is not to contemplate it but to recognize it. 
 Recognition implies . precognition, whereas contemplation 
 purports to be simple and immediate, and of itself implies no 
 previous acquaintance. Recognition supposes memory and 
 also constructive imagination, without which memory would 
 only be recollection of the past, not knowledge of the present. 
 Remembering and imagining are not qualities of sensible 
 objects. We are forced, in order to give meaning to the
 
 198 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 terms, to oppose mind to matter. Memory and imagination 
 are qualities of an intelligible object, the mind, and not of a 
 sensible object, the body. Their nature is spiritual and not 
 material. 
 
 There have, indeed, been many attempts to show that 
 memory may be a material fact. It has been suggested, for 
 example, that it is one in kind with the trace which every 
 material thing, however great its resilience, even flint or 
 steel, seems to retain of every force which has acted upon 
 it. But this is wholly to misunderstand the nature of the 
 fact, and is due, no doubt, to an ambiguity in our use of 
 the term memory. We use it to designate two wholly 
 distinct conscious phenomena, namely, first, the pure record 
 of our past experience which we retain and recall at need, 
 and also second, the disposition or habit of repeating 
 past experience which is either innate and part of our 
 nature, or else acquired by practice. This habit-memory, the 
 memory which repeats, is a motor disposition, and therefore 
 dependent on the setting up of mechanical contrivances 
 in the psycho-physical organism. Pure memory, on the 
 other hand, is unintelligible as a material fact. If there 
 be any one thing which we can point to and say, this is 
 spiritual, mental, psychical, and in no sense material, it is 
 memory. 
 
 It may still be objected, however, that this only proves 
 that memory cannot be considered as the quality of a 
 sensible object in so far as that object is purely spatial. 
 But, it will be said, every spatial object is also in a time 
 relation, the living body is spatio-temporal. May not 
 memory and imagination, then, be temporal qualities of 
 sensible objects, that is, qualities of living bodies enduring 
 through the continuity of a changing process ? The reply 
 is that memory is not static and mechanical. We do not 
 remember indifferently what has happened to us, and the 
 vividness of our memory is not proportionate to the strength 
 or weakness of the original sense stimulus. We remember 
 only what has interested us and what to some extent con- 
 sciously or unconsciously has engaged our attention. It is 
 the direction of this interest, and not the actual mechanical
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 199 
 
 modification of the sense-organs, which determines what 
 shall and what shall not form a record. How can such a 
 record be mechanical ? Our body contains various and in- 
 numerable reflex mechanisms, continually giving immediate 
 and automatic responses to definite stimuli, but no imagin- 
 able complexity of such reflexes would yield memory or 
 imagination. Memory represents the past, imagination the 
 future, not according to a scale of sense impressions or of 
 physical stimuli, but according to the organization of a 
 special interest. 
 
 This leads to the main consideration. Memory and 
 imagination do not pertain to the continuity of physio- 
 logical process in the body, but to the unity and continuity 
 of conscious experience which we term the personal self. 
 The continuity of living process in the body and the con- 
 tinuity of conscious process in the mind are not one and 
 the same continuity. The two continuities are in relation, 
 for there is neither affection nor action of the mind save by 
 means of the body. But the mind is a continuity of con- 
 scious experience quite distinct from the continuity of living 
 process, and quite different in its nature. The two con- 
 tinuities do not even present a point-to-point correspondence. 
 There are breaks in the bodily condition of consciousness, 
 normal breaks in sleep, abnormal breaks in certain diseases 
 and on the occasion of injuries or poisons, and these breaks 
 are of varying duration. Yet, however long the interval 
 between the states of consciousness, there is no break what- 
 ever in the continuity of the consciousness. When we 
 awake from sleep or when consciousness returns after long 
 coma, we are one and the same person in everything which 
 concerns the conscious continuity. No external stimulus 
 nor internal cerebration which may take place during periods 
 of unconsciousness enters into or goes to constitute the 
 continuity of memory which is the personal self. It is true 
 we may dream and may remember the dream, and the mind 
 may be affected by it after waking, but it is the dream we 
 are conscious of having had when we have awakened from 
 sleep, not the actual dream consciousness itself as it occurred 
 in sleep, which enters into the personal memory record. On
 
 200 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 the other hand, there may be breaks in the continuity of the 
 personal self-consciousness when there is no break whatever 
 in the continuity of its bodily condition. In such case we 
 have a wholly different kind of derangement. The break 
 may take the form of an amnesia, and according to its 
 extent and severity there will be a disruption of psychical 
 unity. Or it may take the form of complete dissociation 
 and give rise to the condition of double or multiple person- 
 ality. It is evident, therefore, that there is a unity and 
 continuity of mental process, distinct from, and other than, 
 the unity and continuity of physiological process, whatever 
 be their mutual relation. 
 
 It is, however, when we consider the conative rather than 
 the contemplative function of the mind, when we consider 
 desire, volition, action, rather than perception, memory, 
 imagination, that we are made aware of a definite mental 
 structure. Our psychical nature is based on innate in- 
 stinctive impulses which are for the most part unconscious. 
 Up to quite recent times these psychical dispositions were 
 regarded in a general way as the necessary accompaniment 
 of the natural functions of the bodily organism. More 
 especially the biological necessity of sexual reproduction, 
 which in the higher animals involves the union of individuals 
 organically distinct but complementary to one another for 
 the reproductive function, was supposed to have given rise 
 to the sexual instincts. The sexual instincts were supposed 
 to have undergone further modification in evolution, and 
 to have called forth auxiliary instincts with appropriate 
 emotions, such as parental affection, tender emotion, 
 gregariousness, and so forth. These again were supposed 
 to be the basis of our social and political institutions. 
 Our unconsciousness of this instinctive nature was simply 
 taken to be evidence that it belonged to our brute bodily 
 organization, constituted our animality, and was wholly 
 irrational. In the light of modern investigation we have 
 had to revise the whole concept of this unconscious nature, 
 and to replace it with the concept of unconscious mind. 
 
 To the older psychology the unconscious mind seemed a 
 contradiction in terms, for mind was generally a synonym of
 
 CHAP, vin BODY AND MIND 201 
 
 consciousness, and the unconscious was therefore the nega- 
 tion of mind. No one now quarrels with the term, though 
 there are many theories and acute controversies concerning 
 the fact. These I shall avoid as irrelevant to my present 
 purpose. I will confine myself to indicating a few now 
 generally accepted facts which clearly imply a definite 
 mental structure analogous to the bodily structure, and a 
 definite unity and continuity of psychical process analogous 
 to the co-ordinated unity and continuity of the physiological 
 process. 
 
 The first of these facts is that which psychologists 
 term repression. There are certain instinctive tendencies 
 to actions which we habitually repress, and this repression 
 is specific and constitutes nature. It is automatic and 
 unconscious. For example, the whole mental and moral 
 development of human nature, that is to say, the particular 
 and definite form it has assumed in civilization, is dependent 
 on the control of the reproductive instinct. This is a 
 psychical not a physical control ; for it is the expression of 
 the instinct, not the instinct itself, which is repressed. Re- 
 pression is effected by the holding back and suppressing of the 
 " wish " or imaginative form in which conation asserts itself, 
 so that it is kept from emergence into consciousness. There 
 is a repression exercised by consciousness itself. This is 
 very common experience and of everyday occurrence. But 
 there is a repression of which we are altogether unconscious, 
 and this is proved by abnormal psychology and also con- 
 firmed by many delicate experiments on normal subjects. 
 
 The second fact which seems to be established is that 
 there are planes of unconsciousness. If we take as the 
 plane of consciousness not merely what at any moment is 
 within the central zone of attention but what is within call 
 of the mind in memory, then there is below this a whole 
 range of definite psychical content which cannot of itself 
 reach consciousness and which is only revealed under 
 special circumstances, normal or abnormal. We may, for 
 example, under hypnotic conditions bring back memories 
 or re-live conations which in ordinary conditions are un- 
 recoverable. There is evidence of deeper and deeper planes.
 
 202 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 According to the well-known theory of dream interpreta- 
 tion of Sigmund Freud, it is from deep and ordinarily in- 
 accessible regions of our mind that the substantial material 
 of the dream life comes. However that may be, we may 
 regard it, I think, as established that whole regions of 
 psychical matter lie beneath the manifest mental activity 
 of attentive consciousness. 
 
 The third fact is that this unconscious mind is not inert 
 but active, not dead but living. Its constituents, like the 
 cells of the living body, have their own individual life. In 
 normal healthy life the deeper strata are inhibited and 
 controlled. The inhibiting and controlling power is exer- 
 cised by the mind, and the character and variety of the 
 inhibition constitute the individuality and personality of 
 the mind. Personality may, however, become disordered, 
 deranged or, to borrow the analogous term in the pathology 
 of the organism, diseased. Then the repressed and inhibited 
 constituents break away from control and run riot, and 
 give rise to the familiar symptoms of hysteria, or, it may 
 be, to the more serious symptoms of dissociation, or to final 
 and irreparable ruin in dementia. 
 
 We are entitled to say of these facts, apart from anything 
 in regard to them which is hypothetical or mere theory, that 
 they point to the existence of mental structure. Memory, 
 imagination, desire, conation, tendency, wish, are psychical 
 matter, and they are organized to form an acting unity, and 
 this unity is the personal mind. The constituents of it are 
 of a different order of reality to that of the protoplasmic 
 movements, cell physiology, mecabolism, muscular con- 
 tractibility, glandular secretion, nervous co-ordination, and 
 the like, which constitute the living body. 
 
 Is it not possible, however, it may yet be urged, that the 
 mind is identical with and a development of the principle of 
 life ? Whatever be the origin of life and whatever the 
 nature of the principle which has determined the direction 
 of the energy of the changes of carbon compounds and 
 evolved specialized vegetable and animal forms, is there 
 not, it may be asked, an uninterrupted progress in this 
 direction until we reach the rational soul ? The reply I
 
 CHAP, vin BODY AND MIND 203 
 
 offer to this, so far as my present purpose is concerned, is 
 that whether or not the problem of life be ultimately one 
 and identical with the problem of mind, the actual fact 
 before us is the problem of two distinct orders, an order of 
 living body and an order of thinking mind. The inter- 
 action of mind and body is not the problem what life itself 
 is, but in what way a mind, being an organization of spiritual 
 experience, can act hi and through a living body constituted 
 of material elements and mechanical movements. Every 
 man whose mind is normal recognizes, as soon as he under- 
 stands the proposition, that two straight lines cannot enclose 
 a space, and every man whose body is normal maintains 
 from birth to death a blood temperature of 37 C. The two 
 facts belong to different orders, and it is inconceivable that 
 the two facts can interact in such a way that one might be 
 the cause or the effect of the other. Yet the two orders do 
 in some way enter into one system, for both are essential to 
 one personality. 
 
 Let us now consider the nature of the body. The body 
 is, what the mind is not, a sensible object. It is one among 
 the objects or things which constitute the sensible world. 
 It is presented by means of sensations, and is in spatial 
 and temporal relations with the other objects of the sensible 
 world. The term " sensible " implies a relation to mind, for 
 object sensed implies subject sensing. There is no escape 
 from this relation. On the other hand, there would be no 
 advantage in escape, were escape possible, for the whole 
 problem of knowledge and existence is the problem of 
 presenting reality to the mind in a form which is self- 
 consistent. The relation of object to subject expressed in 
 the words " sensible object," the relation of object to subject 
 in knowing of every kind and order, is not, however, the 
 relation between the body and the mind which I am now 
 seeking to make explicit, because in this meaning the mind 
 as well as the body is an object to a subject. The body is 
 a sensible object to a sensing subject, the mind is an in- 
 telligible object to a thinking, that is, an imagining and 
 reflecting, subject. 
 
 The body, like other objects in the sensible world, is
 
 204 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 spatial ; it excludes other objects, and is juxtaposed with 
 them. It is changeable, for it occupies different positions 
 at different moments. It is changing, for it alters intern- 
 ally continuously, and according to a principle or law. 
 It is temporal, for its state at any moment is determined 
 by its state at the previous moment. As an object it can 
 be classified according to any order or arrangement to 
 which physical objects conform. 
 
 To each individual, however, his body is a privileged 
 object. It is the constant centre of all objects, and the 
 changes in all other objects are primarily for him changes in 
 the relation of other objects to the body. But it is also 
 privileged in a still more special sense. It is the means 
 and the only means by which all objects, itself included, 
 are known, and the only means by which desires and wishes 
 are expressed. Also it is a privileged object in the sense that 
 it alone among all objects is known not only by sensations 
 but also by affections or feelings. We know our body, not 
 only in the way we know all sensible objects by the sensa- 
 tions we have of it, but also in the feelings by which the 
 sensations of itself and of other objects are accompanied. 
 So it is that some knowledge of our own body appears to 
 be a necessary accompaniment of any knowledge of any 
 sensible object. For example, when by touch I am made 
 aware of an external object I am also at the same time 
 aware of my own body as the surface touched, and this 
 even if the object touching is also part of my own body. 
 Nevertheless, although the body as an object has these 
 privileges over other objects, we find no difficulty in abstract- 
 ing from them and considering the body purely as belonging 
 to the general class of external material objects. Indeed, 
 it is only by doing so that we have come to know anything 
 of importance about the body. Its special privileges give 
 us no insight into its nature and function. We know 
 absolutely nothing of the internal structure and of the 
 physiological processes of the body by reason of the fact 
 that the mind dwells within it and is dependent upon it 
 for all it knows and does. In fact, our individual mind, 
 notwithstanding its specially privileged position in regard
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 205 
 
 to one object, is not thereby endowed with special know- 
 ledge of the nature of that object, nor equipped with special 
 means of becoming acquainted with its living processes. 
 Knowledge of physiological process cannot be gained by 
 introspection but only by external observation. It is gained 
 by means of sensations, perceptions and judgments, not 
 by feelings. 
 
 The living body is a cycle of physiological processes, 
 performed by means of mutually adapted structures, auto- 
 matically co-ordinated and controlled. The great majority 
 of these processes are involuntary and unconscious in the 
 absolute degree, and in those processes or parts of processes 
 in which there is consciousness and volition the conscious- 
 ness and volition seem independent of the efficiency of the 
 actual process. If the consciousness take the form of 
 sentience, pain or pleasure, it appears as merely an accom- 
 paniment of the process, not as an essential constituent of 
 it. If it take the form of reflective consciousness or aware- 
 ness, it then appears, though accompanying the process, 
 to be altogether detached from it. We can and we do 
 conceive the living body as complete in itself without the 
 accompaniment of consciousness, either in the form of 
 simple sentience or in the form of apperception. And yet 
 this accompaniment of consciousness, whether it be simple 
 sentience or cognition, always seems to fulfil some manifest 
 biological purpose. Also unconsciousness, in those neural 
 processes from which consciousness is absent, is not merely 
 negative, its absence fulfils a biological purpose. Uncon- 
 sciousness may be simply an absence, or it may be positively 
 acquired, the automatism of habitual action, in either case 
 we may find its ground in a biological utility. 
 
 Yet although the physiological processes of the living body 
 seem independent of the particular form of consciousness or 
 unconsciousness which may accompany them, this conscious 
 accompaniment is conditioned by special structures and 
 special processes in the living body. Part of our organiza- 
 tion has for sole function sentience and responsive volitional 
 action. Such structures are : the sense-organs which consist 
 of specialized nerve-endings disposed in varying groups over
 
 206 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 the periphery, enabling a minute discrimination of external 
 physical stimuli to be experienced ; the special nerve- 
 endings beneath the skin or in its deeper layers which give 
 rise when stimulated to pain-sensations ; special nerve- 
 endings sensitive to muscular, glandular or vascular fatigue 
 which give rise to vague feelings of general comfort or dis- 
 comfort ; the richly innervated organs of the special senses, 
 the retina, the organ of Corti, the semicircular canals, the 
 organs of taste and smell, which enable us to discriminate 
 definite ranges or distinct classes of physical stimuli. Then 
 there is the great central organ itself, the brain and spinal 
 cord, to which every single sentient end-organ communicates 
 directly its particular fibre and whence special fibres descend 
 with the volitional impulses to every muscle under volitional 
 control. 
 
 There is an important character of the structure and 
 function of neurones which recent researches have disclosed. 
 This is the individuality or rather the specificity of each 
 constituent cell with its fibres. The older theory of specific 
 nervous energy merely affirmed the general specificity of 
 groups of sensory and motor neurones, particularly those 
 associated with the special senses. It now seems probable 
 that this specificity belongs to every constituent unit of a 
 group and not merely to the group as distinguished from 
 other groups. All action mediated by neurones takes place 
 on the all-or-nothing principle, and the function of one 
 neurone cannot be performed by any other. At least it 
 seems to me that all the direct experiments, such parti- 
 cularly as the well-known experiment of Dr. Head on the 
 innervation of his own forearm, tend to confirm this general- 
 ization. 1 The living principle, whatever it is and however 
 we name it, entelechy, elan vital, life-force, manifests 
 itself in the co-ordination of multifarious specific processes 
 of constituent cells. This function of co-ordination is not 
 exercised by any specific structure. At any rate, no such 
 structure is known and there is no reason to suppose it 
 exists undiscovered. The function is exercised indifferently 
 whether the constituent elements be many or few, and the 
 
 1 See Brain, 1908, vol. xxxi. p. 137 et seq.
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 207 
 
 number of cell-constituents varies enormously between 
 individuals of different species of the same generic type. 
 The mechanism by which co-ordination is effected can be 
 located in the cerebral cortex, the function of which may 
 be likened to that of the switchboard in a telephonic 
 exchange. The ultimate nature of the living body seems 
 therefore to be the co-ordination on an enduring principle 
 of an immense numerical aggregate of independent specific 
 units. 
 
 Let us now consider the heterogeneity of these two 
 natures. When I speak of the heterogeneity of mind and 
 body, and point to the absolute disparity between mental 
 and physical (including physiological) process, I do not 
 mean that we can form class -concepts of minds and of 
 bodies as unrelated realities. It is easy to see in the case 
 of the mind that the possibility of presenting it as image 
 or as concept depends on its relation to the body. We can 
 only define what anything is by what it does ; what does 
 nothing is nothing ; and whatever the mind does it does by 
 means of the body. We may abstract the mind from its 
 relation to any particular body, but we cannot give ex- 
 pression to the thought of a mind without imagining for it 
 some embodiment. This has been the favourite criticism of 
 animistic theories ancient and modern. It is impossible 
 even in thought to present the idea of pure unembodied 
 spirit. The converse is also true in so far as the concept 
 of one's own living body is concerned, but it is not so im- 
 mediately obvious, and would at least require the support 
 of argument to bring conviction. It is really impossible 
 for me to think that my body without my mind is still my 
 body. I may place myself in thought as a spectator at 
 my own cremation, but only by the artifice of an imagined 
 embodiment which enables me to present my body to my 
 mind as no longer my body. Or, again, consider a case 
 like the pathetic picture which Nietzsche's sister has given 
 of the last years of her brother, truly a picture of 
 living death. There is the living body surviving the dead 
 mind. In presenting that living body to our mind as still 
 Nietzsche's body, we are, in fact, employing the artifice of
 
 208 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 a new impersonation. We must place Nietzsche's mind 
 within his body in imagination in order to conceive its 
 absence in fact. The problem of heterogeneity is not the 
 problem whether a dissociation of mind and body is or is 
 not conceivable. 
 
 If, then, mind and body are heterogeneous and yet neither 
 existentiallynor conceptually separate, does the heterogeneity 
 consist in the double aspect which psycho-physical action 
 assumes ? Is mind the aspect of that action when regarded 
 as purpose, body its aspect when regarded as mechanism ? 
 The specific character of mental process is the representa- 
 tion in idea of the end to be attained ; the specific character 
 of physical process is the determination of counteracting 
 forces in a resultant. Every action or process, whether we 
 class it as material or vital, as conscious or unconscious, 
 presents to the observer this double aspect, the resultant 
 can be viewed either as determined by a final cause or by 
 an efficient cause. The resultant is one and the same, 
 however viewed. A process of crystallization or a process 
 of organic metabolism can be read purposively or mechani- 
 cally, but it is the same set of facts, whichever way they 
 are viewed, and whatever kind of interpretation the external 
 observer seeks. There is, however, in a system or body in 
 which mind is immanent, the emergence of a phenomenon 
 which is not found in any merely mechanical system of 
 interacting forces. This is conscious or purposive adapta- 
 tion. It manifests itself as a direction of physical forces, 
 already existing, toward the attainment of an ideal which 
 it presents as an end. In this we have the distinguishing 
 characteristic of mind, that which raises it, so to speak, to a 
 higher plane than that of mere natural fact. Yet this is 
 not the characteristic which seems to me to constitute the 
 fact of heterogeneity ; rather, I should say, it is the hetero- 
 geneity of mind and body which is the ground or condition 
 of this characteristic. 
 
 This heterogeneity is based on a certain fact which we 
 directly experience and also may indirectly observe. It is 
 that every new experience from the instant of its historical 
 apparition enters into, submits to, is incorporated within
 
 CHAP, vin BODY AND MIND 209 
 
 two disparate systems. Each system has its own kind of 
 order, its own specific nature, and its own peculiar function. 
 The union between the two systems consists in a relation 
 of mutual interdependence, but it is the systems which are 
 interdependent. It is not a point-to-point union, nor a point- 
 to-point correspondence of the constituent parts of one 
 system with those of the other. Thought and action, 
 though mutually dependent, form each a system ; the one 
 is the psychical organization we term the mind, the other 
 the co-ordination of mechanical contrivances we term the 
 body. We cannot call into activity a part of the mind 
 without calling into activity the whole mind. We cannot 
 exercise a particular mechanism of the body without affect- 
 ing the whole disposition of the body. 
 
 When I feel, perceive, think and will, what is it in me 
 that performs these acts of feeling, perceiving, thinking and 
 willing ? Why do I attribute these acts to my mind and 
 not to my body ? Why do I divide myself into these two 
 parts or attribute to myself this dual nature ? What is 
 the difficulty in assigning all my psychical acts to the brain, 
 and in supposing that my brain thinks ? Many con- 
 temporary philosophers are inclined to consider this a 
 possible hypothesis, and the new theory of " Behaviourism " 
 seems an attempt to give it philosophical expression. I 
 find no inherent difficulty in the notion. It does not seem 
 to me absurd, nor antecedently impossible, nor even ante- 
 cedently improbable. The theory that the brain thinks or 
 that the mind is the brain is not the same as the theory that 
 the brain secretes mind as the liver secretes gall. Such a 
 concept rests on a false analogy. As the ovary secretes the 
 ovum, would have been a truer analogy. But then, as 
 the ovum becomes the embryo, the absurdity would have 
 been manifest. I see no incongruity in attributing to the 
 brain, because it is ultimately resolvable into a constellation 
 of physical atoms, a psychical function. My reason for 
 rejecting the simple statement that the brain thinks is that 
 it seems to me untrue in fact. I can imagine that the brain 
 might think and feel and will, but what I cannot imagine is 
 that thoughts and feelings and volitions, if they were acts of 
 
 p
 
 210 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 the brain, could form the mind. They could in a certain 
 way hang together, no doubt, and they could have the 
 unity which comes from being owned, but could they of 
 themselves form an organic individual system such as the 
 mind is ? I find it, then, impossible to believe that, as a 
 fact, the brain thinks, because I find that, as a fact, the brain 
 is not the mind. If there be two things, the mind and the 
 body, and the brain is part of the body, then it seems to 
 me it must be the mind and not the brain which thinks. 
 But what is the proof of it ? It seems to me clear that, 
 were it the brain which directly exercises the psychical 
 function, then acts of feeling, thinking, etc., would be dis- 
 connected, detached, and detachable, or combined, if they 
 were combined, on an altogether different principle from 
 that which I find. As a fact, I can never detach one 
 psychical act from other acts, or attach a psychical act 
 purely and simply to a physiological process, it is always 
 one and indivisible with the whole psychical organization 
 I call mind. It belongs to the system of my psychical 
 experience, and to present it as belonging to the system of 
 mechanical contrivances which I call my body and to the 
 particular co-ordinating connexions of these which are the 
 part of my body I call my brain, is to me a pure incongruity. 
 Even the simplest, most elementary psychical act is the 
 act of a mind. Its character, its tone, its subordination 
 to purpose, emanate directly from the organization of an 
 individual whole of psychical acts. Thoughts, ideas, mean- 
 ings, desires, wishes, imaginations, feelings, sensations, are 
 not a chaos, a disconnected manifold. They do not float 
 loosely, and they are not indifferent to the principle of their 
 combination. They are owned, not by the brain, but by the 
 personality which they themselves constitute, the mind. 
 Test it in the simplest case of mere sentience. Suppose the 
 stimulation of a pain nerve-ending. The pain which follows 
 may seem instantaneous, and may be followed by an auto- 
 matic muscular response, but it is not a pure reflex. For 
 it is only if I experience pain that it is pain, which means 
 that to be pain it must be a state of my mind. It must 
 modify my whole personality. If my mind exclude it, it is
 
 CHAP, vni BODY AND MIND 211 
 
 absolutely ineffectual, practically and actually non-existent, 
 even though the stimulation remain in the form of physical 
 injury, and the neural course be unimpeded. There is no 
 way of detaching the pain as a psychical element from the 
 mind, and attaching it and confining it to a particular 
 neural process ; and it is the whole mind, not a detached 
 psychical factor of it, which intervenes to bring about the 
 new bodily disposition. 
 
 We find another and yet more striking instance of the 
 heterogeneity of mind and body in the general phenomenon 
 of the animal mind. The mental equipment of different 
 animal species seems always proportioned to the conditions 
 of the animal's life, and never and in no respect proportion- 
 ate to neural matter, or to the complexity and quantity 
 of specific contrivances. There are large mammals which 
 possess at least fifteen thousand times as many neurones as 
 the smallest mammals. Does any one, therefore, credit 
 them with fifteen thousand times the sentient or intellectual 
 capacity ? But if the brain thinks, why not ? Leaving 
 aside the problem of magnitude, when we compare one 
 animal with another, we are struck with the remarkable 
 difference between one species and another in the extent 
 to which mind serves it in its activity. A rat, for example, 
 shows more cunning than a rabbit, or a sheep, or a horse, yet 
 it is not better equipped neurologically for its special 
 activities than they are for theirs. It is clearly a case in 
 which intelligence has been developed because it serves the 
 species in the peculiar routine of life to which it is adapted. 
 A striking illustration was afforded a few years ago at the 
 Zoological Gardens in the case of a Polar bear, a creature 
 which, judging by its structure and position in the animal 
 scale, might be expected to exhibit a high degree of common 
 intelligence. When placed in new quarters on the Mappin 
 Terraces, it fell over the parapet into the surrounding foss. 
 Obvious and perfectly simple means of return were offered 
 it, but instead of availing itself of them it displayed for 
 several days an amazing amount of what appeared as sheer 
 stupidity. The explanation zoologists offered was that its 
 mental equipment was adequate to the conditions of its
 
 212 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 life, the routine of which in its native seas, where no natural 
 enemies are laying snares for it, seldom presents a complex 
 situation, or one that calls for the exercise of cunning. 
 
 The acquirement of skill affords another illustration of 
 what I mean by the heterogeneity of mind and body. The 
 skill of the musician, the mechanic, the professional scientific 
 practitioner, is acquired by an activity orientated in the 
 inverse direction to that which we associate with the grow- 
 ing, widening, and developing mind. It even depends for 
 success on a certain inhibition of pure mentality. Skill 
 may almost be defined as the power of performing compli- 
 cated actions without thinking. Reflective or discursive 
 thought, which is the essence of mind, interrupts the work 
 of skill. Yet the acquirement of skill is not independent 
 of, nor indifferent to, the brain. Not only does it involve 
 a development of neural process, but almost certainly a 
 development of the higher cerebral centres those which we 
 imagine to be most immediately concerned with rational 
 processes. Skill supposes an enormous work of co-ordina- 
 tion, and the cerebral hemispheres are the seat of this co- 
 ordination. Here, therefore, we have a case in which brain 
 development is quite disparate from mind development. 
 On the other hand, the cases are almost proverbial of the 
 want of skill in the ordinary affairs of life displayed by 
 men of vast intellectual attainments. Mental giants some- 
 times act as children in matters of daily life. It may be, 
 of course, that the intellectual development is due to other 
 and different nervous co-ordinations or to other kinds of 
 nervous contrivance, but whether this be so or not, it is 
 clear that in the case of skill the brain hypothesis is largely 
 explanatory, in the other case it is not. The reason is 
 important. Muscles are involved in the case of skill, and 
 muscles are wholly controlled by nerves. In the case of 
 mind, thoughts, ideas and meanings are concerned, and 
 their direct relation to nerve is purely hypothetical. Nerves 
 are the channels or pathway between the mind and the 
 world external to the body, but that they cause or control 
 or originate the mind there is no evidence. 
 
 At this point it may seem that the animistic hypothesis
 
 CHAP, vni BODY AND MIND 213 
 
 offers the easiest solution of our problem. It is the most 
 ancient and the most venerable, and this of itself may 
 incline one to suspect that it may be true after all. May 
 we not schematize the relation of mind and body on 
 the analogy of the charioteer who with the reins in his 
 hands guides and controls the living horses, making them 
 subserve and fulfil his purposes ? May not the relation 
 of the soul to the living body, though infinitely more com- 
 plex, be yet ultimately as simple as this ? Should we 
 adopt this view we might then suppose that each sensation 
 was a demand on the attention of the soul, a call to it to 
 take account of the situation and direct the response. And 
 this the soul might do either by leaving the response to 
 the automatic reactions or by co-ordinating new ones. In 
 any case we should represent the soul as distinct in its 
 nature and function from the living body, able, perhaps, 
 like the charioteer to step down from the chariot and at 
 need to mount another. The analogy is tempting and up 
 to a point it agrees with the facts. It is therefore very 
 important to indicate clearly the exact point at which it 
 fails, and also the completeness of the failure. It fails to 
 explain the fact that the mind is psychical experience and 
 not something which has psychical experience. The problem 
 of mind and body arises in the fact that psychical experience 
 organizes itself into mind, and then stands as an organic 
 or systematic whole over against the bodily system. 
 
 It seems to me certain that the forces, whatever they are, 
 which are moulding the body and adapting it to the specific 
 activity of the living creature are the identical forces which 
 are forming the mind and organizing it into the personal 
 unity. I say it seems to me certain, not because I think 
 the contrary inconceivable, but because all the facts when 
 considered without prejudice support this view, and because 
 I can think of no reason why I should suppose there are 
 unknown facts which would invalidate such a conclusion. 
 Moreover, there is one fact which seems positively to clinch 
 it. Every individual has an ancestry and proximately 
 arises from two parents. In the fertilized germ, potential 
 mind and potential body are indistinguishable. Together
 
 214 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 they part from the parental stock and enter on individual 
 existence. I find it impossible to believe that the mind is 
 generated by some separate process or arises independently 
 of the force which generates the body. 
 
 I will now state my own theory, and I will do so by first 
 of all presenting its metaphysical basis in abstract terms, 
 afterwards trying to show how it is exemplified in the 
 common and acknowledged facts of experience. 
 
 The ultimate reality I can best indicate by the term 
 '* life." Life is a very general term and more often used 
 as an adjective than as a substantive. I mean by " life " 
 existence as I immediately experience it in living. I mean 
 therefore what some philosophers term conscious experience, 
 or simply experience. It seems to me to be what Descartes 
 meant by his "I think, therefore I am." Thinking is the 
 ultimate fact behind which even thought cannot get. This 
 immediate knowing of life in living is pure intuition, that 
 is, a form of knowing which is non-intellectual. When we 
 reflect on this life and form a notion of it, when we ask 
 what it is, we find that there are involved in the notion 
 two concepts which are essential to it, the concept of 
 activity and the concept of duration. It may be said 
 that these are but expressions of a more general notion 
 which underlies them, the notion of movement or change. 
 I prefer to identify change with the general notion of 
 life, but I am now considering life as each individual 
 conceives it in reflecting on his experience. To the in- 
 dividual, life is centralized and determined. It is the 
 activity which is confined to a definite present moment, 
 and also it is the duration of progressing action. There is, 
 therefore, a dichotomy in the very notion of life. It splits 
 into two antithetical notions and these stand over against 
 one another and are mutually exclusive. The notion of 
 activity seems to concentrate or focus all reality in one 
 intense but isolable instant and to exclude from the present 
 moment what has been or will be, while the notion of 
 duration brings into the present moment both past and 
 future. It appears to me that we have in this dichotomy 
 of thought the essential principle which underlies the duality
 
 CHAP, vin BODY AND MIND 215 
 
 of mind and body. The body is the concrete realization 
 of the activity of life, the mind the concrete realization of 
 its duration. 
 
 Some of the most obstinate problems of philosophy are 
 due to a natural disposition of our intellect which inclines 
 us to dissociate thought and action, thinking and doing. 
 We regard deeds as alone real in the full sense of actuality ; 
 thoughts possess a shadowy kind of reality which they 
 derive from deeds. Consequently the living body which 
 at each present moment is actually doing the action essential 
 to its life seems not only the centre of activity but the whole 
 activity and the source from which the mind derives its 
 reality. But if the living body is necessary for the perform- 
 ance of action, the enduring mind is equally necessary for 
 the unity and continuity of the action. 
 
 When we try to form the distinct concept of the living 
 body apart from the concept of the informing mind, it is at 
 once evident that our notion is of an unenduring thing, 
 that is, a perishing and not a persisting thing. We conceive, 
 it is true, a continuity of purely bodily existence. We 
 picture the continuity of the body of an individual from 
 birth to death. The same body seems to us to go through 
 the most complete changes, changes both of matter and 
 form, in infancy, maturity, and decay. At any present 
 moment the body is an aggregation of material con- 
 stituents with a certain arrangement of juxtaposition in 
 space, and an order of succession in time. Ordered 
 succession is implied in physiological process. The state 
 at every present moment is determined by the state at the 
 preceding moment. But this is not the concept of duration ; 
 on the contrary, it is the concept of the succession of 
 momentary existences lapsing into a non-existence which is 
 absolute. The living body concentrates its whole activity 
 in one present existent moment, and it perishes with that 
 moment. Its continuity is a continuity of perishing. It 
 does not share its existence between two moments in such 
 way that part of it exists at one moment, part at another. 
 Its existence at one moment means that it has ceased to 
 exist at every other. We cannot form the concept of mind
 
 216 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 on that model. Duration is as essential to our concept of 
 mind as non-duration is essential to our concept of body. 
 Duration means the continued existence of the past and 
 its comprehension within the present ; non-duration means 
 the continual going out of existence and new creation of 
 the present. 
 
 Living action therefore involves for its actualization two 
 systems antithetical in their nature and divergent in their 
 direction. Each of these systems organizes itself continu- 
 ously round one and the same individual centre of activity, 
 and its organization is the necessary condition of realization 
 in action. One secures to living action its duration and 
 gives it its free seH-determining character. The other 
 secures its efficiency and gives it mechanical necessity, 
 inserting it into the universal system of interacting forces. 
 Such is the nature of the antithetical systems which it 
 seems to me are necessarily formed round every centre of 
 life, realizing the twofold character of action duration and 
 efficiency. Can we present the scheme of the genesis of 
 these two systems, and will this throw light on the problem 
 of the nature of their interaction ? 
 
 Living process, as I conceive it, is a progressive dichotomy. 
 Throughout the realm of individual experience the funda- 
 mental principle of development is a dichotomy of thinking 
 and acting. By the term dichotomy I wish to emphasize 
 that the process of experience is single not twofold in its 
 origin. Living experience is the continual differentiation 
 of what is at first undifferentiated. The differentiating is 
 not a mechanical division into parts, it is the imposition 
 on the same material of two orders of arrangement, each 
 following a different principle, but each order the necessary 
 complement of the other. 
 
 I will try to illustrate what I mean by taking first a 
 simple case, the simplest case I can imagine, then a more 
 complex case. I will suppose that a single pain-terminal 
 in my body is excited by an adequate stimulus. The result 
 is a psycho-physical event, as simple and unique as an 
 event can be. It is physical and it is psychical. The pain 
 is psychical, and the stimulus is physical. A later reflexion
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 217 
 
 may separate them, but existentially they are inseparable ; 
 they are not experienced as two events in a causal relation. 
 Yet this one single experience in its very nature affects 
 two wholly distinct systems, the mind and the body. In the 
 mind it isundifferentiated pain, vaguely localized, and referred 
 to something hurting. In the body it is the specific function- 
 ing of a specific minute structure, responding to a specific 
 stimulus. This structure is not interchangeable with any 
 other so far as its function is concerned, yet it is in co- 
 ordination with the whole body as a physiological system. 
 And now let us consider a more complex and complicated 
 case. I will suppose I am watching a violinist performing. 
 I have before me quite clearly mental process and bodily 
 action. Were there only bodily action I might hear sound 
 or noise but not music. Yet for me there is only one fact, 
 and it seems to me also that for the violinist there is only one 
 fact, his living action ; but this one fact necessarily enters 
 his mental order and his bodily order, and each is changing 
 at every point of the progressing action. Each order, the 
 mental and bodily, is changing, however, on a totally 
 different principle, so that there is not and cannot be a 
 correlation between a constituent part of the one order and 
 a constituent part of the other. His living action is not 
 uniting two diverse facts, nor holding in a fixed correlation 
 two series of facts ; it is creating two different orders. My 
 theory is, then, that living action is not the unifying of an 
 original diversity but the dichotomizing of an original unity. 
 If this be true it seems to me the whole problem of inter- 
 action, as hitherto understood, is transformed. Mind and 
 body arise in the very process of living action, and arise, 
 not at some moment which we can fix or imagine as the 
 absolute beginning of living action, but arise continuously 
 from moment to moment of the progressing development. 
 Every modification of ever-changing experience is a modifica- 
 tion of mind and body, each in its individual integrity. 
 The antithesis of the two constitutes the essential nature of 
 living action. The principle of living action is an organiz- 
 ation of ends, an organization of means, and a continuous 
 adaptation of ends to means and means to ends. The
 
 2i8 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 organizations realize antithetical principles ; the one achieves 
 freedom, the other necessity. The notion of means involves 
 rigid determinism, a means which is not the necessary means 
 is not a means ; the notion of end involves freedom, a neces- 
 sary end is not an end. The dichotomy itself is grounded in 
 necessity. It is because the principles are antithetical that 
 each must organize itself independently of the other. There 
 is no common quality of mind and body and no common 
 measure between them, which would render it conceivable 
 that mental things and bodily things should enter indiffer- 
 ently into either a mental or a bodily process. Equally 
 inconceivable is a mind without embodiment, and a body 
 without mind to give purposiveness to its co-ordinated 
 processes. It is only as whole and individual, and not as 
 composed of classes of discrete entities, that mind and body 
 are in perfect union in a relation of absolute mutual 
 interdependence . 
 
 The term which seems to me best adapted to express the 
 interaction of the mind and the body is solidarity. The old 
 legal meaning of this word exactly fits the notion. It was 
 originally a term of Roman and Civil law to express the 
 character of a contract which, in a single matter, involved 
 individual obligations on the part of the contractors 
 severally, with corresponding rights to the holders. The 
 term solidarity means, therefore, that diverse, even divergent, 
 activities together bring to pass a single common result to 
 which all the activities contribute without sacrificing their 
 individual integrity. The term causality, on the other 
 hand, as used in physical science (apart from any question 
 as to the legitimacy of its employment therein) means that 
 in some way something which is distinguished as cause dis- 
 appears, and its exact equivalent reappears in something 
 which is distinguished as effect. The interaction of mind 
 and body is not of a causal but of a solidary nature. 
 
 I can now, I think, make clear my scheme of this inter- 
 action. Let us call living action A, then we may say that 
 every A is B C, these standing respectively for what pertains 
 to the mind system and to the body system. B and C are 
 not in direct relation but only in indirect relation. A B is
 
 CHAP, viii BODY AND MIND 219 
 
 different from A C, and the relation between B and C is that 
 both are implied in A. Thus there is interaction between 
 B and C without causal relation. For, let us suppose that 
 the initiation of a change is in B, the change is a change of A, 
 but A is also C, and therefore there is a change in C con- 
 sequent on the change in B. It is the nature of the con- 
 sequence which is all-important in my theory. A is always 
 changing, change being of the essence of activity, and the 
 change of A is a change in system B, and a change in 
 system C. The relation of B and C to one another is 
 mutual adaptation. A profound change in B may neces- 
 sitate very slight adaptation in C, may conceivably 
 necessitate no adaptation at all, and then the changes in B 
 and C are quite disproportionate. It is this that differ- 
 entiates my view from parallelism. The change in the 
 mind is never commensurate with the change in the body, 
 and there is no one-to-one correspondence which would 
 make it possible for even an infinite intelligence to read the 
 one in the other. 
 
 Let me try and apply the formula. Life, I have said, is 
 enduring and efficient, and I have shown that these char- 
 acters are antithetical. I suppose, then, life to exist as an 
 undifferentiated unity. If I am challenged to justify this 
 supposal by any actual experience, I have, of course, to 
 acknowledge that there is no such experience. I am present- 
 ing a scheme of the genesis of experience, not a temporal 
 history of it. There is no experience of life save as already 
 differentiated into body and mind. This is not a difficulty 
 peculiar to philosophy, it is an inherent difficulty of all 
 scientific explanation. How, for example, can I schematize 
 what light is without the notion of latent energy, yet, so 
 far as experience is concerned, latent energy is non-existent 
 energy ? I conceive life, then, as first an undifferentiated 
 unity which to realize itself, to become actual, to be living 
 action, must differentiate itself. This differentiation is a 
 dichotomy, a separation into two individual systems, the 
 order of which is governed by principles which are opposite 
 and contradictory, but at the same time the systems are 
 complementary. One principle is realized in the mind, the
 
 220 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 other in the body. One forms an enduring agent pre- 
 serving past and projecting future action, and the other 
 an efficient instrument inserted into the whole system of 
 interacting forces within which it is operative. Freedom 
 is essential to the agent, mechanical necessity to the 
 instrument. Here we must be on our guard lest our 
 metaphors defeat us. Agent and instrument are metaphors 
 which almost directly suggest the distinction between a 
 machine and its function, and we cannot apply this dis- 
 tinction to the relation of mind and body. Between life 
 and function there exists no distinction. The body is not 
 like a motor car which a man leaves in his garage until he 
 has need of it. Living action progresses with the con- 
 tinuous modification of mind and body. The action is 
 neither physical nor psychical nor partly physical, partly 
 psychical, it is psycho-physical. No physical influence 
 affects the mind save through the body, and no psychical 
 influence passes from the mind save through the body. All 
 and every experience modifies both mind and body, but the 
 modification is not a mechanical addition to something 
 which but for the addition remains identical with what it 
 was before. However subtle and imperceptible the change 
 may be which new experience effects on the mind, it is the 
 whole mind which is changed. And however slight the 
 demand on the body a new experience makes, even though 
 the action called for may appear a mere repetition of count- 
 less previous similar actions, a change is effected in the 
 whole disposition of the co-ordinated mechanisms which 
 comprise the body. We know that the organs of the body 
 and the constituent elements of the organs atrophy with 
 disuse and grow with use. A continuity of change in mind 
 and body is a condition of life. 
 
 Here I may offer a remark on the bearing of this theory 
 on the question of survival. It is not strictly relevant, yet 
 to many the predominant interest of the whole problem of 
 the interaction of mind and body is the light it throws on 
 it. I see nothing irrational in the notion of a survival of 
 personal experience after death. The credibility of it, as 
 matter of fact, must depend on ordinary scientific evidence,
 
 CHAP, via BODY AND MIND 221 
 
 and with this my theory has nothing to do. The only 
 question it is concerned with is how far the system I call 
 mind is conceivable when the system I call body is practically 
 destroyed. There are two types of religious dogma ; one 
 is the natural immortality of the soul, the other is the 
 resurrection of the body. I do not propose to discuss or 
 compare them in regard to their conceivability, for with the 
 first my present argument is not concerned. I will only 
 point out, therefore, that so far as the view of the relation of 
 mind and body which I have tried to set forth is concerned, 
 some embodiment is essential to every presentation of mind 
 as image of a concrete person, or as general idea or concept 
 of an actual individual. If, then, we believe that the de- 
 parted soul can or does return now and here, or that it may 
 or will return hereafter, or that it moves to a new sphere 
 and lives in other conditions, the pertinent questions in 
 regard to any such belief are those which St. Paul set him- 
 self to answer : " How are the dead raised up ? And with 
 what body do they come ? " A soul without a body would 
 be a non-receptive, non-active mind, and that is only not 
 a contradiction in terms because there are no terms to 
 contradict. 
 
 Mind and body are then, in my view, two disparate but 
 not separate nor separable systems or orders. They are 
 the necessary condition of the realization of life in action. 
 They arise and undergo modification continuously hi the 
 progress of living action. They interact continuously by 
 mutual adaptation. They are never in direct causal relation, 
 in the sense in which that relation holds in an energetical 
 system, but they have a common source and co-operate in 
 a common end.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MECHANISM OF PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 
 
 Une sensation renferme telle ou telle idee : done nous avons ces idees 
 aussitdt que nous avons cette sensation. Voila une conclusion que les 
 mauvais metaphysicians ne manquent jamais de tirer. CONDILLAC, 
 Traite des Sensations, Bk. I. chap. ii. sect. 8. 
 
 WHEN Hume described the constituent elements of ex- 
 perience as impressions and ideas, and when Kant described 
 the fundamental matter distinct from the form of experience 
 as the manifold of sense, they referred, not to what we call 
 perceptions, but to something simpler and more elementary, 
 to what we call sensations. The pure empiricist, that is, 
 one who acknowledges experience as the only criterion of 
 reality, seems to find in sensations not only something 
 indisputable, simple and elementary, but also something 
 which in a singularly precise way corresponds to the functions 
 of the constituent elements of the neural structures of the 
 body. In fact, when we begin our study of the mind by 
 making an inventory and descriptive classification of the 
 sensations we seem to be following a natural course, directly 
 suggested and borne out by the science of the structure 
 and function of the nervous system. Up to a certain point 
 everything has seemed to confirm this view. It has always 
 been recognized, and the recognition is the starting-point 
 of a science of psychology, that sensation is sui generis. 
 It is impossible to identify it with physical structure, with 
 vibration, material or ethereal, or with any kind of mechani- 
 cal action, yet there has seemed to be in fact a relation 
 between the two not only in their simple origin but at every 
 stage of their growing complexity. This parallelism of 
 
 223
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 223 
 
 psychical and physical has frequently been taken as primary 
 fact and as affording evidence of an undiscovered, if not 
 an undiscoverable, identity. The parallelism takes the 
 fojTn_ofjthe_simple^ affirmation that as invariable fact when- 
 there is a psychical event, let us say a sensation.^ 
 is ajways concomitant with JL_a_ physical eyeni^ the 
 stimulation of a neural structure. The relation between 
 the two events is not causal in the meaning of physical 
 science for there is no common measure. Parallelism as 
 a theory led directly to the concept of the epipheno- 
 menon. This concept was formed in order to give 
 expression to the fact that the parallelism is one-sided, 
 heavily weighted as it were on the side of the physical, 
 for the psychical is not concomitant with the whole of the 
 neurological, much less with the whole of the physical. 
 Sensation came to be regarded, therefore, as an epipheno- 
 menon, a concomitant of certain special neural conditions 
 on which conditions, however, it did not react. Sensation 
 in this view is conditioned by neural structure, and it is 
 always the conditionate, never vice versa. This long-accepted 
 and comparatively simple idea of the relation of sensation 
 to nerve structure has been completely upset by the recent 
 great expansion of the science of neurology. Recent 
 research, so far as it throws light on the fact of sensation, 
 proves that sensation is not simple and ultimate or, in any 
 definitely technical meaning, specific ; that it rarely if ever 
 enters into conscious experience as a specific response to 
 a definite stimulus ; that its simple character does not 
 depend on the elements we are able to dissociate ; and that 
 the quality of sensation taken as a response to a definite 
 stimulus is neither in intensity nor in extensity graduated 
 by the stimulus. Let us first, however, examine a little 
 more closely the old concept of the simplicity and elementary 
 character of sensation in order to see why it has needed 
 reform. 
 
 Psychical life is a duration, but it seems constituted of a 
 succession of sense impressions. These are not easy to isolate, 
 but the difficulty is not that of distinguishing them, it is 
 rather the practical difficulty of experiencing them separately.
 
 224 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTH 
 
 In the first place, they are so rapid in their succession as 
 to appear continuous, and in the second place the sensa- 
 tions of the different senses are simultaneous, so that at 
 any moment of experience a vast number of interconnected 
 sensations of different quality are mingled together. Each 
 sensation seems, however, to have its occasion in a sense 
 impression, and each sense impression its occasion in the 
 physical stimulus of a sense-organ ; and although the mechan- 
 ism, enabling these impressions to be associated together 
 and to give rise to the perceptions or conceptions which con- 
 stitute knowledge, is extremely complex, the inference 
 seems plain that, reduced to its utmost simplicity, the 
 fundamental scheme of knowledge is that physical activities 
 stimulate sensitive surfaces and are translated into psychical 
 qualities out of which our perception of external reality 
 is constructed. This external reality may be a fiction or 
 construction of the mind, it may be no more than a sensation 
 plus a possibility of sensations, but it is always conceived 
 as more than the actual sensation. The idea of the possi- 
 bility of a passage from sensation to knowledge depends 
 on the implication that there is a constant relation 
 between stimulus and sensation. It is not necessarily 
 causal, but the psychical quality must be thought of as in 
 some correlation with the physical reality. All the older 
 psychology was built on this presupposition, and one of 
 the most important movements in the history of philosophy 
 is the attempt to show that knowledge of every kind is an 
 association of simple sensations. 
 
 Idealists and realists alike have been in agreement in 
 accepting as a fundamental fact that a sensation, taken in 
 its simplicity and apart from any causal inference, is ultimate. 
 Their controversy arose over the causal inference, the 
 realists insisting that the actual physical objects were 
 revealed by sensations, these being the psychical equivalent 
 of sensible qualities in the objects ; the idealists who 
 followed Berkeley declaring the sensations themselves the 
 objects of perception, denying any ground of inference to 
 an independent reality, and accounting for objectivity 
 by a theory of ideal substance. The sceptics following
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 225 
 
 Hume denied the possibility of validifying any inference 
 whatever, substantial or causal. Throughout the whole 
 of this controversy the unassailability of the sensation 
 as the ultimate constituent of experience was accepted 
 almost as an axiom. It not only was never called in 
 question, but it appeared unquestionable, and the whole 
 controversy was as to the sufficiency or insufficiency of 
 sensations of themselves to constitute experience. The 
 mam difficulty was to account for the idea of necessary 
 connexion, which seemed as fundamental in experience as 
 the constituents themselves, for even the sceptic must 
 produce a theory of the appearance of necessity in 
 justification of his denial of the fact. 
 
 Nineteenth-century idealism was not based on denial 
 of the fundamental reality of sensation, but on the affirmation 
 that the relations or connexions of sensations are of equal 
 objectivity, and as constitutive of experience, as the sensa- 
 tions themselves. This principle first found full expression 
 in the concept of the a priori synthesis. The later con- 
 troversy has been between those who have held that relations 
 are as foundational and as constitutive of experience as 
 the matter of sense, and those who have held that relations, 
 however necessary to and presupposed in experience, are 
 purely external and do not affect the independent existence 
 of the sensible matter. 
 
 The most definite recognition of the objectivity of 
 sensations in the full scientific meaning is the well-known 
 Sensationstheorie of the physicist Ernst Mach (1834-1916). 
 Sensations, bging the ultimate constituents of experience, 
 arejn his_yiew _hejbasis_on which physicaJLscience itself 
 must rest. Everything physical in so far as it is knowable 
 is translatable into terms of sensation. Inasmuch, however, 
 as sensations are purely psychical, and inasmuch as the 
 psychical does not enter into the system of direct causal 
 action and compensated reaction of physics, he was obliged 
 to adopt the theory of parallelism. By adoptingjthe 
 
 hypothesis OJ^arjUlejisjmL ^n^ti'nn^hgroTnp amenable to 
 
 scientific treatment, for although^ they_cajmoOhemselYes 
 be_ directly measured they are now_ correlated wjth__a 
 
 Q
 
 226 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 physical sejries_dlich__caji_Jbe. Sensations can indeed 
 be classified and their laws determined, also they are 
 representable in idea and the subject - matter of inter- 
 course between mind and mind. YejMjiey are a peculiar 
 class of j>henomena_inasmuch as they are themselves im- 
 mediate experience and also the type or form to which all 
 knowledge is reducible. They Cannot be brought within 
 the physical system because their relation to jDhysical 
 reality is not causal or consequential in the scientific 
 meaning of an equivalence of action and reaction. They 
 are, in fact, a parallel series : they are not an aspect of 
 the physical nor in any way identical with the physical, 
 but ideal existences. They constitute the mind as an 
 ability to know, and are the form to which all know- 
 ledge is reduced. As matter of fact, however, there are 
 three series, viz. (i) the physical actions and reactions, 
 (2) the physiological responses, and (3) the psychical 
 responses or sensations. The first and second belong to 
 the physical system, the third does not. 
 
 The science of sensations in this view is therefore not 
 psychology in the ordinary acceptance of the term, that is 
 to say, it is neither introspective nor subjective. It treats 
 sensations as equally objective with the facts of physical 
 science, and its main interest is to determine the laws by 
 which they have come to reveal to the mind the physical 
 universe. 
 
 An interesting illustration of Mach's problem and method 
 is given in the careful drawing he made, reproduced in the 
 Sensationstheorie, of the actual visual imagery accompany- 
 ing his conscious perception when lying in bed. He drew 
 accurately the perspective of the objects and the actual 
 proportion of everything which came within his field of 
 vision. The extraordinary disproportion between the actual 
 sense impressions on the retina and his perceptions, also the 
 distortion in perspective, which to all appearance must be 
 automatically corrected, is strikingly demonstrated. 
 
 The whole scheme of a science of sensations is based 
 on the assumption that the conditions of a sensation are 
 invariable. The quality of the sensation is not deducible
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 227 
 
 from-Jts conditions, but the existence of the sensation i> 
 inv;aiiably^^c^nipanied by^a _ physical change in material 
 Structures. For example, let the sensatiorf be a vivid 
 patch oT~fed. I may attribute it to a direct image of a 
 visible object, or to an after-image when my eyes are closed 
 and there is therefore no object, but in each case the sensa- 
 tion is concomitant with a specific change in certain nerve 
 structures. The sensation and the change in nerve tissue 
 are the two parallel existences, and each seems reducible 
 to an original elementary simplicity and each concomitantly 
 develops an ever-growing complexity. Simple strains in a 
 structureless ether develop the complexity of mind. Such, 
 in brief, is Mach's theory. 
 
 The scheme is scientific both in its conception and in 
 its method, and the criticism of philosophy upon it is that, 
 however useful it may prove in practice, it can never give 
 what it is intended to give, and what it professes to give, 
 a theory of knowledge and existence, a scientific philosophy. 
 It cannot do so because the simplicity which is its goal is 
 only reached by abstraction, that is by subtracting more 
 and ever more from the richness and diversity of experience. 
 The fascination of the idea that the simple elements we 
 obtain by elaborate and arbitrary methods of abstraction 
 are more real, more abiding and more original than the 
 living whole from which we have abstracted them is irre- 
 sistible, however irrational. It seems, for example, almost 
 absurd to question the fact that the earliest forms of life 
 on our planet were of extreme simplicity and that the more 
 complex forms have evolved from them. Yet the evidence 
 for it, so far as actual fact is concerned, is purely negative, 
 the absence of fossil remains, and the theoretical problem 
 is more and not less complicated by the hypothesis. Yet 
 the opposite assumption even shocks us by its unscientific 
 character. It is not evidence, therefore, in the empirical 
 meaning, but a reasoning which seems inherent in our 
 nature, that is at the root of our conviction. We have but 
 to recollect the astonishment caused in our own generation 
 by the discovery of the evidence of a pre-historic, yet 
 essentially modern, civilization in Crete, and, even more
 
 228 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTH 
 
 amazing, the increasing evidence that neolithic man possessed 
 the arts of agriculture and engaged in oversea trade. It is 
 precisely the same inherent reasoning which makes us think 
 that the infant mind must consist of extremely simple 
 associations, and that the adult mind is gradually built up 
 out of infantile trials and errors. In the case of the simplicity 
 of sensations and their parallelism with a corresponding 
 simplicity of physiological reaction, however, it is not by 
 general philosophical criticism of general scientific method 
 that it stands condemned ; the theory fails to accord with 
 fact in the ordinary sense in which appeal to fact is made. 
 The description which the theory of parallelism presupposes 
 proves false. It is proved false by the discovery of the 
 function of the cerebral cortex in sensation. Let us first, 
 however, examine more closely the theory of parallelism 
 itself. 
 
 The sensation and the physiological condition con- 
 comitant with it are conceived by the theory of parallelism 
 as each in itself ultimately of extreme simplicity. Each 
 is the constituent element of a series of events. The two 
 series are unalterable in their special nature and therefore 
 not interchangeable, but each series within its own procession 
 is able to give rise to endless variety, diversity and com- 
 plexity by addition, coalescence, commingling and such-like 
 mechanical relations. An analysis of experience is supposed 
 to end in a quality which has to be accepted as simple 
 existence, the sensation. It is accompanied by definite 
 quantitative change in a special physiological structure. 
 The original idea of a parallelism was metaphysical. JLt 
 was first definitely formulated by Leibniz as a hypothesis 
 toeyplain thfTrilati 1 nf ^ha-_minr) to the body. He sug- 
 gested that mind and body might be related to one 
 another as two entirely independent but perfectly regulated 
 clocks, the workmanship of a divine artificer. Each would 
 depend on its own principle and be independent of the 
 other, but each at every moment would exactly accord with 
 the other. Modern psychologists faced with the difficulty 
 of bringing the science of mind within the energetical 
 system of physical science availed themselves of this idea.
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 229 
 
 It seemed at least to be innocent and non-committal. Its 
 acceptance might be half-hearted and unsatisfactory, but 
 as a provisional hypothesis it at least appeared to offer a 
 principle by which the new science of mind could get to 
 work. For anything to be scientifically treated, the first 
 condition is that it be measurable, and the hypothesis 
 seemed to offer a very effective substitute for direct measure- 
 ment. It appeared, moreover, to be justified by the pragmatic 
 test of success in working, and psychological research gener- 
 ally tended more and more to confirm it. A great advance 
 was made when Johannes Miiller (1801-1858) formulated the 
 theory of the specific energy of the nerves ; and when later 
 Weber (1795-1878), and following him Fechner (1801- 
 1887), announced the discovery of a definite psycho- 
 physical law, it seemed that the foundation of a descriptive 
 science of mind on the basis of complete parallelism 
 was assured. Even when the promise of progress along 
 this line was disappointed, the basis of parallelism seemed 
 to be continually confirmed by new discovery. Following 
 the formulation of specific energy came the analysis of 
 skin sensations into the four completely distinct classes of 
 heat, cold, touch and pain, each class served by specific 
 nerves and distinguishable by the sensitive spots. It was 
 found possible by careful survey to map out the exact dis- 
 tribution of these spots on the whole surface of the body, 
 and it seemed to indicate that we had found the ulti- 
 mate elements of neurological discrimination on the one 
 hand and of qualitative psychical response on the other. 
 
 Side by side with this advance in the discrimination 
 of nerve-endings has gone an increasing discovery of the 
 localization of function in the central nerve masses of the 
 brain and spinal cord. First, the parts of the cortex which 
 are concerned with the sensations of the special senses 
 vision, hearing, taste and smell were localized ; then it 
 was found possible to map out a motor area and detect 
 the exact spots at which the control of the voluntary 
 muscles which move the limbs, and those which bring about 
 the complicated movements of articulate speech, are situated. 
 Everything seemed to tend to the conclusion that on each
 
 230 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 side the physiological and the psychological there is 
 ultimate elementary simplicity, and that the complexity 
 of the concrete mind-body is purely mechanical. The fact 
 that the two orders, psychical and physical, could not be 
 reduced to one, seemed to be adequately met, or at least its 
 disconcerting obstinacy to be overcome, by the hypothesis 
 of parallelism. 
 
 It was indeed surprisingly simple. An organ like 
 the great brain or cerebral cortex, containing thousands of 
 millions of individual cells each with a specific function, 
 could not be easy to lay bare in its working or to follow in 
 the intricacy of its paths, but at least it seemed clear that 
 its work could be no other than that of associating the 
 sensations and so providing the condition of judgment and 
 general mental process. 
 
 Recent discoveries have completely disappointed this pro- 
 mise, and altered the whole aspect of the problem. They begin 
 with the discovery by Dr. Head, in a famous experiment 
 already referred to, that there are two systems of sensitivity, 
 completely distinguishable from one another, named by him 
 the epicritic and the protopathic. To the first belong the skin 
 sensations of the four classes of sensitive spots. The other, 
 the protopathic, is an apparently older, more diffused kind 
 of sensation, but, what is important, it is quite distinct in 
 the nature of the response it gives and the system to which 
 these responses belong. The discovery, interesting enough 
 in itself, might yet have remained a mere detail of physio- 
 logical and psychological analysis had not its discoverer at 
 once grasped its significance and followed it as a clue to 
 guide him in his further researches, more especially with 
 regard to the function of the cerebral cortex. Let me first, 
 however, try and indicate without entering into anatomical 
 and physiological details the significance of the discovery 
 for theory of knowledge. I will take an illustration. The 
 finger-tips are extremely sensitive and highly discriminative. 
 The slightest contact with an object is enough to obtain 
 a psychical response conveying the most delicate distinc- 
 tions in the physical stimuli of temperature, surface quality, 
 pressure, weight, etc., and also a high degree of sensitive-
 
 CHAP. K PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 231 
 
 ness to pain. When I shake hands with a friend my fingers 
 not only discriminate temperature, surface, pressure, etc., 
 of the physical object, but enable me to respond in thought 
 and feeling to all the modifications introduced by my 
 friend into his handshake. In fact, my handshake may 
 become a language. In all this I have an experience which, 
 however hopelessly complicated the task may appear, offers 
 no theoretical difficulty to an ultimate resolution on analysis 
 into simple elementary sensations responding to simple 
 elementary stimuli. But now, suppose the hand I touch 
 is that of the lady with whom I am in love will any 
 analysis into epicritical sensations of pain, touch, heat 
 and cold, describe, much less exhaust, the response ? I am 
 not thinking of any emotions which may have other occa- 
 sions, but purely and simply of the response to the hand- 
 touch. There is a difference of kind and not of degree in 
 the sensation itself. The lady's hand is not softer or 
 warmer or more delicate to my touch, judged by any 
 physical criterion, nor need I suppose any intention to 
 impart language on her part, nor yet is the quality of the 
 sensation due to judgment being warped by imagination 
 or emotion, j_js_a_|>rotpjDa^^ The signifi- 
 
 cant thing, however, and that to which I now wish to 
 direct special attention, is that this difference cannot be 
 accounted for by saying that in one case the sensation 
 evokes emotions, in the other not. It may be true as a 
 first description : it is useless as an explanation, for it 
 explains nothing. No analysis of pure sensations as simple 
 accompaniment of physiological reactions to physical stimuli 
 will discover the difference which makes some evoke specific 
 emotions, some not. The emotions^in fact^ are^ 
 ditioned IlsprisMTg^^the are indiffcrrrrt-4o 
 
 they are conditionedJby_a^sihe^cJji^LgejrjL-_ Clearly some- 
 thing must interveneTbetween pure sensation and emotion, 
 and it must be psychical. It intervenes not only between 
 sensation and emotion, but also between sensation and 
 responsive muscular action. An image is created. This 
 essential, pivotal, fact in the working of the psycho- 
 physical mechanism is purely mental however it purport to
 
 232 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 represent nature and matter. It is the aesthetic activity, 
 and if we must assign it an instrument in the organism 
 we must localize it in the cerebral cortex, for when that 
 is injured the functioning of the image-producing activity 
 is impaired ; but it cannot be identical with the pure 
 receptivity of the mind in regard to sensations. 
 
 It is necessary to suppose this function, and when we 
 consider what it implies we see that it must be wholly 
 distinct from the sensory function itself. It cannot, that 
 is to say, be only integration, to however high a degree of 
 perfection such integration be carried, by means of simple 
 association or any other mechanical mental process. It 
 cannot be so, because knowledge is not an association of 
 sensations but an interpretation of them. Were we able 
 to study exhaustively the sensitive spots and to manipulate 
 them in endless varieties of combination, playing on them 
 as we strike chords on the keyboard of the pianoforte, we 
 could not thereby construct knowledge ; not because there 
 is no common factor between psychical quality and physical 
 quantity, but because knowledge is interpretation. It sup- 
 poses a factor which fits the sensation into an imaginative 
 system. If the cerebral cortex be, as there is every reason 
 to believe it is, the organ of intellect in its highest specializa- 
 tion and the means by which the logical processes of thought 
 are carried out, this is the function par excellence we must 
 assign to its response to sensation. Aesthetic activity 
 conditions logical activity, concepts depend on images. 
 Anatomical and physiological research has come to confirm 
 this view. 
 
 If the cerebral cortex generated the mind by exercising 
 the passive, mechanical, responsive, associative and integra- 
 tive functions which used to be assigned to it, we should 
 expect that lesions of the cortex would be accompanied by 
 definite quantitative effects on the sensitive spots. We 
 should expect that according to the extent and affected 
 area of the injury or destruction of tissue in the cortex, 
 there would be interruption in the functioning of such of the 
 sensitive spots as were in direct communication with it. 
 For every sensitive spot is in communication with the
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 233 
 
 cortex, and on that communication we suppose its parti- 
 cular psychical effect in consciousness to depend as well as 
 its association and integration. It would be natural to 
 suppose, therefore, that a definite diminution of sensation 
 would follow injury or destruction of the cortex, correspond- 
 ing to the extent of the injury, and due to throwing out of 
 action a definite number or a particular class, or a special 
 area, of sensitive spots. Nothing remotely approaching 
 such a condition is found to take place. When the injury 
 is confined to the cerebral cortex and other parts of the 
 nervous system are unimpaired, what wejiave^is not Joss 
 of sejisation_but jiisiurbance of the normal mteiprete/tion.^ 
 First of all the power oT acclirateTocalizatiorPis"lost, then 
 the power to judge intervals of time, and then the power to 
 estimate comparative weights and identify similar stimuli. 
 But what is more curious and instructive still is that older, 
 it_maY_be pre-human, instinctive reactions and reflexes 
 come into play. This^ cannot but siiggest_^al_the^iieans 
 by_which_these^Qlf|pr systems have-Jbeen superseded js^ a 
 
 power JwhigtL_haS ^ ppn a ^1p fn holH^jJTpmjrpprpc^pd or m _ 
 
 hibited without being destroyed, for .they begin to function 
 again when the controj^js_weakeiie(l^ or the ^inhibition 
 removed. 1 
 
 The physiological and biological problem is to determine 
 the function of the cerebral cortex. The psychological 
 problem is to discover the psychical import of that function 
 and its place in the mental life. It is on the relatedness 
 of these problems I desire to concentrate attention. The 
 physiologists have demonstrated that the sensitiveness of 
 the organism, in whole or in part, is unaffected by injuries 
 to the cerebral cortex, and further that the specific psychical 
 apport of the separate sensitive spots is unaffected by the 
 activity which the cerebral cortex exercises in response to it. 
 It seems to me that this is precisely what a study of the 
 mental life itself should lead us to expect. The basis of 
 knowledge^_jts__primary and essential condition, that on 
 which all intellectuaTprocess depends, islmagery. Images 
 
 1 See Henry Head, "jSensation and the Cerebral Cortex," Brain, 
 vol. xli. pt. 2, 1918.
 
 234 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTH 
 
 are not sensations nor composed of sensations, though 
 sensations are the occasion of their production. We have 
 only to consider the two activities, perception and memory, 
 to see how wholly dependent our mental life is on imagery. 
 The mental life consists in perception and memory, and 
 these active processes are concerned only with images. 
 Thus the pin-prick gives me a sensation of pain which I 
 feel. What I perceive is not the pain I feel but the 
 pin-prick, and that is a sense-image. What I remember 
 is the pin-prick, and that is a memory-image. If I seem 
 to remember the pain it is not really the pain I felt 
 which is reproduced but an image, otherwise the memory 
 would itself be sensation. Sensations are not images, 
 nor are they in any intelligible meaning constituents or 
 elements or components of images. Even if we adopt 
 the standpoint of the associationist and resolve the image, 
 in this case the pin-prick, into an association of sensa- 
 tions, visual, tactile, and painful, even then over and above 
 the sensations, simultaneous or successive, and their associa- 
 tion, we^ have to postulate an actiyity_which seie^ts_-them 
 anc^jwhich. when it has selected them, fashionsjtlieja_into 
 a pennanent^hape which makes it possible to present them, 
 then and thenceforward, ^as one and identicaT It is im- 
 possible to reject the fact that in some form image^creation 
 is at the basis of intellectual life. The image, not the 
 sensation, is the pivotal fact on which the whole structure 
 of intellectual knowledge rests. In this highly significant 
 fact we may find the clue to the unravelling of some of 
 the most perplexing riddles of our emotional and intellectual 
 nature. 
 
 Every human being is, I suppose, to some degree, 
 doubtless there is difference in the degree, at times the 
 unwilling prey of sensuous imagery, and it gives rise 
 to a mental conflict. It seems to us at such times 
 that we are slaves to ruthless impulsive emotions which 
 compel the indulgence of imagery even though at the same 
 time we are fully conscious of the loathing with which it 
 fills us. Literature teems with examples of what it is 
 difficult to express adequately in technical scientific terms.
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 235 
 
 Often enough it is the tragedy of saintly lives. One of 
 the finest artistic expressions of it is Robert Louis Steven- 
 son's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is the 
 burden of a great part of the writings of St. Paul, and it 
 looms largely in the graphic description of the spiritual 
 conflict which issues in that heart-cry, " Oh, wretched 
 man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this 
 death ? " The psychical fact which appears to me to lie at 
 the basis of this mental conflict is the dependence of our 
 emotions on imagery for their expression. It is true of all 
 our emotions, fear, anger and the rest, and not only of 
 the sexual emotions, although it is in sexual emotion that 
 this dependence is most pronounced. Why should this give 
 rise to conflict ? Imagery is purely intellectual, by which I 
 mean that the creating of images is a distinct mode of intellec- 
 tual activity : the image is a product of intellectual activity. 
 But the intellect is also on the motor side directly in control 
 of the voluntary muscular system. It stands, therefore, emi- 
 nently for what we call the will ; meaning thereby not blind 
 impulse, but the power to direct and control. Our emotions, 
 onjthe other hand^belong to the jtgective side of oufhature 
 
 _ control the gTandiiTajL^jjysjgTn. ^Th^^biing about^ 
 glandular jtiyjty_and find their satisfaction in glandular 
 discharge^ bir^JFor^the power __to_gxercise this activity 
 
 on imagery. Here, then, 
 
 are the controlling forces, emotions compelling the intel- 
 lect to find for them expression in imagery, the intellect 
 unable to resist the compelling force of the emotion, yield- 
 ing easily to the demand of the emotion for expression, 
 but resisting the capture of the voluntary muscular system 
 over which the emotion has no direct control. Let us look 
 at it a little more closely and try to illustrate it from facts 
 of common experience. The point for which I am contend- 
 ing is the recognition of the image as distinct from the 
 sensation. The image is the product of an aesthetic 
 activity and not of a passive sensibility. 
 
 In the first place, it is entirely in accord with the 
 well-known theory of dream interpretation associated with 
 the researches of Freud and Jung and their followers.
 
 236 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 According to this theory the dream is caused by active 
 " wishes " or impulses or cravings repressed in the un- 
 conscious mind, which avail themselves of the relaxation 
 of censorship during sleep to emerge into consciousness. 
 They can only express themselves by clothing themselves 
 in imagery, and for this purpose they avail themselves of 
 the images which have formed some recent experience and 
 are therefore ready to hand. Hence the phantasmagory, 
 distortion and contraction of the dream-consciousness. 
 What is significant to me in this theory is the recognition 
 that the only outlet of an impulse to expression is sensuous 
 imagery. The dream is a striking instance of it, but it is 
 just as true of waking experience. If there are no images 
 there is no perceptual world, for images are not conglo- 
 merated sensations, but sui generis products of an aesthetic 
 activity. Especially instructive are dreams which are 
 primarily caused by physical discomfort and which end in 
 glandular or valvular discharge, cases in which the impulse 
 is not a repressed wish but an ordinarily controlled natural 
 function. Here, if anywhere, we should expect that an 
 impulse, active during the unconsciousness of sleep, would 
 of itself bring about the required relieving action, yet it 
 seems unable to do this until it can draw the aesthetic 
 faculty of the mind into activity. 
 
 Consider now an ordinary emotion, fear, for example. 
 In its terrifying form it is a rare and occasional experience, 
 but in the milder form of anxiety it enters into the daily 
 ordinary life of every one, differing greatly, indeed, according 
 to temperament. In its way it illustrates admirably the 
 conflict, though on a lower and unimportant plane. Anxiety 
 has only one way of expressing itself, and that is compelling 
 the image-forming activity. We resist, but are helpless. A 
 child has not returned home at its wonted hour, or a friend 
 lies ill. We may know perfectly well, and may be able to 
 think of, numberless reasons which would account for the 
 one or the other, and we know that, as a probability, disaster 
 as the cause of the child's absence, or death as the end of 
 the friend's illness, is negligible, yet if anxiety overcomes 
 us we picture street accidents, portray vividly all kinds of
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 237 
 
 dangers, or we think of death and follow out the imagery 
 to the funeral scenes and mourning. We may be all the 
 time conscious that our fears are idle and our forebodings 
 foolish. We may be vexed with ourselves and try to 
 disperse the images. It is useless, we are helpless. But 
 no sooner is the anxiety relieved than all this imagery 
 disappears in oblivion. So complete is the oblivion that 
 when, as must in the ordinary nature of chances happen 
 to some one sometimes, a real disaster is simultaneous with 
 an anxiety and the image in which it had found expression, 
 it seems supernatural and an instance of occult, or at least 
 abnormal, mind-activity. 
 
 These facts, when we give full attention to them, seem 
 to make it clear, not only that there is in us as part of our 
 human nature a distinct aesthetic or image-forming activity, 
 but that it is the fundamental^ activity^ the basis of 
 perception and the condition^ of action. This is not the 
 ordinary view. Imagination or fancy is a mental power 
 universally recognized, but also universally rejected as having 
 no claim to be constitutive of the real world of practical life. 
 It stands as the very name for unreality. It seems to us 
 to weave airy forms which dissolve and vanish at the touch 
 of real life. We know that the objects we perceive as well 
 as the objects we imagine are images. We can give no 
 other meaning to our words. The glorious crimson clouds 
 in a sunset sky could not be presented to the mind as 
 identical with the tiny globules of water which surround 
 us as a gloomy chilly fog when we are within them, had the 
 mind no power to form images. It is images we perceive, 
 interpret them how we will. Yet despite this fact, we are 
 firmly convinced that a sharp and absolute difference in 
 kind separates into two classes the images we perceive and 
 the images we fancy separates, therefore, the activity of 
 perceiving from the activity of imagining. It seems the 
 height of paradox to declare that the things we perceive 
 and the things we fancy alike receive their form and sub- 
 stance from one and the same creative activity of the mind. 
 I want to show that when we start with the concept of 
 reality as life and consciousness and not as something or
 
 238 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 other on which these somehow depend ; when we make 
 the task of philosophy to follow the life of the mind in its 
 development or unfolding and thus present it as history; 
 then it is no longer a paradox, and the appearance of paradox 
 is itself explained as an end at which the life activity has 
 aimed and which it has achieved. 
 
 There is, however, one condition to which any sound 
 metaphysics must submit, failing which it can never bring 
 conviction to the human mind. It must respect the concept 
 of the objectivity of the real. If, that is to say, philosophy 
 begin by showing that the ordinary notion of what con- 
 stitutes the objectivity of nature is irrational, it must 
 replace that notion with one that is rational. We cannot 
 reject the ordinary notion and propose to do without 
 absolute objectivity at all. Continually throughout the 
 history of human thought notions which have seemed 
 fundamental, rooted in the nature of things, have been 
 undermined and replaced with other notions, but they have 
 always been replaced. The concept of physical reality has 
 undergone continual change, but throughout all the re- 
 volutions in our ideas, objectivity in the absolute sense has 
 not been in question. It is not by dialectical arguments 
 like those of Zeno and Heracleitus that men have become 
 convinced that the earth is not at rest, that the atmosphere 
 has weight, that mass is a function of velocity, that particles 
 are charges of electricity. At every stage of the evolution 
 of ideas, to be effective a new view has had to replace the 
 old and the new view has had to be more satisfactory in its 
 objective aspect. 
 
 Precisely the same is true with regard to the concept 
 of perceptual reality. The belief of mankind that per- 
 ceptual images are objectively real and fanciful images 
 subjectively real, that the one are caused by physical 
 objects, the other by a riot of the faculty we call imagina- 
 tion, seems grounded in the nature of things and unquestion- 
 able. No dialectical exposition of the baselessness or even 
 absurdity of this interpretation of experience will bring 
 conviction, which simply denies the objective distinction 
 of the perceptual image, or which places it objectively on
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 239 
 
 the same plane as the fanciful image. Philosophy is in 
 the first place the__aesthetical problem, in what does the 
 reality of the perceptual image, the unreality of the fanciful 
 image, consist ? And in the second place theT logical 
 problem, in what does the objectivity of knowledge and 
 truth, the subjectivity of opinion and error, consist ? 
 
 The second of these problems has been recognized as 
 the peculiar province of philosophy from earliest times ; the 
 first has been much later in gaining recognition and is even 
 yet hardly acknowledged. Yet the moment our reflexion 
 is directed on this aesthetic problem it becomes clear that 
 the failure of science to find any ground in experience for 
 the fundamental distinction on which it rests, the aesthetic 
 distinction of perceptual and fanciful images, is absolute. 
 Consider the ultra-scientific theory of sensations to which 
 I have referred. Let us challenge it, not generally, but 
 on a particular point most favourable to it. There are 
 three series of actual objective events, a series of physical 
 events, a series of physiological events, and a series of 
 psychical events. The theory is that the sensations or 
 psychical series are invariably concomitant with the physio- 
 logical series, but only when that physiological series is in 
 direct and immediate relation to the physical series does 
 the series of sensations become a series of perceptual images. 
 How, then, are we to explain the phenomenon of the after- 
 image ? I am lying in bed and my eyes are directed on the 
 pendent electric lamp. I switch off the light and the room is 
 completely dark. In a few moments I have the vivid sensa- 
 tion of an intensely brilliant green glow passing, on its sharply 
 defined outline, into orange red, projected where I imagine 
 wall or ceiling to be. After a few seconds it passes, at 
 first slowly, then with an increased acceleration, to the 
 right. Why do I say that the image of the electric lamp 
 before I switched the light off is resolvable into three 
 concomitant series and the after-image into only two ? By 
 assuming the physical series in the one case and its absence 
 in the other I can offer myself some more or less plausible 
 hypothesis, no doubt, but confining myself to the acknow- 
 ledged data of the theory of sensations I have and can
 
 240 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 have no possible explanation. At any rate, if there be one 
 it is yet to be produced. 
 
 It seems to me, then, that sensations, however funda- 
 mental, essential and important, play a comparatively 
 subordinate role in the mental life. No construction of 
 them or development of them can constitute the concrete 
 reality of life. The first expression of mmplpfp mmrl i^ 
 the_image not the sensation, and the first self -sufficing form 
 of activity is the imagination^ When as yet there is no 
 image, there is nothing. Abstract sensations cannot be 
 welded together to form an image. Let me then outline the 
 way in which the life of the mind appears to me to shape it- 
 self and accord with the organization of the body for action. 
 
 When we try to present the life of the mind in its full 
 reality to the mind itself, we are met with a difficulty which 
 is familiar enough in physical science and which science 
 has had to find the means of surmounting. This difficulty 
 is that only a fragment of our full life comes to expression 
 in consciousness, and that knowledge in its positive meaning 
 is confined to that fragment. If then we would have a 
 complete knowledge of mind we must transcend conscious- 
 ness to the extent of forming a conception of unconscious 
 mental existence. In physical science we have the same 
 difficulty. What appears is not self-explanatory, and we 
 have therefore to introduce the concept of energy, an energy 
 latent when it is not kinetic. In precisely the same way 
 we must introduce the concept of energy if we would com- 
 prehend the full life of mind. Here, however, there is an 
 important, it seems to me an all-important, difference. We 
 are not without knowledge of mind-energy, it is only the 
 form of the knowledge which offers a difficulty. In regard 
 to psychical reality as compared with physical reality we 
 are in a privileged position. We know our life in living it. 
 We experience the inward force and push as well as the 
 outward expression. In fact had we not this intuition of 
 mind-energy it is difficult to imagine that we could ever 
 have formed the concept of physical energy. Our difficulty 
 in the case of mind is to find a concept which will express 
 the existence of our activity before it finds expression.
 
 CHAP, ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 241 
 
 Mind is pure activity, and activity is only known in its 
 expression. An activity is what it does, and what it does 
 expresses what it is. We experience this activity in two 
 forms, first as emotion, second as action. Both forms 
 seek expression, depend in fact on expression, and find 
 expression in the image. Until there is imagery there is^ 
 no mental expression of any kind. But while one form 
 is definitely shaping itself hi action, the other form is in- 
 directly concerned with action. Herein it seems to me 
 consists the difference between the perceptual and the 
 fanciful image ; while the one is only indirectly and remotely 
 connected with action, the other is intimately concerned in, 
 and called forth by, the forming action. And here physiology 
 and biology come to our aid. Physiology shows that the 
 cerebral cortex is mainly concerned in the shaping, con- 
 trolling and directing our voluntary actions, and to this 
 purpose integrating a glandular system stimulated by a 
 protopathic sensibility and a muscular system stimulated 
 by an epicritic sensibility. Biology shows the antiquity of 
 the protopathic system with its psychical accompaniment 
 of emotion ItmTinstinctive action, and the evolution of the 
 epicntical system in the rise and development of the new 
 brain with its psychical accompaniment of voluntary self-con- 
 scious action, culminating in the intellectual activity in man. 
 However this maybe, my main contention is that in the nature 
 of the activity which finds expression in emotion on the one 
 hand, and hi purposive action on the other, we have the true 
 distinction between the fanciful and the perceptual image. 
 
 To sum up, then, the theory of sensations supposes that 
 the mind consists of ultimate simple qualities forming a series 
 of successive and simultaneous psychical existents ; that this 
 series is concomitant with a series of physiological changes 
 in specific nerve structures ; that these physiological changes 
 are primarily induced by the stimulus of movements, 
 material or ethereal, in the physical universe. The sensa- 
 tions are held to be states of mind which are related together 
 by laws of association analogous to the attractions and 
 repulsions of physics. Criticism of this theory reveals its 
 utter inadequacy to account for the primary fact of mental 
 
 R
 
 242 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 life the image. Perception and memory, the distinctive 
 activities of the mind, depend on imagery. There are two 
 kinds of images, perceptual images which represent the 
 objective reality of the world, and fanciful images which 
 represent the ideal independence of the mind of that objec- 
 tive reality. The difference between perceptual and fanciful 
 images, according to the theory of sensations, is that the 
 physiological series of neural changes which accompanies 
 the sensations composing the images in one case is, in the 
 other is not, concomitant with a series of external physical 
 stimuli. The criticism of this theory shows that there is 
 nothing in the sensation which reveals whether it is or is 
 not concomitant with anything else. When we reject the 
 view that mind is conditioned by an independent reality 
 on which it depends, and conceive mind as itself the reality 
 of an activity of which all existence is a mode, the concept 
 of activity itself involves a twofold mode of existence, one 
 latent and potential, the other actual and expressed. Mind 
 is an inward push expressing itself in outward action. The 
 latent activity of the mind is called into expression by 
 the sensitivity of the body. Bodily activity is glandular 
 and muscular. Mental activity is either emotional and 
 sensory or voluntary and motor. Both forms are dependent 
 on imagery for expression. The images are distinguished 
 by their function. Emotion is connected with a system 
 of deep protopathic sensitivity and only indirectly con- 
 cerned with action. Will is intellectual and directly 
 concerned with action. Will is connected with a super- 
 ficial, sharply differentiated, epicritical sensitivity. Its 
 expression is called forth by the continually present 
 need of shaping the progressing action, and this gives its 
 objective character to the perceptual image. The role of 
 sensation is to form a kind of sentry outpost system to the 
 mind. Sensations have no apport. They evoke images, 
 but the images are not the sensations plus associated 
 reminiscences of sensations. An image is the work of the 
 mind sui generis. This essential, characteristic, manifesta- 
 tion of mind is the aesthetic activity. The mind expresses 
 its inner impulses and latent force by creating images.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MONADIC INTERCOURSE 
 
 Don Quixote affirmed the two flocks of sheep were armies with such 
 assurance that Sancho actually believed it, and said to his master, "And 
 pray now, good your worship, what must we do ? " "What," answered 
 Don Quixote, " but assist and support that side which is weak and dis- 
 comforted ? Thou must know, Sancho, that yonder host that fronts us, 
 is led and commanded by the mighty Emperor Alifanfaron, sovereign 
 of the great island of Trapoban ; and that other belongs to his mortal 
 enemy, the King of the Garamanteans, known by the name of Pentapolin 
 with the naked arm, because he always goes to battle with the sleeve of 
 his right arm tucked up." CERVANTES. 
 
 IF we accept the view of monadic activity which sees in 
 the image and not in the sensation the essential expression 
 of mind, the problem of the intercourse of monads is com- 
 pletely transformed. The psychological inquiry has brought 
 us back to the metaphysical problem already indicated in 
 the discussion of the windowlessness of the monad, the 
 problem whether in conceiving the knowledge of the monad 
 to be solipsistic we are not thereby rendering an intercourse 
 between monads inconceivable. When we come to see, 
 however, that intercourse depends not on the power of one 
 monad to impart something of its substance to another, 
 but on its power to evoke aesthetic activity in another, the 
 problem is raised to a new and higher plane. 
 
 It is generally admitted that at some stage of its activity 
 the mind forms images ; it is almost universally thought 
 that this cannot be either the primitive or the essential 
 function of the mind. Images seem in their very nature to 
 be subjective and personal and supererogatory, their value 
 being proportional to their verisimilitude to some objective 
 
 243
 
 244 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 reality to which the mind is passive and on which the image 
 is moulded. Ordinarily this something objective is assumed 
 to be the external world which makes impressions on the 
 mind, but for the analytic psychologist it is perception, 
 and perception has generally been taken to be an association 
 of definite and distinct and specific sensations. On any 
 sensation theory the problem of intercourse is insoluble 
 because there is no way of association by which passively 
 received sensations can become language, and without 
 language (in the wide meaning, and not in the narrow mean- 
 ing which restricts it to spoken or written words) there is 
 no means of intercourse. On the other hand, when we 
 conceive the mind in the first moment of its expression as 
 an aesthetic activity, that is as an activity which expresses 
 its intuition in imagery as the necessary preliminary of 
 translating living force into outward action, then we see 
 that the image is already language, and the problem of 
 intercourse disappears. 
 
 Human beings possess in speech a most highly developed 
 and mobile language. Speech is indeed the distinctive 
 feature of human nature, and has probably more than any 
 other endowment secured to man his present predomi- 
 nant position over other living forms. It is dependent, 
 as we know, on a special development of the cerebral 
 cortex, contrived to give the human will control over a 
 varied and immense range of delicately co-ordinated move- 
 ments of the muscles of mouth, tongue, larynx, etc. Regard- 
 ing the problem from the purely psychical side it appears 
 to us that, by whatever chance or concomitance of chances 
 it originated, language essentially depends on a logical, 
 that is, a reasoning process, and that it has developed pari 
 passu with the development of our logical power. Nothing 
 else seems necessary so far as mental conditions are con- 
 cerned. Because man had this reasoning power, no doubt 
 at first feeble, tentative and imperfect, he had, we usually 
 suppose, all the conditions necessary for discovering that 
 there were other minds with whom by agreement as to ex- 
 ternal signs he could establish communication. The reason 
 why animals do not speak is popularly held to be because
 
 CHAP.X MONADIC INTERCOURSE 245 
 
 they are more foolish than we are, that is more deficient as 
 compared with us in the power of logical reasoning. We 
 pity them on this account and think of them as our poor 
 dumb friends. Now while undoubtedly spoken and written 
 language is a refinement, dependent on the intellect, a special 
 mode of mental activity, and conditioned by a special 
 neural formation in the Rolandic area of the cerebral 
 cortex, language in its wide meaning as the communication 
 by outward expression of internal intuition is not dis- 
 tinctively human and is not dependent on any reasoning 
 process. It is dependent on mental activity, but on an 
 aesthetic not on a logical activity. It depends on images. 
 Language means not that the sensitivity of one creature is 
 communicated to another, and certainly not that the 
 thought or idea of one person is of itself conveyed to another 
 person, but that the image evoked by one mind can be 
 made to evoke a corresponding image in another mind. 
 The problem of intercourse therefore is clearly connected 
 with the production of an image. What is the nature of 
 this activity ? An image is not something which is a 
 common object to two minds. It is wholly private and 
 personal to the mind which creates it. Intercourse there- 
 fore must mean that one mind can call forth the activity 
 of another, and the power to do so is intimately connected 
 with the activity which creates the image originally. This 
 interconnexion of the activity of two minds would be im- 
 possible were the image only a mosaic formed by the external 
 association within the mind of its passive experience, its 
 data of sense. 
 
 Intercourse is impossible and unmeaning if the inter- 
 relatedness it implies is conceived on the analogy of the 
 ordinary action and reaction of things in the physical 
 world. Such interaction is not and could not by any kind 
 of transformation become intercourse. If we want an 
 analogy of the intercourse of mind with mind in the physical 
 world, we must seek it, not in the kind of compensation we 
 discover in colliding billiard balls, but in a phenomenon 
 like that of wireless telegraphy. In wireless telegraphy two 
 instruments when tuned to the right pitch will respond to
 
 246 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 one another by reciprocal adaptation, the communication 
 between them being established by the Hertzian waves. 
 By the use of the discovery intercourse is established 
 between two operators. If we complete the scheme by in- 
 cluding the minds of the two operators we have an illustra- 
 tion of the relatedness of the monads in intercourse. There 
 is no interaction hi the scientific meaning. Expression in 
 one mind evokes corresponding expression in the other, but 
 that expression is not common to the two minds, is not 
 shared by them, is not intercommunicated. Whatever form 
 the expression takes in the individual minds, whether it 
 be perceptual or conceptual, aesthetical or logical, it is in- 
 communicable. Only when the two minds are attuned, like 
 the instruments, is there intercourse, and the intercourse 
 depends on the creation by each mind for itself of the 
 appropriate imagery which expresses that accord. 
 
 Let me illustrate what I mean by this psychical 
 creation of imagery. Let us take a common instance of 
 animal behaviour below the human, for example the 
 behaviour of the chicken newly hatched. Any one may 
 observe it. Very soon after its release from the egg the 
 chick is running about with its fellows, obeying the cluck 
 of its foster-mother, pecking at objects, swallowing some 
 and rejecting others. It is indifferent to the presence of 
 many living creatures hi its environment, but immediately 
 alarmed at the approach of others, running with the rest 
 of its brood to the protection of the hen's covering wings. 
 The creature's behaviour shows that it perceives and 
 remembers. Let us assume that these faculties are part 
 of its heritage ; the important questions I wish to consider 
 are the nature of the mentality, the mode of its working, 
 and the product of the activity, of the creature's mind in 
 so far as it is revealed in its behaviour. By a process of 
 natural reasoning we suppose that the order of the creature's 
 experience must be from without inwards. Its mind seems 
 to be dependent upon the data it receives, and as the 
 creature appears to us to be richly endowed with organs of 
 sense, we conclude that these have an informing function, 
 and that the mind, with its activity of perceiving and
 
 CHAP, x MONADIC INTERCOURSE 247 
 
 remembering, shapes and forms this matter by a process 
 which is ultimately reducible to association. If any one 
 will take the trouble to reflect on this notion it will im- 
 mediately appear that it is the notion of an impossible 
 process. Assume whatever inherited powers of perception 
 and memory you like, limit those powers to the direct and 
 simple interpretation of sensations, with their reflex or 
 instinctive responsive actions, and see if you can in any 
 conceivable way construct the experience. Think what the 
 process of reasoning must be which has to combine and 
 integrate the multitudinous sensations, simultaneous and 
 successive, visual, auditory and tactile, pleasant and painful, 
 graduated in intensity, extensity and protensity, into that 
 range of conscious experience which constitutes the first 
 day of life of a chicken. Do not make the mistake of 
 thinking it is simply a time difficulty. Let one day be as a 
 thousand years to the chicken, it is impossible to conceive the 
 means by which it could bring the manifold of sense into the 
 unity of its experience. But this difficulty is nothing to that 
 of accounting for intercourse, even that limited intercourse 
 which we denote by the term gregariousness. Call gregarious- 
 ness an inherited instinct if you will, you must still form 
 some concept of its mode of working. How with a mind 
 purely passive to the apport of sensation, and active only 
 in association, can you account for the social actions of the 
 creature ? To call it an instinct and leave its mode of 
 working unexplained, and impossible to explain, is only to 
 make more evident the bankruptcy of the notion that 
 passivity to sensations and activity in logic exhaust the 
 chicken's mind. Can we suppose the logical processes of 
 perceiving and remembering associated sensations powerful 
 enough of themselves to project sensations into the ex- 
 perience of another subject ? The important thing is not 
 the length of time nor the complexity of the process but 
 the utter impossibility of conceiving either its initiation or 
 its success. It is evident, of course, under any hypothesis, 
 that a new-born living creature such as a newly hatched 
 chicken brings with it in its physiological organization a 
 latent energy of past racial experience. But this does not
 
 248 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 remove the difficulty ; it only throws it back. According 
 to the sensation theory, however far back the organization 
 of experience is projected, experience consists and only 
 can consist of sensation and association, these being its 
 ultimate and only factors. The vice of the whole theory 
 lies in supposing that the mind is essentially a passive 
 endowment, a faculty in a living creature of receiving a 
 revelation of external reality and utilizing the revelation 
 for the advantage of the living organism. 
 
 I conceive the mode of mental activity entirely differently. 
 To me it is essentially the translation of internal energy into 
 external expression. It works, therefore, from within out- 
 wards, not, as the other theory supposes, from without 
 inwards. Sensations are psychical, but they are not states 
 of mind, and mind does not consist of states. Sensations 
 play a definite part in the life of the mind, but they are not 
 the little bricks out of which the mental life is constructed, 
 the little threads by which the pattern is woven, or the 
 formless stuff to which knowledge can ultimately be reduced. 
 When a new individual living creature, such as a chicken, 
 is born or hatched, its mind does not spring into existence 
 when its active life begins, its mind begins to find expression 
 in living actions. The creation of a chicken's mind out of a 
 chicken's living experience is inconceivable, for its mind is 
 the whole of its past existing as latent energy, that is, as 
 impulse and tendency. This mind seeks expression, and 
 it is dependent for it on imagery. Sensation is the occasion 
 which evokes the imagery not the stuff of which the imagery 
 consists. 
 
 All this argument when applied to the experience of a 
 chicken may sound anthropomorphic and absurd, but there 
 is no need to suppose, and the reader is not asked to suppose, 
 that the chicken's mind is finding expression in human 
 imagery. Without being the chicken it is impossible to 
 experience chicken-imagery, but we can know that imagery 
 must be a condition of its mental life. And further, in 
 taking an illustration from animal behaviour we can set 
 aside as irrelevant all theories of the nature of instinctive 
 action. Whether the behaviour of the creature be in-
 
 CHAP.X MONADIC INTERCOURSE 249 
 
 stinctive or intelligent, it is inexplicable when we endeavour 
 to translate it into, or state it in terms of, sensation theory, 
 because sensations do not give us the essential factor in 
 the behaviour, namely, imagery. A sensation can be 
 sensed, it cannot be perceived or imagined. Only an image 
 can be perceived, memorized, anticipated. An image is a 
 mental product sui generis ; it does not exist in its own 
 right, but in and for the mind which creates it. In creating 
 the image the mind gives expression to its intuition. But 
 why will not the sensation, or, at least, a group of associated 
 sensations, serve the purpose of the image ? Simply because 
 the sensation is hi its nature and origin purely subjective 
 and internal, and such it must always remain. In order 
 that there may be action there must be objectivity, and 
 until there is expression there is no objectivity. 
 
 The whole controversy concerning the nature of inter- 
 course has been obscured by the tacit ignoring of imagery 
 as a distinct stage in mental activity. Because it has 
 seemed that the image can be no other than the sensations 
 into which it appears to dissolve on analysis, it is assumed 
 that it is no more, and that it is in no way different, and 
 the problem has been to pass from subjective passively- 
 experienced states of the soul to objects identical for all 
 subjects of experience. The classical instance of this in 
 the history of philosophy is the well-known attempt of 
 Thomas Reid to meet the sceptical inquiry of Hume by an 
 appeal to common sense. 
 
 The appeal to common sense is based on the fact of human 
 intercourse. The philosophical argument is that such inter- 
 course is impossible unless there exist objects common to 
 the communicating minds. To be common to two minds 
 an object must, so it is argued, be independent of both. 
 When ten men look at the sun there are not ten objects 
 but one object, although there are ten different perceptions 
 of the object. The argument is neither logically sound nor 
 metaphysically necessary, and it soon fell into disrepute, 
 but it is important because it is being revived to-day 
 in the theories of the new realism. As directed against 
 the scepticism of Hume the argument had a certain force
 
 250 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 inasmuch as both sides ignored and therefore denied, or 
 rather denied because they failed to discover, any activity 
 of the mind in knowledge. Activity, they held, was purely 
 on the side of the object. To Hume this object was not dis- 
 tinct from the mind, independent of it, and presented to it, 
 for in his theory there was no mind distinct from the object 
 nor object distinct from the mind, the objects of knowledge 
 and the knowing mind simply were the impressions and 
 ideas which constituted experience and gave form to it by 
 association. It is exceedingly difficult to see how inter- 
 course between minds on such a theory is possible, and it 
 seems to follow that if, notwithstanding the logical difficulty, 
 we accept intercourse as fact we do thereby posit the com- 
 munity of a causal object. Why, then, did this dilemma 
 of pure empiricism fail to manifest itself when the appeal 
 was made to common sense ? Simply because the same 
 dilemma was inherent in the principle of common sense. It 
 is quite clear that in either hypothesis (the hypothesis that 
 there is or that there is not a common object) the ten men 
 do not see the same sun, and merely to affirm that there is 
 an independent sun, which no one of the ten men can see but 
 which is the sole active cause of the different perceptions 
 of the ten men, explains nothing at all. It merely affirms 
 against empiricism the very belief which empiricism had 
 challenged without offering any alternative explanatory 
 principle. For empiricism and for common sense alike mind 
 is a tabula rasa dependent for all it is on the impressions it 
 passively receives, and therefore for both alike the problem 
 is how impressions reveal objects. 
 
 The real failure of empiricism is that it identifies sensa- 
 tions with perceptions and consequently ignores completely 
 the specific activity in imagination. Our perceptions are 
 for empiricism complex or associated sensations, and sensa- 
 tions are for the mind " the given " out of which experience 
 is constituted . Contemporary empiri cists and realists usually 
 distinguish sensations and sense-data, or, as some philo- 
 sophers prefer to call them, sensibilia. The difference is not 
 existential, both belong to experience sensations to the 
 subjective order, sense-data or sensibilia to the objective.
 
 CHAP.X MONADIC INTERCOURSE 251 
 
 But the mind does not " perceive " sensations, it perceives 
 images, and images are not revealed or disclosed or discerned, 
 they are wholly and completely a product of the mind's 
 own active creation. The mind does not create in per- 
 ceiving, but unless it had already created an image it 
 would have nothing to perceive. Imagination, in its pure 
 and original meaning, is creative activity, and this creation 
 is the essential nature of mind. When ten men look at 
 the sun, what each perceives is the image which his mind 
 has created to give expression to its intuition. It is this 
 image he thinks of as agreeing or not agreeing with the 
 image in the mind of each of his fellows. It is imagination, 
 in its distinct literal meaning, the power of creating 
 forms and not merely the power of reproducing or of 
 more or less capriciously combining our actual or possible 
 experience, which is the essential and fundamental spiritual 
 activity. It makes intercourse possible, because the mind in 
 finding expression in imagery is creating for itself language. 
 Sensation is private and incommunicable ; independent 
 objects are, so far as knowledge is concerned, otiose ; the 
 empiricists who appealed to the one and the philosophers 
 of common sense who appealed to the other had no third 
 alternative. Knowledge for them must either be the mind's 
 awareness of its own sensations or the mind's passive 
 response in contemplation to the action of independent 
 objects, and both the alternatives are impossible. Neither 
 party saw that the image which is the true object of percep- 
 tion is sui generis. Now it is quite clear that if there is 
 intercourse between mind and mind there is something 
 communicable, and this something cannot be sensation, 
 and it cannot be an object supposed to cause sensation, if 
 the only possible knowledge of that object be the sense 
 impressions it causes. Images are the language by which 
 minds communicate. But here a difficulty will be raised. 
 It will be said that if images are private and owned by the 
 mind which produces them, then they are no more com- 
 municable than sensations. This would be so if intercourse 
 implied a currency like the coinage passing from one mind's 
 possession to another's. Quite different in my view is the
 
 252 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 communication which language establishes between mind 
 and mind. 
 
 The first condition of intercourse is expression. A mind 
 which, as yet, has not expressed its own intuitions, a mind 
 which we can conceive, if we will, as reacting to external 
 influences purely by internal sensations, clearly cannot 
 communicate its experience to another, for it cannot express 
 its experience to itself. Finding expression is self-realiza- 
 tion. This is the first characteristic work of the mind. It 
 is the image-forming activity or the imagination. It gives 
 form to experience. It is aesthetic, for it depends on sense 
 and sensing, not on thought and relating, and it is artistic, 
 for it is pictorial, producing particular images. It also 
 clearly is the first condition of intelligently directed action. 
 I tread on a sharp stone or thorn, the pain sensation at 
 once produces a reflex muscular action, but the sensation 
 is no part whatever of the image of stone or thorn which 
 my mind forms ; it is this image which I perceive and which 
 enables me to direct my next movement. I have there- 
 fore in my mind images, they are formed by my mind and 
 they are as particular and personal as my sensations. 
 Wherein, then, lies their advantage ? And how do they 
 enable me to have intercourse ? They indicate that my 
 mind has found expression. Their advantage is that they 
 have given me language, and language enables me to have 
 intercourse. My mind interprets signs. It experiences the 
 sensations but it actively forms the images, and it is the 
 images, not the sensations or the sensibility, which give to 
 the mind its universe, the range of its activity. 
 
 But this of itself is not sufficient for intercourse. Images 
 are expression, but they do not of themselves take us out 
 of our world or inform us of other minds. The second 
 condition of intercourse is action. It is because expression 
 is continued into action that actions can suggest expression. 
 Intercourse is not action provoking reaction, but expressive 
 action evoking new expression. When the intuition in my 
 mind has found expression in imagery, it leads to action, 
 and the action being expressive and not mechanical, itself 
 evokes new expression and arouses the aesthetic activity in
 
 CHAP.X MONADIC INTERCOURSE 253 
 
 other minds. In the degree in which other minds approach 
 our mind in its standpoint will our expressive action excite 
 the imagination (i.e. the productive aesthetic activity) in 
 other minds, and the more community of imagery will there 
 be. It can never be identity, and there is absolutely no 
 interaction between mind and mind in the meaning of the 
 concepts of conservation and compensation and causal 
 continuity by means of which physics systematizes nature. 
 The scheme of intercourse is : (a) The stimulus to a mind 
 to exercise its own activity by finding expression for its 
 intuitions. The stimulus may be sensational or emotional. 
 (b) The action in which the expression finds outward mani- 
 festation, voluntary and purposive ; (c) the activity which 
 the action evokes in another mind, primarily by sensation 
 or emotion ; (d) the responsive expression of the other 
 mind. The psycho-physiological counterpart, so far as it 
 can be traced, seems to be : (a) sensation, the psychical 
 manifestation of the functioning of peripheral neural organs 
 communicating with their main centres in the spinal cord, 
 under the control of an inhibitory function exercised by 
 the cerebral cortex ; (b) imagination, the formation of 
 sensuous images, the function of the cerebral cortex ; (c) 
 expressive action, the co-ordinated and integrative exercise 
 of the voluntary muscles to produce speech or other lin- 
 guistic action, the function of the motor areas of the cortex. 
 Let me now illustrate the theory by applying it to 
 various particular familiar instances. I see from my window 
 a flock of sparrows and finches feeding on the lawn of my 
 garden, I open the door to walk out, and the moment I 
 approach the lawn where the birds are feeding they take 
 wing. Such action is voluntary and purposive, it is not 
 reflex. We need not ask whether it is instinctive or in- 
 telligent as that has no relevance to the question we are 
 considering. Is that action conceivable in the absence of 
 an imaginative activity, that is, without the mental creation 
 of images ? Perhaps it will be said that visual sensation 
 alone is in question here, and that visual sensation is already 
 in its very nature imagery. Let that be granted. That 
 is to say, let us admit that visual sensation cannot be
 
 254 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 disintegrated on the same scheme as that which we employ 
 for the sensitive points of skin sensations. Yet visual sense- 
 data or sensibilia are conceived as discrete, as bringing 
 nothing to consciousness but simple quality, as associated 
 by purely external relations of similarity, contiguity and 
 causality. These will never give an image. Grant that 
 the creatures have memory as well as sensitivity, the sense- 
 data are surely not conceived as retainable in memory, 
 memory reproduces images not sensations. Where do the 
 images come from ? The action of the birds clearly implies 
 that the sensing man-coming-hither (to put it of course 
 anthropomorphically, we possess no means of transforming 
 human imagery into bird-imagery, in the very nature of 
 the case that must lie beyond us) brings before the creatures' 
 minds the image of a visual or possible situation which by 
 their action they can forestall. That is to say, the action 
 posits an activity which cannot be identical with sensation 
 or with contemplation, with merely passive reception of 
 sense-data or with the unreciprocated action of independent 
 objects on the mind. If any one thinks otherwise I desire 
 to know how without allowing to these creatures an activity 
 of imagination he can account for this factor in their action ? 
 For now suppose that I am in the habit of producing crumbs 
 from my pocket and scattering them on the lawn, the action 
 of the birds will be quite different they will flock to the 
 lawn instead of taking flight. But what difference is there 
 in the sense-data ? None whatever. The difference is 
 wholly in the image the birds have created. 
 
 Let us take another example of animal behaviour but 
 one involving actual intercourse between minds. I am 
 going out. I go into the hall and take my hat from the 
 peg, my stick from the stand. My dog follows my move- 
 ments with growing excitement, frisks and jumps impatiently 
 around me. It happens, however, that I do not want my 
 dog to accompany me. I order him back, a command he 
 understands and obeys with evident disappointment. Can 
 that behaviour of the animal be explained by any other 
 way than by supposing an active creative imagination in 
 the mind of the dog ? Of course, I repeat, I have no
 
 CHAP.X MONADIC INTERCOURSE 255 
 
 means of correlating my imagery with dog-imagery, but 
 can I conceive the action if I admit no other factors but 
 sense-data and relations of association ? One thing surely 
 is clear, there can be no communication between my mind 
 and the dog's mind by means of our receptive faculties. 
 There is not one single object in our perspectives of the 
 universe which is identical to us both. There is no means 
 of correlating our respective systems of reference, no way 
 on which we can agree on a language by signs which are 
 only signs. We must posit activity in each mind, and the 
 only activity which renders intercourse possible is imagina- 
 tion. The dog's instincts, the pack, the scent, the hunt, 
 are not my instincts. The dog's imagery is not my 
 imagery. Nothing passes from the dog's mind to my mind 
 or from my mind to the dog's, but each has the creative 
 imagination which enables it to respond to sensation by 
 expressing its own intuitions, and this makes significant 
 action possible, action which can arouse another mind to 
 responsive expression. 
 
 My last illustration is from fiction. Don Quixote with 
 Sancho Panza is in quest of adventures. Both see 
 approaching them two great clouds of dust. These are 
 raised by two large flocks of sheep which some shepherds 
 are driving across the plain. Don Quixote at once recog- 
 nizes the two contending armies of the mighty Emperor 
 Alifanfaron and of King Pentapolin. The supreme moment 
 of his life has come. On his action depends the issue of 
 the conflict. Sancho Panza recognizes nothing of all this, 
 to him there are only the ordinary incidents of country 
 travel shepherds and flocks of sheep. Now wherein 
 lies the difference between the two minds, and in what 
 way are they brought into relation, and what is the 
 basis of their intercourse ? Clearly the difference is not in 
 sense-data, nor yet can it be in any supposed independent 
 objects. Both minds have the same data so far as physical 
 reality is the causal source of their impressions. They each 
 actually experience as sense impressions the clouds of 
 white dust, to analyse no further. The sense impressions 
 awaken in one mind the perception of armies, in the other
 
 256 A THEORY OF MONADS PART n 
 
 the perception of flocks of sheep. The only immediately 
 apprehended objects are the dust clouds gradually revealing 
 their cause whatever it may be. Now it will be at once 
 objected that according to the very story itself we are 
 supposed to allow that Don Quixote's imagination is insane, 
 Sancho Panza's, however simple, is sane. Let it be so, it 
 does not in the slightest degree affect the question of inter- 
 course which I am citing it to illustrate. The artist has 
 heightened the effect of his picture by exaggerating the 
 contrast. Each mind creates imagery, and it is by the 
 images and not by sensations or sense-data that com- 
 munication is possible. The humour of the story is that 
 the vivid imagination of the knight can impose itself on 
 the commonplace imagination of the squire, even to the 
 extent that when the catastrophe has occurred and the 
 hero is lying prostrate as the result of the hail of stones 
 from the shepherds, Sancho can still accept the hypothesis 
 of enchantment. Why, then, do we smile at Don Quixote 
 for the unreality of his vision and at Sancho Panza 
 for the ease with which his simple-minded realism is dis- 
 turbed ? The answer, in my view, is that perception 
 involves judgment and so marks the advance to another 
 grade in the mental activity. Reality and unreality concern 
 action as our story illustrates. Even Don Quixote, who 
 cannot entertain the hypothesis of the non-objectivity of 
 his images, must account for their failure to respond to 
 the expectation on which his actions are based, he can only 
 explain it by positing the malice of enchanters. 
 
 Intercourse, then, depends upon and is conditioned by 
 the creative imagination exercised individually by each 
 communicating mind. There is a sentence of Hegel which 
 reads : " The natural man sees in the woman flesh of his 
 flesh : the moral and spiritual man sees in the moral and 
 spiritual being and by its means spirit of his spirit." We 
 may adapt this to the whole problem of monadic intercourse. 
 The plain man sees in nature an inert matter, spatially and 
 temporally determined, out of which his mind and the minds 
 of his fellow-beings have been formed, and which presents 
 itself to those minds as their common object. The philo-
 
 CHAP, x MONADIC INTERCOURSE 257 
 
 sopher recognizes in nature the expression of the organizing 
 activity of his mind, and sees mind of his mind, spirit of 
 his spirit, in the organizing activity of infinite individual 
 minds ; each, like his own, self-centred and self-enclosed, 
 and each, like his own, seeking outward expression for its 
 intuition and forming thereby its actions. They are the 
 monads, the only reals, a pre-established harmony, but a 
 harmony inherent in their existence and nature, not imposed 
 upon them by the transcendent act of a creator.
 
 PART III 
 
 LOGICAL : THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE 
 MONAD 
 
 259
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 
 
 In true philosophers there is always something more than themselves 
 beneath their teaching, something of which they are themselves un- 
 conscious. It is the germ of a new life. To repeat mechanically what 
 philosophers have taught is to suffocate that germ, to prevent it developing 
 and becoming a new and a more perfect system. CROCE. 
 
 MODERN philosophy has been determined in its form and 
 matter as well as in the subdivision of its sciences by the 
 work of Kant. The reason of this becomes clear when we 
 study modern philosophy historically and in its develop- 
 ment. Two lines of speculation, opposite in their directing 
 principle, even contradictory in the method followed, meet 
 in Kant. Each is recognized as legitimate, their opposition 
 is reconciled, and a new method emerges in which the old 
 antitheses are synthesized and the modern problem of 
 philosophy becomes concrete. Kant named this the critical 
 method. It rests on a philosophical discovery, the a priori 
 synthesis. In Kant philosophy becomes pre-eminently 
 theory of knowledge. It is theory of knowledge which 
 divides the speculative from the practical reason, and which 
 leads within the speculative realm to the distinction of 
 aesthetic and logic and within the practical realm to that 
 of metaphysics and ethics. The aesthetical, the logical, 
 the metaphysical and the ethical problems as they exist in 
 philosophy to-day owe their definite shape and relative 
 significance to the form in which the philosophical problem 
 was presented by Kant. 
 
 The two lines of philosophical development before Kant 
 were, first, the philosophy of clear and distinct ideas, which 
 
 261
 
 262 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 begins with Descartes and attains its full expression in 
 Leibniz. And, second, the philosophy of sense experience, 
 the theory of the origin of ideas and the laws of their associa- 
 tion, which begins with Francis Bacon, and later is systema- 
 tized, first by Hobbes, then by the English philosophers of 
 the eighteenth century, attaining its full expression in the 
 sceptical philosophy of Hume. In Kant the two methods 
 are distinguished as dogmatism and empiricism, and it is 
 this contrast he has in mind when he tells us in the Prolego- 
 mena that the scepticism of Hume roused him from his 
 dogmatic slumber. 
 
 It is easy to see the origin of this divergent direction of 
 philosophical development if we reflect on the nature of 
 the problem which knowledge presents to us. 
 
 When without any prepossession derived from philo- 
 sophical theories we attend to the experience we name 
 cognition, we find that it is not immediate, simple and 
 self-explanatory. We cannot say that in having the ex- 
 perience of knowledge we know what knowledge is, in the 
 same way in which we can say that we know what pain, 
 or heat, or cold is, when we experience the sensations. 
 Knowing refers beyond itself and also presents two aspects. 
 There is an activity, knowing ; and there is a passivity, 
 something is known. This distinction, which is all that 
 the experience itself yields, seems to imply something 
 beyond itself as its condition. We reason, therefore, and 
 infer from the activity that there exists an agent, and 
 this we call the mind. We reason and infer from knowledge 
 that there exists an object, and this existence we then 
 represent as the independent condition of knowing and not 
 as itself conditioned by the knowing relation. By this 
 natural reasoning common sense reaches the notion of nature 
 and mind as two independent existences, and by such 
 reasoning it defends the notion when it is challenged. In 
 philosophy we name this theory the naive realism of common 
 sense. According to it there are objects independent of 
 knowing subjects, and subjects (minds or selves) independent 
 of objects, and knowledge is a relation between them which 
 does not affect or qualify the existence of either. Know-
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 263 
 
 ledge means in fact that there exists in mind a faculty or 
 power of discerning the existence, and discovering the 
 nature, of an external object. There are two things, a 
 mind and a world, and an external relation between them. 
 
 The dualism of mind and world, which common sense 
 thus accepts uncritically as the necessary ground of living 
 action, is the problem of philosophy. If the analysis of 
 experience yielded immediately the theoretical ground of 
 our practical belief, there would be no philosophical problem 
 of knowledge and no need for a theory of knowledge. It 
 would be enough to have the experience of cognition in 
 order to know its meaning and nature. It is not so. In 
 order to discover the meaning of cognition we must reflect 
 upon experience and bring it before the mind as an object 
 for analysis. The moment we do so we become aware 
 of a logical discrepancy between the object of knowledge 
 as real and the knowledge of the object as ideal, and this 
 discrepancy is the first form in which knowledge becomes 
 a problem of philosophy. 
 
 Two difficulties confront the philosopher from whatever 
 standpoint he approaches the problem. They concern the 
 two substantive terms which cognition seems to imply, 
 mind and thing. The first is the difficulty which underlies 
 all the groups of problems known as problems of the self. 
 It is in the nature of a paradox. The substantive term of 
 the knowing relation on its subjective side the self or 
 ego is not, and qua knowing cannot be, object of know- 
 ledge, and therefore the knowing self is itself unknown. 
 The second difficulty concerns the substantive term on the 
 objective side. The independent object or thing is not the 
 known object. The object known gives us ground for the 
 presumption that the object exists independently, but 
 knowledge gives us known object not its independent 
 existence. Strictly speaking, therefore, although know- 
 ledge is a relation between subject and object yet subject 
 and object are themselves unknown. 
 
 These difficulties may be presented in another way. 
 That which in experience we know most immediately 
 we can never know objectively, and that which we know
 
 264 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 objectively is never existentially independent and therefore 
 free from subjectivity. What we are ever striving after and 
 can never attain is to know the mind without objectivity 
 and the thing without subjectivity. If we maintain that 
 such knowledge is impossible, the retort is that if there be 
 no knowledge of a real world, in its independence of knowing 
 mind, physical science is impossible. If to avoid this we 
 hold that knowledge is an external relation between in- 
 dependent existences, then the retort is that truth is a 
 miracle, or at least an unfathomable mystery, and philosophy 
 is impossible. 
 
 But may it not be that the common-sense belief, that 
 objects known and subjects knowing exist in reality as they 
 exist in idea, is true ? Is it not possible that in the ideal 
 order of knowledge we have the exact counterpart of the 
 real order of nature, and that this nature is indifferent to 
 whether it is known or not ? The answer depends on what 
 is meant. There is a sense in which we may say of any- 
 thing of which we are necessarily ignorant that it may be 
 true, and in saying so we do no more than express our 
 ignorance. If, however, we mean by truth positive know- 
 ledge which will stand the logical test of consistency, then 
 we must answer that the common-sense belief is not true 
 and cannot conceivably be proved true. It is in the very 
 discovery that common sense is logically inconsistent that 
 philosophy takes its start. Still, we may ask, is it not 
 possible that the result of the philosophical quest for a 
 theory will be the conclusion that the common-sense belief 
 is true ? Again we must answer that this is impossible. 
 Philosophy may, and indeed must as part of its task, show 
 the ground of the common-sense belief, but to adopt it as a 
 philosophical conclusion would simply condemn philosophy. 
 It would mean that the quest for a theory of knowledge so 
 far from arising in a need of intellectual satisfaction is a 
 false step which the wise man will avoid taking. To return 
 to the uncritical starting-point as the reasoned conclusion 
 could only prove that philosophy had made false route. 
 
 Now to many philosophers it seems that in pursuing 
 theory of knowledge philosophy is making false route.
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 265 
 
 Theory of knowledge seems to them a hindrance, a stumbling- 
 block and rock of offence, in the path of philosophical 
 advance. Their first care is to clear it out of the way. It 
 seems easy to do and justified by results. Philosophy is 
 much more than theory of knowledge, but allow it to be 
 blocked by this theory at the outset and we are condemned, 
 they say, to remain for ever outside the promised land. 
 We must recognize the problem, of course, Berkeley and 
 Hume have made it impossible for any one to ignore it 
 but we need not be turned aside by it. Let us make the 
 hypothesis that the common-sense belief is right and see 
 whether we shall not be justified by the result. The 
 attractiveness of most of the modern realist theories of 
 knowledge is not that they solve the problem but that they 
 seem in this way successfully to shelve it. 
 
 There are many inducements to such a course. Not the 
 least is the underlying bias in our nature which manifests 
 itself in the strong inclination to think that a practically 
 workable belief must be a theoretically true belief. Even 
 in philosophy we are swayed by the unconscious assumption 
 that common sense is in the last resort the positive criterion 
 of truth. We are even conscious of a strong tendency to 
 discredit any theory, however consistent it be and rational 
 in itself, if it conflict with common sense. And yet there 
 is the history of thought to remind us that self-evident 
 beliefs are continually being discredited. Common sense 
 indeed not only sets our problem, but accompanies every 
 effort to solve it with a sustained bias against its solution, 
 which weakens intellectual effort and warps judgment. 
 
 We can indeed enter on philosophy by making the 
 hypothesis that the existence and nature of a world con- 
 templated is immediately and absolutely disclosed to a 
 mind contemplating. We can use the hypothesis as a 
 bridge to pass directly from knowledge to reality and thus 
 avoid what some call the morass, others the impassable 
 gulf, of theory of knowledge. But it is a hypothesis, and 
 no description of it as naive realism can disguise its hypo- 
 thetical nature. This is as much as to say that we can 
 choose to begin philosophy with a principle which is false
 
 266 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 to philosophy. Hypothesis as a starting-point of philo- 
 sophical theory is a false step we cannot retrieve. " Hypo- 
 theses non fingo " should stand as a warning post at the 
 entrance to philosophy. Science makes hypotheses, they are 
 indeed the very instrument of scientific advance. Science is 
 utilitarian and therefore hypothesis is for it a rational method, 
 it meets the demand for the satisfaction of theoretical truth. 
 Suppose we start with the assumption that our impressions 
 and ideas, which we distinguish as ideal existences from 
 things and relations, are simply the discovery or discern- 
 ment of real existences, how can any subsequent reasoning 
 make that assumption cease to be an assumption ? The 
 hypothesis, for such it is, which we pose at the beginning, 
 is thenceforward an essential part of any logical conclusion 
 at which we can possibly arrive. How can we bring the 
 hypothesis to a test, such as is common enough in science, 
 which will cause it to lose its character of hypothesis and 
 become the theoretically consistent account of knowledge 
 which our intellect demands for its intellectual satisfac- 
 tion ? The hypothesis which we thus introduce into 
 philosophy is not needed in practical life, and in philosophy 
 it is useless, for there is no method of philosophy by which 
 a hypothesis can be submitted to a criterion. 
 
 There is, however, in the actual experience of cognition 
 something which itself seems to impel us to pass directly 
 from subjective thinking to an existent reality independent 
 of thought. We are dissatisfied and feel as though we were 
 thwarted, or held up and suspended in air, so long as the 
 passage to objective reality is in doubt. Yet the moment 
 we reflect on our experience we see that knowledge must 
 in the first instance be a purely subjective state of the 
 knower, notwithstanding that its whole meaning depends 
 on its claim to be truth about existence. Hence our im- 
 patience to be transported to this existence and to be able 
 to feel that it is free from any taint of subjectivity. In 
 the mathematical and physical sciences we seem to have 
 achieved this pure objectivity, and for philosophy to fall 
 short appears as a handicap. But in truth it is this apparent 
 handicap which constitutes the strength of philosophy and
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 267 
 
 raises it high above the special sciences in dignity. For 
 philosophy is the science of science. All reality, subjective 
 as well as objective, mind as well as nature, mind inclusive 
 of nature, nature inclusive of mind, is the subject of philo- 
 sophy. This is why assumptions and hypotheses are 
 abhorrent to the philosopher, he has no criterion outside 
 knowledge by which to test knowledge. 
 
 How, then, does philosophy begin ? Every one will agree 
 that it begins with the study of experience ; that the study 
 of experience is only possible if the mind has the power to 
 reflect ; that however direct the reflexion on experience, 
 knowledge of experience is, as compared with the experience 
 reflected on, indirect, and yet the experience of reflecting 
 on experience is one and continuous with the experience 
 reflected on. This means that experience is one with con- 
 sciousness, or, what is the same thing, that experience is 
 self-conscious by right and in its own essential nature, that 
 self-consciousness is not acquired. This, reduced to its 
 simplest position, is the necessary standpoint of a philosophy 
 which eschews hypothesis. We take experience as it is 
 and analyse it in right of the self-consciousness it possesses. 
 Now when the experience of cognition is submitted to this 
 analysis it yields at once an important distinction the 
 distinction between act and object. The act is the knowing, 
 the object is the known. The act is the apprehension of 
 the object, whatever be the mode of acting or the character 
 or nature of the object. Mode of acting and character of 
 object known are, however, always correlate. If, for 
 example, the act be sensing, the object is sensation ; if it be 
 perceiving, the object is percept ; if thinking, thought ; 
 and so throughout. The object is always presented, passive, 
 or given, the act is always directed in or towards it. It is 
 on the interpretation of this twofold aspect of cognition 
 or of this dual nature that the most fundamental divergence 
 in metaphysical theory arises. According to some philo- 
 sophers it implies that mind and nature are dual existences, 
 and that knowing is an external relation between them. 
 To them the common-sense view that things are in their 
 essence and independent existence what we in act of
 
 268 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 knowing discern them to be, is justified. On the other 
 hand, to some philosophers it implies the direct contrary, 
 for it proves that the whole world is only object in relation 
 to subject, perception of a perceiver, and that its reality 
 is therefore essentially ideality. 
 
 Without trying at this point to decide between these 
 divergent directions in metaphysical theory, we may at 
 least point out that so far as the first interpretation finds 
 a justification of common sense, it is justification, not of 
 common sense, but of the hypothesis which underlies the 
 view of common sense. Philosophy makes no hypothesis 
 but validates the hypothesis of ordinary working life. The 
 second interpretation, on the other hand, condemns the 
 common-sense hypothesis as illusion, and is in consequence 
 committed to show how the illusion arises and what purpose 
 it serves. 
 
 Between knowledge and truth there exists no difference. 
 Knowing and knowing truly are one and identical : know- 
 ing falsely is not knowing. This means that truth is not 
 the object of knowledge but the validity of knowledge. It 
 means also that the opposition of error to truth is not a 
 distinction between knowing and not knowing, but an opposi- 
 tion within the one distinct concept of knowledge or truth. 
 It is clear, then, that if the object of knowledge be something 
 confronting the knowing mind, an outside which in knowing 
 is brought inside, the act of knowing must be essentially 
 an act of faith and its validity miraculous. It is this problem 
 of validity which has seemed imperatively to call for a 
 hypothesis. If the act of knowing is an act of faith who 
 or what is to assure us of its validity ? 
 
 There is, then, a problem of knowledge which meets us 
 at the very beginning of philosophy, and a peculiarly dis- 
 couraging problem, because it seems to challenge the very 
 possibility of philosophy. We want to study reality and 
 our only means is knowledge, yet this very means seems 
 itself to interpose an obstacle and to prevent our ever 
 reaching the goal. Could we only, we think, place ourselves 
 at the very beginning of life and watch the genesis of know- 
 ledge, surely then we should understand its nature. Many
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 269 
 
 have tried to surmount the difficulty by some device, natural 
 or artificial, which would place us, at least imaginatively, 
 in the position of surveying knowledge from the independent 
 standpoint of reality, but all such attempts only serve to 
 conceal or disguise the real problem. 
 
 The reality and inevitableness of the problem of know- 
 ledge will be manifest if we consider three definite and 
 typical instances of the attempt to meet it in the history of 
 philosophy. To Descartes, to Berkeley and to Kant, know- 
 ledge presented itself as primarily a problem. It seemed 
 to interpose a veil before the mind's view of reality, or even 
 to bar altogether the pathway to reality. Descartes pre- 
 sented the problem of the validity of knowledge in the 
 clearest and most striking form in which it has ever been 
 stated. He propounded a principle of universal doubt, but 
 so far from it leading him to absolute scepticism it revealed 
 the ground of certainty. Probably no philosopher has 
 ever worked with surer confidence than Descartes in 
 working out the principles of a philosophy of nature and 
 producing the definite scheme of a mechanical system of 
 the universe. But a formidable obstacle confronted him at 
 the outset. It was not exactly what we now call the problem 
 of truth. It was not, that is to say, the question whether 
 truth be correspondence or coherence and what in either 
 case is its criterion. It was more profound. It was, if I 
 may state it in my own terms, how can we be sure that 
 our experience or any part of our experience is knowledge 
 of real existence ? The experience of being at rest, of 
 remaining fixed in one spot during a succession of events 
 in time, is consistent with the real existence of translation. 
 The senses are deceptive. This was the reason for the 
 method. How and when is experience knowledge ? Only 
 by doubting everything that can possibly be doubted 
 shall we arrive at certainty. Only if we can point to one 
 absolute certainty shall we know what in experience char- 
 acterizes knowledge. To say that we cannot know until we 
 first of all know what knowing is, sounds self-stultification, 
 and is often so represented, but to refuse to recognize the 
 difficulty is to leave the whole of philosophy on an unsound
 
 270 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 foundation. We cannot learn to swim without plunging 
 into the water, but only the fool who courts disaster plunges 
 into the water in order that he may learn to swim. 
 
 Let us see, then, how this problem of knowledge resolved 
 itself for Descartes. Here are the opening sentences of 
 the Principles of Philosophy : " We were children before 
 we became men, and just as then when we were without 
 the full use of reason our judgments concerning things 
 presented to our senses were sometimes right and sometimes 
 wrong, so now we find many premature judgments pre- 
 venting us coming to the knowledge of truth and even 
 obstructing us. There seems one way of escape, it is that 
 once at least in our lives we should undertake to doubt 
 everything wherein we can discover the least suspicion of 
 uncertainty." And here is the conclusion of the Principles, 
 written when the whole mechanism of nature has been 
 explored : "I distinguish two kinds of certainty. The 
 first is called moral, it suffices for the regulation of our 
 conduct. . . . The other kind is when we cannot think 
 that the thing can be otherwise than we judge it to be. 
 This certainty is founded on a very sure metaphysical 
 principle. It is that God, being sovereignly good and the 
 source of all truth, for he is our creator, has bestowed upon 
 us the power or faculty of distinguishing the true from the 
 false which cannot be deceptive when rightly used. It 
 shows us evidently that a thing is true." 
 
 This famous principle that God in the ca?e of evident 
 ideas does not deceive is in its very nature a hypothesis, 
 and in accepting it we make our whole knowledge of external 
 real existence depend on an assumption. But there is all 
 the difference in the world between an assumption con- 
 sciously adopted as a conclusion and an assumption un- 
 consciously latent in an argument. The philosophical 
 importance of this hypothesis in the conclusion is not 
 whether it is probable or improbable, and in what degree, 
 but that it stands for failure not success. If ever there 
 has been a pure inquirer, conscientious and anxious at 
 all costs to attain to truth and know real existence, it 
 is Descartes. He has no interest in doubt as doubt, no
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 271 
 
 inducement to doubt for the sake of doubting, he doubts 
 in order to know, as the medieval philosophers believed 
 in order to understand. Doubt for Descartes is no idle 
 speculation, it is the search for truth. 
 
 The method led Descartes to the immediate discovery 
 that there is one truth secure against possible disturbance 
 by doubt, namely, the existence which is given in the act 
 of thinking itself. " I think, therefore I am " is a truth 
 which doubting for doubting is thinking affirms. If, then, 
 I consider this truth I may find out what it is which char- 
 acterizes knowledge, and I discover that it is clearness and 
 distinctness which identify idea and existence. I have not 
 discovered a truth, I have discovered what truth is, clear- 
 ness and distinctness of the idea which in this typical case 
 is self-evidence. So, then, we possess at least one truth hi 
 which the passage from thought to existence is immediate. 
 It is not the ontological argument, because it is not an 
 argument, but it is that which is to give to the ontological 
 argument a new meaning and a new force, for here in the 
 very fact of thinking we have an idea which includes 
 existence. 
 
 In " I think, therefore I am " we possess a truth which is 
 absolute so far as the relation of thought to existence is 
 concerned, but it is a truth which has a limit in extension. 
 The existence which is affirmed is confined to the point- 
 instant affirmation. It loses its immediacy directly we 
 try to extend it beyond the actual point which marks its 
 present. It affirms what is, not what has been or will be. 
 I may say, for example, " I remember, therefore I am," 
 if by remembering I mean my present thinking, but I 
 cannot affirm the existence of the object remembered from 
 the fact of my present memory. How, then, am I to pass 
 from the immediacy of idea and existence in the present 
 moment to the identity of idea and existence at other 
 moments and in other points ? 
 
 It is clear that if I am to pass immediately that is, 
 without inference, hypothesis, or assumption, any of 
 which would introduce doubt from the particular truth 
 of my own existence to the truth of existence hi general,
 
 272 A THEORY OF MONADS PART in 
 
 it must be because I am able to find in the idea of this 
 existence the existence itself. That is to say, the idea must 
 contain existence in precisely the same meaning as that in 
 which the " I am " of existence is contained in the " I think." 
 Descartes finds this in the idea of God which contains the 
 clear and distinct truth, God exists. This doctrine is very 
 important and calls for careful study. It is the familiar 
 ontological argument, and Descartes propounds it in 
 the identical terms of the old theology, but in its new 
 setting it has an entirely new significance. God exists is 
 a truth which is self-evident and immediately certain in 
 the clearness and distinctness of its idea. The God- 
 idea includes existence in precisely the same immediate 
 sense in which the " I think " contains the " I am." 
 God is a necessary idea if existence be not momentary, for 
 the "I think, therefore I am" contains nothing in the idea 
 which will continue or sustain existence from moment to 
 moment. The necessary existence of God is not, therefore, 
 a dogma which Descartes wants to affirm in the interest 
 of religion or morality, it is a necessary stage of the search 
 for truth. 
 
 The ideas of the self and of God are clear and dis- 
 tinct ideas whose truth is guaranteed in the fact that 
 existence is not separate from but contained within the 
 ideas. It is the exact opposite with my knowledge of 
 nature. If I know material substance, then by the very 
 notion of it I know an existence which the idea does not 
 contain. It is the very essence of matter, according to 
 Descartes, that it confronts the idea, stands over against it 
 by reason of an attribute, extension, which the idea does 
 not possess. What is truth when existence is separate 
 from the idea ? How can I know an existence which my 
 ideas do not contain ? In this case doubt is not excluded. 
 Not only so, but I am continually discovering that my 
 ideas are false and am constantly suspicious that they are 
 inadequate even if not false. Have I any criterion of truth ? 
 The method has shown me that the ideas which exclude 
 doubt, the self and God, are clear and distinct, it is im- 
 possible to have them as ideas and to doubt their existence
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 273 
 
 in fact. They are self-evident. My ideas concerning 
 external existence, however, differ in the degree of their 
 clearness and distinctness. Some, particularly those of 
 sense, are obscure and confused, some, particularly those 
 of intellect, are clear and distinct, and with the degree of 
 their clearness and distinctness goes the difficulty of doubt- 
 ing their reality. Hence we may conclude that clear and 
 distinct ideas are true. But we have not excluded doubt, 
 is it possible to do so ? Only by founding an argument 
 on our idea of God. The idea of the most perfect being 
 must include veracity we cannot think that God deceives. 
 But, we object, we are deceived, for are not the senses decep- 
 tive ? The purpose of the senses is not, Descartes replies, to 
 give us true ideas, it is to preserve our body from injury, but 
 the purpose of our intellect is to give us truth. To suppose, 
 then, that in the case of clear and distinct ideas, God our 
 creator is our deceiver, is to suppose God false to the very 
 principle of clearness and distinctness which he has himself 
 determined to be the criterion of truth. 
 
 This is not Descartes's philosophy, but it is the problem 
 of knowledge which lay in the path of his philosophy. 
 
 Let us now consider the second instance we have chosen 
 Berkeley. One of the most interesting human documents 
 which has been preserved to us is the " Commonplace 
 Book of Occasional Metaphysical Thoughts " which George 
 Berkeley kept during his student years in Trinity College, 
 Dublin. Before he was twenty years old he had formed 
 the design of a Treatise which was to be a complete system 
 of philosophy. In the "Commonplace Book" he jotted 
 down as they occurred to him and without form the thoughts 
 which were to be developed in the great work. The Treatise 
 was never written. The work entitled A Treatise concerning 
 the Principles of Human Knowledge was probably in its 
 original form intended as part of it, and was perhaps thrown 
 into its present shape when the Essay towards a New Theory 
 of Vision had met with success. In the " Commonplace 
 Book " he had various notes intended for the great design. 
 Thus we read : " Mem. To premise a definition of idea." 
 Against this is placed a capital " I," indicating that the 
 
 T
 
 274 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 memorandum is for his Introduction. Then there follows 
 this note : " The 2 great principles of morality the 
 being of God and the freedom of man. These to be handled 
 in the Second Book." The first and third books of the 
 Treatise are also alluded to. Why was this work not only 
 never completed but first laid aside and then abandoned ? 
 The important philosophical works which contain the theory 
 we associate with Berkeley are short, unsystematic and 
 occasional, and all written at the beginning of his literary 
 life. Why he turned aside from his purpose and then 
 abandoned it we do not know. Probably his life with its 
 widening practical and philanthropical schemes is the 
 sufficient answer, but the works he has left and the notes 
 in his " Commonplace Book " show us very plainly the 
 direction of his thoughts. They enable us to see what 
 books he was reading and the effect they had on him and 
 the kind of problems that fascinated him. 
 
 This " Commonplace Book " begins about 1704 when 
 Berkeley was in his twentieth year. He is then a graduate, 
 having matriculated when he was fifteen. The Essay 
 towards a New Theory of Vision was printed in 1709. It was 
 followed by the Treatise concerning the Principles of Human 
 Knowledge in 1710, and the Three Dialogues between Hylas 
 and Philonous in 1713. We are able from the " Common- 
 place Book " to see the contemporary philosophy which he 
 studied and the order in which he read it. He read 
 Newton, Locke and Malebranche in the order named. He 
 had evidently no acquaintance with Descartes's Principia, 
 and this seems strange seeing how critical and hostile he is 
 towards Newton. " Newton begs his principles ; I demon- 
 strate mine." He read Descartes's Meditations and the 
 Observations on them, but probably not until after he 
 had become acquainted with the Cartesian theory in Male- 
 branche. His only reference to Hobbes is in connexion 
 with Descartes's Meditations, and Leibniz is only referred 
 to in relation to Newton's Theory of Fluxions. Spinoza 
 he mentions more than once, but evidently the common 
 prejudice had prevented him making direct acquaintance 
 with his works. Locke he is reading with diligent care
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 275 
 
 and sustained admiration. In criticizing him he describes 
 himself as a pigmy in comparison with a giant. But the 
 determining factor in the direction of his philosophical 
 research is clearly Malebranche, that is, Cartesianism as 
 expounded by Malebranche. The Recherche de la verite 
 had a striking effect upon him, drawing him off from his 
 original purpose. I am not referring to any resemblance, 
 apparent or real, between Malebranche's theory of vision 
 in God and Berkeley's theory that God sustains the world 
 in perceiving it, nor am I suggesting that Berkeley's theory 
 is derived from Malebranche and not original. The two 
 theories are essentially different and probably without any 
 direct relation to one another. The influence I am speak- 
 ing of as detei mining the direction of Berkeley's speculation 
 is that of the Cartesian theory of the deceptiveness of the 
 senses, brought out with striking force in Book I. of the 
 Recherche. It was a direct challenge to the principle which 
 Berkeley had accepted from Locke, and led him to reaffirm 
 Locke's principle against the Cartesians. At the same time 
 it called forth a criticism of Locke and a profounder study 
 of the principle itself. The immediate effect was the Essay 
 towards a New Theory of Vision. 
 
 This biographical note is particularly important just 
 because Berkeley's original research in philosophy belongs, 
 as we have seen, to his early years. His knowledge of 
 contemporary philosophy must have been derived from his 
 own reading in the leisure of his regular courses of classical 
 and mathematical studies. His service to philosophy is 
 not that he developed by critical study the work of his 
 predecessor Locke, but that he took up the challenge pre- 
 sented by the Cartesian method of doubt. 
 
 In fact, Berkeley, like Descartes, has the ideal of a 
 philosophy wherein, as in the promised land, we may 
 dwell securely in the sure possession of truth, and finds 
 that there is a formidable obstacle at the outset a 
 doubt concerning knowledge itself, concerning its reality, 
 concerning its validity. No advance is possible unless this 
 obstacle is removed. The Cartesian principle, so far from 
 overcoming it, has made it, if possible, more impassable
 
 276 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 than it was, for it separates existence from knowledge and 
 so makes it impossible to unite them. 
 
 Here are some of the notes in the " Commonplace 
 Book " which disclose Berkeley's leading thought. 
 
 Mem. Diligently to set forth how that many of the ancient 
 philosophers run into so great absurdities as even to deny the 
 existence of motion and those other things they perceived 
 actually by their senses. This sprung from their not knowing 
 what Existence was, and wherein it consisted. This was the 
 source of all their folly. 'Tis on the discovery of the nature 
 and meaning and import of Existence that I chiefly insist. This 
 puts a wide difference betwixt the Sceptics etc. and me. This 
 I think wholly new. I am sure this is new to me. 
 
 I am the farthest from scepticism of any man. I know with 
 an intuitive knowledge the existence of other things as well as 
 my own soul. This is what Locke nor scarce any other thinking 
 philosopher will pretend to. 
 
 The supposition that things are distinct from ideas takes 
 away all real truth, and consequently brings in a universal 
 scepticism, since all our knowledge and contemplation is confined 
 barely to our own ideas. 
 
 These notes enable us to see clearly what Berkeley's 
 problem is. Scepticism in philosophy is unavoidable if 
 knowledge of existence is unattainable. Knowledge of 
 existence is unattainable if existence and idea are separate 
 things. But in sense perception there is no separation of 
 idea and existence. The senses do not deceive us. They 
 cannot deceive us, for the objects of knowledge in sense 
 experience are perceptions and not an existence separate 
 from perception. The ordinary man may think that his 
 perceptions exist when he is not perceiving, but only philo- 
 sophers suppose that there is an existence of a sensible 
 object independent of its perception. This is a pure 
 invention of philosophers and an absurdity. Esse is percipi 
 is therefore the direct contradictory of the Cartesian theory 
 that the senses are deceptive, that truth is adherent to 
 ideas, that its criterion is subjective and that knowledge 
 depends on the truth of a hypothesis. 
 
 Berkeley's doctrine that esse is percipi was indeed mainly
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 277 
 
 used by him to give force to his criticism of Locke's idea 
 of material substance, but primarily it was the challenge 
 to the Cartesian principle and the affirmation of the anti- 
 thetical principle. The curious thing, however, about 
 Berkeley's theory of knowledge is that, although it adopts 
 as its principle the direct contradictory of the Cartesian 
 principle, it leads to precisely the same dilemma. What 
 is still more curious is that in attempting to meet this 
 dilemma it adopts what is practically the identical device. 
 Berkeley fell back for his support of an existence which 
 would give continuity to the intermittent and fragmentary 
 perceptions of individuals, on the idea of God as a con- 
 tinuous perceiver. 
 
 We see therefore that both positions present a problem 
 which cannot be solved without transcending the individual 
 experience. If there be an existence independent of idea, 
 then the problem is : How can idea, whatever its clearness 
 and distinctness, impart knowledge of existence ? If there 
 be on the other hand no existence which is not also idea, 
 then the problem is : What is it that exists in the intervals 
 of individual perception ? In each case there is a problem 
 of knowledge which theory of knowledge cannot dispel, 
 and in each case it effectively blocks the entrance to the 
 promised land. 
 
 Let us now consider Kant. His philosophy is theory 
 of knowledge from beginning to end. His work is not an 
 inspiration or youthful enthusiasm, it is the mature re- 
 flexion of the professional philosopher. Kant was in his 
 fifty-eighth year when he published the Critique of Pure 
 Reason. His whole life up to that time had been engaged 
 in teaching, and for the previous eleven years he had held 
 the professorial chair of philosophy at Konigsberg. The 
 two Critiques which followed the Critique of Pure Reason 
 are a development and integral part of the whole conception. 
 To Kant, therefore, the theory of knowledge does not 
 present itself as an obstacle in the path to systematic know- 
 ledge, it is not a bridge, constructed ad hoc, to enable the 
 mind to cross the gulf which separates the idea from the 
 existence, on the contrary it is the whole special problem
 
 278 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 of philosophy. It is not even its first and main business, 
 it is its whole business. Philosophy in Kant has ceased 
 completely to be encyclopaedic as it was to Aristotle and 
 later to Francis Bacon. It stands in necessary and peculiar 
 relation to the mathematical and natural sciences, but it 
 is distinguished from them by its special task and the 
 method which that task imposes. Kant has revealed to 
 us how this came about. In the Prolegomena, published 
 two years after the great Critique and intended to elucidate 
 it, he tells us that the scepticism of Hume first roused him 
 from his dogmatic slumber. It forced upon him the ques- 
 tion, Is metaphysics possible ? Is the knowledge of reality 
 within our attainment ? This could only be answered by 
 investigating the conditions of the possibility of knowledge. 
 This research became of necessity the whole philosophy of 
 Kant. It is forced upon him because each of the opposite 
 and mutually contradictory principles which philosophers 
 have followed has failed. The alternative methods, the 
 one he calls dogmatism, the other empiricism, are alike 
 unworkable. One is a vicious circle from which there is 
 no outlet, the other is a scepticism from which there is no 
 advance. Yet neither can be dismissed. Each principle 
 indicates something fundamental and indispensable in 
 knowledge. 
 
 Let us try and rethink the reflexion which led Kant to 
 his great philosophical discovery. First, then, those are 
 right who hold that knowledge depends on clear and distinct 
 ideas and that truth is clearness and distinctness of ideas. 
 It is undeniable that the belief which I accord, and cannot 
 withhold from, the propositions of mathematics rests on 
 self-evidence and on the immediate apprehension of the 
 import of the ideas themselves. But then, on the other 
 hand, knowledge depends on sense experience. The per- 
 ceptions of sense are without and independent of me in 
 the meaning that they are not drawn out of my own nature 
 and they are not at my command nor under my control. 
 Their order and their import are independent of me. The 
 senses often deceive me, but this only means, not that the 
 sense experience is itself deceitful, but that the ideas which
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 279 
 
 I bring to its interpretation are at fault. Clearly, then, 
 knowledge requires and supposes both sense perception 
 and thought, both percepts and ideas. The senses provide 
 the matter, the ideas the form of knowledge. How do 
 they come together and on what principle are they com- 
 bined ? Sense experience is original, does it carry with it 
 the relations which make it knowledge of a world ? Clearly 
 not, sense experience is in its very nature a manifold, a 
 manifold without connexion or any principle of unity in 
 itself. It is impossible by analysing a pure datum of sense 
 to discover in it a necessary connexion with another datum. 
 But ideas are in their very nature relations. Whence then 
 are they derived ? They are not derived from sense per- 
 ceptions for these do not contain them. They must belong 
 to the constitution of the mind, they must come from within 
 and not from without, and this also agrees with experience. 
 But then, if my mind possesses ideas or rational forms, are 
 not these sufficient ? Will they not of themselves give me 
 knowledge, restricted, it may be, but yet absolute, know- 
 ledge which may grow as it advances ? No, for there is a 
 constituent of knowledge which ideas cannot give. Think- 
 ing will not produce sensation. Knowledge then is a 
 synthesis. Its condition is that two separate, completely 
 heterogeneous, factors exist in unity. Neither of these 
 factors can of itself bring about the synthesis. The syn- 
 thesis is original and a priori. It is not brought about by 
 experience but is the condition of experience. This was 
 Kant's great philosophical discovery. 
 
 The a priori synthesis does not enable Kant to give a 
 satisfactory answer to his question, Is metaphysics possible ? 
 Instead of that it leads him to present the problem of 
 philosophy in a new way, but it is still a problem. The 
 ideas or concepts, forms of sense intuition and categories 
 of the understanding, all that the mind brings to con- 
 stitute knowledge, are empty and void in abstraction from 
 sense intuition, and sense intuition is without connexion, 
 interpretation, meaning or significance in its pure existence. 
 " Thoughts without content are void, intuitions without 
 conceptions are blind." Notwithstanding his discovery that
 
 280 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 knowledge depends on a synthesis before experience, it yet 
 seems to him that the factors of the synthesis point to 
 independent realms of reality outside the relation. Know- 
 ledge is of phenomena, but the factors which constitute 
 phenomena are noumena. Noumena are things-in-them- 
 selves, and of things-in-themselves we have no knowledge. 
 So at the one end, behind the sense intuitions, there are real 
 causes which lie beyond the reach of the mind, and at the 
 other end, behind the activities which find expression in 
 forms and categories, there are realities which we do not 
 know as objects but only as regulative ideas. Knowledge 
 is valid. We are in possession of truth. But knowledge is 
 limited, it is confined to phenomena and phenomena do 
 not exhaust reality. Noumena by the very condition of 
 knowledge are unknowable. So then if metaphysics be the 
 science of reality, metaphysics is impossible by reason of a 
 natural disability. 
 
 Kant's philosophy, then, presents the aspect of failure : 
 nevertheless it registers a distinct and notable advance. 
 The a priori synthesis is a new concept. I have tried to 
 show its historical origin in the two antithetical principles 
 which were adopted by rival methods and reconciled in 
 the critical method. Let us now look at its philosophical 
 origin. 
 
 The concept of an a priori synthesis is in what is essential 
 to it the concept of the monad. I do not mean that it is 
 the historical evolution of the monadic concept of substance. 
 I mean that it affirms a theory of knowledge which derives 
 its whole force, and depends for the conviction it brings, 
 on that concept. A synthesis before experience of factors, 
 which in experience are presented as opposite in their 
 nature, is only a rational idea if it is intended to affirm an 
 original unity of nature, that is, a unity pertaining to the 
 reality of the factors related in the synthesis. Try to 
 imagine the factors as originally diverse, real but empty 
 forms, real but blind sense content, and imagine that 
 these are somehow adventitiously associated as a condition 
 of experience, and the whole concept becomes fantastic 
 and incredible in the highest degree. The factors are not
 
 CHAP, xi THE A PRIORI SYNTHESIS 281 
 
 objects, but the objective factor is opposed to the subjective. 
 Subject and object are synthesized in knowledge. It is 
 this which destroys the value of any analogy we might be 
 tempted to draw from nature, as for example, chemical 
 synthesis, where we bring together pre-existing substances 
 with definite sense qualities and obtain a new substance 
 with new and different sense qualities. And more than 
 this we see that it is just in so far as Kant's synthesis is at 
 variance with the concept of the monad, that is, in the 
 affirmation of a reality, the thing-in-itself , which falls outside 
 the synthesis, that there is failure. The monad has limita- 
 tions, but its limitations are not external, they are intrinsic 
 to it. The monad is a complete whole, no reality lies out- 
 side its perception. What distinguishes the monads is not 
 their subjectivity. A subject of experience may present 
 to itself a monad as the object of its experience, but the 
 reality of the monad so presented is not its objectivity to 
 another subject but its own essential subjectivity. There 
 is no reality outside the monad. If the objects of know- 
 ledge, Kant argued, are things-in-themselves and not merely 
 phenomena, if the understanding is itself perceptive, not 
 merely discursive and dependent on a sensuous content 
 supplied from without, then Leibniz is right. It is Kant's 
 conception of the thing-in-itself, now presented as an un- 
 known cause of sensuous affection, now as an unnavigated 
 ocean bounding the island of experience, and yet again 
 as the regulative idea which imparts unity to experience 
 while standing outside it, that brings contradiction into 
 the Kantian theory of knowledge. This contradiction once 
 overcome, the a priori synthesis becomes the positive ex- 
 pression of the original fundamental activity of mind. 
 
 Modern philosophy we have seen, then, begins with the 
 attempt to present a comprehensive view of reality, mind 
 and nature, systematic and coherent, based on a principle 
 which assures its truth and excludes doubt. It meets with 
 an obstacle at the outset in the problem of knowledge 
 itself. For knowledge seems to have two sources. One 
 is sense awareness, the other is intellectual and non- 
 sensuous. These two sources of knowledge give rise to the
 
 282 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 formulation of antithetical principles, distinguished later 
 as dogmatism and empiricism. Each principle ends in 
 failure, for the difficulty in each case is to pass from thought 
 to reality, or to find a criterion which will assure the validity 
 of knowledge. The first principle rejects sense awareness. 
 The senses are deceitful, their purpose or end is utilitarian, 
 not logical, they do not lead us to truth ; only ideas are 
 true, and the degree of their clearness and distinctness is 
 the degree in which doubt and uncertainty are excluded. 
 The principle fails where it is most needed, namely, in 
 physical science. The second principle rejects the belief in 
 an inferred real world as the cause of knowledge. It accepts 
 sense presentations as immediate reality. The objects of 
 knowledge are perceptions, not the cause of perceptions. 
 And this principle fails because sense awareness in its 
 immediacy will not yield the ideas of necessary connexion, 
 continuity and permanence, which physical science requires. 
 The two antithetical principles are then brought together 
 in the principle of criticism. Both are recognized as equally 
 necessary conditions of the possibility of experience. Their 
 opposition is recognized in the concept of an a priori 
 synthesis. The a priori synthesis means that knowledge 
 is sense content subsumed under intellectual forms. The 
 critical principle in taking the two factors as diverse in 
 origin and brought together in the synthesis, the one coming 
 from without as sense content, the other coming from within 
 the mind itself as form of unity, gave rise to the doctrine 
 of the thing-in-itself, and so the principle failed before 
 the problem of the distinction of phenomena and noumena. 
 But this distinction is already overcome in the concept of 
 the monad and its self-centred activity. The monad is 
 thing-in-itself and its activity is perception. No reality 
 falls outside it. The factors, therefore, which form the 
 synthesis in which knowledge consists exist hi their unity 
 in the monad.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 
 
 There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
 Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things 
 were made by him ; and without him was not anything made that was 
 made. ST. JOHN. 
 
 THE concept of the a priori synthesis opened a new era in 
 the historical evolution of philosophy. In proposing a new 
 theory of knowledge Kant was in effect propounding a new 
 theory of reality. The successors of Kant were not slow 
 to realize that the new theory was much more than the 
 Copernican revolution in philosophy, which Kant himself 
 had suggested, much more, that is to say, than a mere 
 change of standpoint which reconciled contradictory ap- 
 pearance and removed the obstacle to knowledge presented 
 by the seeming impossibility of knowledge. In the first 
 place it is clear that, if experience depend on the a priori 
 synthesis as its condition, the essence of real existence 
 is activity, for activity is implied in the idea of synthesis. 
 In the second place it is clear that if knowledge and reality 
 be each the expression of that activity, they cannot be 
 disparate. The notion of a material or stuff, essentially 
 inert, independent of the passive subject of experience, to 
 whom by reason of his mental or intellectual nature it is 
 revealed by means of sense impressions, must give place 
 to the notion of an original activity, the subjective and 
 objective factors of which are internal, and therefore capable 
 of being disclosed to reflective analysis. Philosophy, instead 
 
 283
 
 284 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 of exercising itself with the concepts of substance and cause, 
 can now turn to the task of comprehending the nature and 
 mode of activity. We need not try and follow the steps by 
 which the new concept was reached. It was pre-eminently 
 the work of Hegel. The new concept is the concrete 
 universal ; the new method which that concept called for 
 and revealed is the dialectic. In other words, we are given 
 a new concept of the object of metaphysics and of the pro- 
 cess of logic, and this involves a new view of the nature of 
 logic and of the subject-matter of the science of logic. 
 
 If Hegel had lived after, instead of before, the great 
 scientific generalization of the nineteenth century, we should 
 most certainly have attributed his philosophy to reflexion 
 on the discoveries of physical science. We are only begin- 
 ning to see how completely harmonious the modern physical 
 theories, attained by experimental method, are with the 
 philosophical doctrines speculatively worked out long before 
 experiments had been contrived or even thought of. It 
 would be difficult to name a more perfect illustration of the 
 concrete universal of Hegel than that offered to us in 
 the modern electrical theory of matter. So striking is the 
 analogy that, but for the fact of historical precedence, the 
 logical doctrine of Hegel must have seemed to have been 
 moulded on the physical theory. And yet, strangely 
 enough, throughout the great period of expansion of 
 scientific discovery, Hegel's philosophy suffered from the 
 reproach of being anti-scientific and obscurantist in its aim 
 and method, and on that account fell into contempt. It 
 will be both useful and instructive to institute a comparison. 
 
 First, then, let us ask, what is a concept ? It is a term 
 which is not confined to philosophy. It has a definite 
 meaning in common-sense discourse and in physical science. 
 Concepts are the clear and distinct ideas of the under- 
 standing which the Cartesians opposed to the obscure and 
 confused ideas of immediate sense experience. Equally, con- 
 cepts are the general ideas which the empiricists opposed 
 to the percepts, percepts being particular and sensible. 
 Ordinarily we think of concepts, not as opposed to percepts, 
 but as having the function of supplying their place when
 
 CHAP, xii THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 285 
 
 the conditions of experience make perception impossible. 
 In physical science concepts stand for actual reality itself 
 as distinguished from the particular aspect of it at any 
 moment or at any place. Percepts may be the appearance 
 of reality, concepts cannot be, for concepts do not appear, 
 they always purport to be the exact mental equivalent of 
 the reality which does appear. Take, for example, the 
 concept of wireless telegraphy and consider how in ordinary 
 discourse the concept is indistinguishable from the exist- 
 ence. I cannot have the concept and at the same time 
 think the reality different from the concept. Saying that 
 I have the concept is the same as saying that I know the 
 reality. I may, of course, have some fanciful image of the 
 way in which telegraphic communication is effected, but 
 this is not to have the concept of wireless telegraphy. 
 When I was a child I had the concept of God in heaven 
 listening to the prayers addressed to him by me on earth. 
 That concept was indissolubly bound up with reality. 
 When the concept dissolved the reality dissolved. A new 
 concept brought with it a new reality. Concepts depend 
 on sense-imagery, but they are not the sense-imagery in 
 distinction from the reality, rather are they the reality in 
 distinction from the sense-imagery. Concepts, then, are 
 hi one of the ordinary meanings of the term the opposite 
 of percepts. They are a kind of mental reconstruction of 
 sense-imagery enabling the mind to complete what is 
 incomplete in its immediate apprehension. A mind able 
 to apprehend all reality in a single intuition would have 
 no need of concepts. 
 
 There is another ordinary and familiar meaning of con- 
 cepts. Concepts are universals as distinct from particulars. 
 Whatever is real seems to us in the first instance to be parti- 
 cular. Everything real is thought of as entering experience 
 in its particularity ; it is this or that. Yet the reality of 
 any particular thing consists in its relations to other things, 
 and apart from these relations there is no content of know- 
 ledge, and if there is no content there is no knowledge. 
 Without relations particulars would be momentary experi- 
 ence. They would have thisness without whatness. The
 
 286 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 whatness or content of the things which we experience as 
 particulars is their universality. Universals are concepts. 
 It is easy to see therefore that every attempt of the mind 
 to discover the reality implied in our experience supposes 
 the use of concepts, and these concepts are not merely 
 substitutes for percepts where perception is impossible, they 
 are totally different in kind from percepts. It is one and 
 the same reality that we know as particular and as universal, 
 but particulars are not universals nor are universals parti- 
 culars. The men and women I know are particular men 
 and women, but their reality as men and women is their 
 human nature. Human nature, mankind, humanity, are 
 universals, concepts. 
 
 In our everyday experience, then, we distinguish two 
 kinds of knowledge the knowledge which comes from sense 
 experience and the knowledge which comes from thinking 
 and understanding. The first kind seems wholly composed 
 of percepts and its objects are particular sensible things. 
 The second kind is composed of concepts and its objects 
 are things in general or universals, that is to say, not parti- 
 cular things themselves but the nature of things. It is 
 because we have in ordinary life this other form of know- 
 ledge, the concept, that our experience is not the patchwork 
 of sensations, colour blobs and splashes, noises, touches, 
 warmth, colours, pains, into which experience seems on 
 analysis to resolve itself. 
 
 When we go behind the knowledge which serves us in 
 our ordinary experience and consider the systematic know- 
 ledge which we distinguish as science, the contrast is even 
 more striking. All the objects in science are concepts, and 
 these concepts are not only directly related by us to our 
 percepts, to the particular things which we actually ex- 
 perience, but also the mind gives these concepts a special 
 perceptual form which is not actual but imaginative. Thus 
 the sun which is an object of knowledge in the science of 
 astronomy is perceived as a disk in the sky illuminating 
 our world and warming our earth. Yet the sensations of 
 light and heat are no part whatever of the scientific object 
 as we conceive it, and, moreover, the concepts of light
 
 CHAP, in THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 287 
 
 and heat as scientific reality have nothing in common with 
 the sensations we feel. The kinetic theory of gas, which 
 expresses in a scientific concept the reality we sense as heat, 
 is not made comprehensible by comparing, for example, our 
 feelings of warmth in the sun and of coolness in the shade. 
 And yet that kinetic theory itself requires perceptual form 
 in order that it may be expressed at all, but it is a per- 
 ceptual form which can only be imagined actual, it can 
 never be actual. 
 
 This fact that physical science depends on concepts 
 was, as we saw in the last chapter, one of the guiding 
 principles in the philosophy of Kant. One of the 
 questions he set himself to answer was, how is physical 
 science possible ? Kant thought of concepts as being 
 few in number, purely abstract, formal, not material, 
 factors in the constitution of knowledge, their essential 
 function being to unify experience. The concepts are the 
 principles of unity, the laws of nature, and guided by the 
 formal or Aristotelian logic we are able to deduce the 
 complete list of them. This is the famous transcendental 
 deduction of all the pure forms of experience or categories 
 of the understanding. Kant represented these concepts as 
 preformed receptacles which the mind itself brought to 
 experience. The activity of the mind in experience con- 
 sisted hi imposing on the multitudinous impressions of sense 
 pre-existing forms, and to be able to do this was the con- 
 dition of knowledge. The mind has a formative power 
 over a matter of which it is the passive recipient. 
 
 The concept, therefore, as Kant presented it, is universal, 
 not particular, it is a necessary constituent of experience, 
 and its condition, but it is abstract. It is pure form in- 
 different to content. The mind possesses it as the condition 
 and as the form of its experience. But mind is thing-in- 
 itself and therefore unknowable, and the content of experi- 
 ence, the sense manifold, also requires for its support the 
 existence of things-in-themselves which are unknowable. 
 The very conditions of experience make knowledge of 
 reality unattainable. The dualism of form and matter give 
 rise to the distinction between phenomena and noumena.
 
 288 A THEORY OF MONADS PART in 
 
 Yet Kant's theory marks a great advance. In making 
 the contradiction in the concept explicit, he pointed the 
 direction in which the solution of the problem lay. The 
 a priori synthesis implies an original activity in experience. 
 Kant himself demonstrated this in the instance of the 
 mathematical concepts. More than this, the priority of 
 the synthesis implies that the duality of the concurrent 
 terms has its origin in the act of knowing, and that the 
 act of knowing is not the effect or issue or result of an 
 original duality. It led to Hegel's great discovery. 
 
 I will state this first of all as briefly and categorically as I 
 can. In doing so it will be easier if I separate the logical 
 and the metaphysical theory although they are intimately 
 connected. The first is the dialectic, the second is the 
 concrete universal. The metaphysical concept follows from 
 the nature of logic. The object of thought is not pre- 
 supposed in thinking, it is posited in and by the act of 
 thinking. The concept is activity of thought. It is not 
 abstract, it is not a mere form superimposed by a con- 
 templative mind on an alien matter, it is the concrete, 
 universal, necessary, reality which thinking brings to exist- 
 ence. The logic is the thinking, the reality is the thought 
 which thinking creates. Literally, therefore, and without 
 any allegorical meaning, we may say that there is nothing 
 either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. 
 
 Logic now acquires new meaning. It is not a syllogistic 
 process, but dialectic. It is not a set of rules for the formal 
 test of correct reasoning. It is the science of the actual 
 process of the mind in the development or unfolding of its 
 active life. Once the concept of mind as essential activity 
 is grasped, and nothing short of this is implied in the a 
 priori synthesis, and the whole scope and meaning of philo- 
 sophy is transformed. It was no arbitrary speculation, no 
 superficial or fanciful conceit which produced the new logic 
 of philosophy, it was profound insight into the nature of 
 reality. A living activity is self -objectifying. The grades 
 or stages of its evolution are the moments of its life. The 
 moments of its life are not external divisions of an indifferent 
 content, they are distinct attainments with a character
 
 CHAP, xii THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 289 
 
 they derive from the continuous process of the activity. 
 The logic of philosophy is the science of self -objectifying 
 mind. 
 
 The dialectic is the scheme of this conscious activity as 
 it reveals itself to philosophical analysis. Thinking is in 
 the first instance affirmation. It predicates being. Every 
 affirmation is at the same time negation. It predicates 
 being by setting over against itself non-being. The affirma- 
 tion can only gain content pan passu with its negation. 
 Hence the activity of thought is an opposition within 
 thought and a continual coming and going between what 
 is affirmed and what is denied. Opposition is the very 
 essence of activity. Instead of nullifying the activity, it is 
 its spur and incentive. It is on the holding together of 
 opposite factors, factors which in pure abstraction are 
 identical and simply nullify each other, that the synthesis 
 of reality depends. It consists in an equilibrium continually 
 disturbed and automatically restored. In affirming we also 
 deny, but the negation which the affirmation posits does 
 not remain simply nothing, purely abstract non-being, its 
 very positing endows it with content, and the negation 
 becomes an opposite or contradictory reality which sets up 
 an equal claim to content against the affirmation. I cannot 
 affirm " I am " without in the very thought distinguishing 
 a not-me from the me, and this not-me in the very affirma- 
 tion of the me asserts itself as existing. 
 
 The well-known illustration of this is Hegel's first 
 category. It may be truly described as the introduction 
 to metaphysical intuition. Take our existence, the exist- 
 ence we know in experience without any mediated know- 
 ledge, and reflect on what it is. In its simplest expression 
 it is becoming. We never are, we are always becoming. 
 Apart from the particular feeling, knowing, or desiring, 
 which gives tone or content to our passing mood, and forms 
 our character, there is the continual flowing, the ceaseless 
 change which makes each moment of experience not a re- 
 petition but new existence. Reflect, then, on this becoming. 
 What is it ? It is not a simple experience. On the contrary, 
 it seems on analysis to dissolve only too easily into factors. 
 
 u
 
 290 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 It is a relation, but a relation of terms internal to it. It is 
 a synthesis, but of what ? Here is the amazing discovery. 
 The factors of becoming are being and non-being, is and 
 is not, existence and nought. But do not these factors take 
 us then beneath the synthesis ? Do they not, in fact, give 
 us a more fundamental reality than the becoming which 
 we took to be the simplest expression of our existence ? 
 No ; for when we abstract these factors from their relation 
 of opposition in the synthesis they are meaningless. What 
 in itself is pure abstract being ? It is nothing, nothing 
 which is identical with being and not merely a term for 
 our ignorance. And what is non-being ? It is not even 
 negation until we provide it with the content which its 
 opposition to being offers. Being and nothing are not, then, 
 self-subsisting realities, they are factors in the only thing 
 that is real, becoming. The simplest reality we can bring 
 before our mind, then, is a synthesis. The reality of this 
 synthesis does not lie in the content or substance of its 
 terms, but in the activity, the actual passing to and fro 
 from thesis to antithesis, from antithesis to thesis, holding 
 the factors together and keeping them apart. 
 
 This philosophical principle conforms exactly with the 
 modern scientific concept of the basis of physical reality. 
 The fundamental concept of science is the field of force. 
 It is more fundamental than the concepts of matter and 
 energy, for it is the condition of them. A field of force is 
 essentially the concept of ^pposites_kept apart andjheld 
 together in stable equilibrium. Suppress the activity in 
 this opposition and the factors are not residual, they are 
 nullified and disappear. In the older concept matter was 
 primarily adverse occupancy of space. This seemed to 
 depend on two essential attributes, mass and impenetra- 
 bility. Both have lost their absolute meaning in modern 
 theory. Given a moving particle, however small, and a 
 range of circumscribed movements, however large, and 
 relatively to some possible system, there is mass and im- 
 penetrability. But the particle, have we not in this 
 an ultimate factor which will provide us with a material 
 basis of our universe ? It is not so ; in physical science
 
 CHAP, xii THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 291 
 
 the particle is introduced ad hoc. It is clear that whatever 
 holds true of the mass and impenetrability which the 
 particle by its motion generates, is equally true of the mass 
 and impenetrability the particle itself possesses. So not 
 the particle but the electric charge is the unit of physical 
 science, and what is the electric charge but a synthesis of 
 opposites, a polarization of attractive and repellent forces ? 
 In physics then, as in metaphysics, the ultimate concept 
 of reality is activity. Suppress the activity and there is no 
 residuum, there is nought. 
 
 The concrete universal is the view of the nature of 
 reality, or, what is the same thing, the concept of the 
 reality of nature, which follows from the discovery of the 
 dialectic. That is to say, the dialectic reveals to us the 
 constitution of the world by giving us the principle from 
 which we are able to deduce the character of thinghood. 
 The dialectic, the process or act of thinking, is itself dia- 
 lectical, for thinking posits and does not presuppose thought. 
 Thought is the negation of thinking. Thought is the fact 
 opposed to thinking which is act. 
 
 Universality and concreteness are the characters which 
 we attribute to reality whatever be our theory of the nature 
 of the material universe. The objects we recognize are 
 universal objects : they exist for every intelligent observer ; 
 they are for each absolutely what they are for any one. 
 Were they not, did we mean no more by the thing thought 
 than the actual sense-awareness of the particular thinker, 
 there would be no recognition of objects. Whether we 
 hold the view of unsophisticated common sense that the 
 real world is unaffected in its existence by any activity 
 we may put forth in knowing it, or whether we hold the 
 view which in some form has been that of philosophers in 
 all ages that unity of existence of knower and known is 
 posited in the very affirmation of knowledge, in either case 
 the objects recognized in knowledge are universal objects, 
 identical for all knowers. 
 
 The objects we recognize are also concrete. They have 
 a stubborn nature of their own which asserts itself against 
 us and refuses to yield to any creative or annihilative power
 
 292 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 our mind may claim to possess. Objects are not like the 
 spirits which we call from the vasty deep and dismiss as 
 soon as our business with them is over. The notion is still 
 widely held, notwithstanding a century of commentators 
 on Hegel, that the Hegelian philosophy means the affirma- 
 tion of a power in thinking to produce the real, or at least 
 that the reality of any object is simply a deduction from 
 the thinking it. There is no more unpardonable mis- 
 understanding than this absurdity. To some extent Hegel 
 is himself, no doubt, to blame for it, for he always treated 
 the misunderstanding with a certain contempt, and dis- 
 dained explanation on the common-sense level. He gave the 
 impression of revelling in paradox. It is a clear necessity 
 of conscious existence as we experience it, that in whatever 
 way our world has been generated and whatever be the 
 nature of the opposition of world and mind, this opposi- 
 tion exists. Objects are alien, independent of and indifferent 
 to the mind which knows them. This independence of the 
 object is a problem of philosophy which is not solved either 
 by assuming it in the manner of common sense or by denying 
 it in the manner of Christian Science. 
 
 In the case of a vast number of the objects their ultimate 
 dependence on a spiritual principle is indisputable. There 
 are objects, that is to say, recognized as possessing full 
 objectivity which in being known are posited as existing, 
 and whose reality is identical with knowledge. Objects 
 which concern social and political relations are of this 
 kind. No one would deny, for example, objectivity, in the 
 full meaning of the word, to such things as a lecture, 
 a ball, a public meeting, a boat-race, the Derby, a cricket 
 match. These denote each a class of objects, but each 
 object of the class is particular and individual and in- 
 dependent of the knower. In regard to all such objects we 
 should, if challenged, admit that we suppose a material basis 
 of their reality, however much we may neglect the materiality 
 in discourse, but as objects they owe nothing whatever of 
 their real character, nothing of their essential objectivity, 
 to this basis, and we should be hard put to it to define the 
 relation of the material to the object. In a general way,
 
 CHAP, xii THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 293 
 
 indeed, we assume that were there no material substance 
 there would be no world, but in the case of these objects 
 it is clear that their substance is wholly mental. They 
 could have no existence in a world without mind. Now 
 in regard to such objects the Hegelian dialectic is easy 
 to demonstrate, and Hegel's works are simply crammed 
 with such demonstrations. Let us take a very obvious 
 example, a game. A game of golf or cricket, or a game of 
 chess, or even a game of patience, is a reality as crisply 
 objectified as any simple physico-chemical object. What 
 then is a game ? In its primary intention a game is a 
 diversion, a relaxation, and a game is therefore hi the first 
 instance the purely negative need of relaxation in some 
 sustained effort. But relaxation cannot be satisfied with 
 pure idleness, thought therefore gives shape and form 
 to an opposite task. The essence of the opposition is the 
 diversion from and relaxation of the tension of some serious 
 business. But in the very passage into this negative 
 position we make a new affirmation, and we find in the 
 very process itself a new positive task shaping itself and 
 asserting itself as equally serious. As the process develops, 
 the new task changes from diversion into serious business, 
 till in the end the game is no longer play and ceases to be 
 diverting. We see this process on the large scale in the 
 curious development of games in the public school and 
 university curriculum, and in the perfect antithesis of the 
 original intention in the rise of the professional player. 
 The scheme of this obj edification is manifest. It is only 
 in its opposition to some serious intellectual task that the 
 game is a game, and it is only so far as the seriousness to 
 which it was opposed passes over into it and becomes 
 identical with it that it acquires the shape and form which 
 objectivity demands, and finally it is only in so far as the 
 opposition is maintained in constant equilibrium of attrac- 
 tion and repulsion that the essential concreteness of object- 
 ivity is secured. 
 
 Here, however, we come to a crucial point. Let us 
 suppose it admitted that thinking is objectified into thought 
 by this dialectical process, yet it will be said thinking is
 
 294 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 throughout passive towards the material of the object and 
 only active in shaping the material. Suppose our game 
 to be golf, we may admit that there would be no golf were 
 there no mind and no thinking, but equally there could be 
 no golf without balls, clubs and a certain configuration of 
 the golf ground. Given any kind of stuff and the mind 
 has the wherewithal upon which to set to work, but the 
 one thing mind cannot do is to produce, or deduce out of its 
 own activity, the matter on which that activity is exercised. 
 It is on this obvious fact that naturalism bases its argument, 
 and it is this fact rather than any argument that commends 
 naturalism to common sense and scientific understanding. 
 The dialectic shows us that this antithesis between matter 
 and form is unreal. In this was the great advance which 
 Hegel made on the position of Kant, for it was the perception 
 of the inseparability of form and matter which led to the 
 rejection of formal logic and the discovery of real logic, the 
 logic of philosophy. 
 
 Let us return to the example of the game of golf. The 
 matter of the game is given, the form is imposed, but the 
 given matter is not formlessness. It is not matter in its 
 own right, but only hi virtue of the form already imposed 
 on it. As material of the object, the game of golf, it is 
 taken ad hoc, but even so its materiality is not absolute, 
 pure and in its own right. That this is so is evident when 
 we start to analyse this matter. We can never succeed in 
 divesting it of form so as to be left with pure stuff formless 
 and decomposable no further. To analyse it is simply to 
 follow its history backwards or forwards. At every stage 
 what there is, is not something separable into matter and 
 form, but always a distinction between what Spinoza, in 
 one of his splendid intuitions, described as natura naturans 
 and natura naturata. 
 
 In considering the objectivity of nature, this is the clue 
 which philosophy offers us. It may not be easy, in the 
 case of any object whatever, at once to show convincingly 
 the thesis and antithesis and the dialectic movement and 
 its reconciling synthesis in which the concreteness of the 
 object lies, but at least the vulgar notion that this concrete-
 
 CHAP, xii THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 295 
 
 ness consists in a materiality which is self-subsistent and 
 independent of form is exposed in all its absurdity. 
 
 Let me now try by comparing the materialist and idealist 
 concepts of the world to show the impelling force of the 
 philosophical principle in its striving for intellectual satis- 
 faction. When I set aside every emotional aspect of the 
 problem, religious or mystical, and confine myself to the 
 purely intellectual aspect, viewing nature as the scientific 
 inquirer views it, the idealist principle seems to me to 
 succeed where the materialist principle fails. 
 
 The whole of human life, and the whole phenomenon of 
 life out of which the human mode of existence is evolved, 
 depends on conditions which we conceive as hi themselves 
 totally indifferent to the life which they condition. The 
 immediate aspect of these conditions is that of states of 
 masses of matter in motion, an aspect which on analysis 
 tends to become the extensive occupation of a space or 
 void, by a discrete material undergoing mechanical change 
 consequent upon successive alterations of position in time. 
 Let us raise no difficulties in regard to the concepts of space, 
 time, matter and movement, but accept them at least as de- 
 scriptive of the reality which is not li ving but the condition 
 of there being life. Life is then an almost insignificant 
 phenomenon, so disproportionate is it to the immensity and 
 infinity of the non-living conditions of it. It is not 
 attributable to chance because chance has no place in 
 scientific thought, but the necessity which underlies the 
 emergence of life is purely mechanical, and though from 
 the human standpoint life is the all-absorbing centre of 
 interest, everything seems to point to its almost negli- 
 gible significance from the standpoint of the world-view. 
 Life depends in the last resort on the instability of the 
 compounds of a certain particular chemical element, carbon, 
 and this activity is dependent on physical conditions which 
 can only have arisen at what is practically a momentary 
 stage in the history of the evolution of a planet, an 
 infinitesimal stage when considered in relation to the 
 whole history of the planet. On this planet life is possible 
 only on one particular plane of its spherical mass, and the
 
 296 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 -duration of the conditions which have determined this 
 possibility, however agelong it appears to our human 
 interest, is infinitesimal in relation to the vast duration 
 which must have preceded and must succeed it. When we 
 look beyond our earth and consider in the boundless uni- 
 verse the infinite possibilities of other spheres, then again 
 what impresses us is the vast expanse, and the myriad 
 masses of matter within it, in none of which is it possible 
 that anything at all resembling life as we experience it 
 can exist. In our solar system there are only two planets 
 besides our own which suggest to us the remote possibility 
 that something in some way resembling the conditions of 
 life may exist in them or that the history of this planet 
 may have analogies in the history of planets in other 
 systems. 
 
 Materialism recognizes without attempting to conceal 
 the problem of the nature of life and consciousness, and 
 it does not minimize the difficulties of conceiving an origin 
 of life from non-living matter. We have no experience 
 of any chemical combinations out of which vital pheno- 
 mena are induced or arise spontaneously. We are forced 
 to the conclusion that, at least so far as any known 
 form of living organism is concerned, life and conscious- 
 ness has had a single origin at one definite historical 
 period. There is, so to speak, blood-relationship between 
 every species or genus of living thing, animal, vegetable, 
 microbial. There is absolute continuity of generation 
 between every living individual and the primal individual 
 form in which life appeared. This makes the problem of 
 life a very difficult one in science. But allowing for this 
 difficulty, the materialist view, resting on the fact that life 
 and consciousness depend on non-vital physical conditions, 
 and insisting on the prior independent existence of those 
 conditions, is, that life has arisen out of those conditions 
 though the mode and nature of its origin may be undiscover- 
 able, and that the conditions are destined to continue their 
 history though life and consciousness cease to exist. 
 
 Modern idealism is not an attempt to disparage the 
 strength or cogency of the concept of nature as an inde-
 
 CHAP, xii THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 297 
 
 pendent and alien reality, for this aspect of nature is as 
 essential to idealism as it is to materialism, though not un- 
 critically accepted by it as fact. It is a popular and general 
 misconception of idealism that it reduces nature to mind 
 and deduces existence from thought. It is the persistent 
 misconception of idealism which makes the difficulty of pre- 
 senting it as a rational theory. I will try, therefore, not 
 merely to state the doctrine but to illustrate it with scientific 
 examples. Science teaches us that our world is moving in 
 relation to the heavenly bodies with a prodigious velocity 
 when compared with any movements of translation which 
 we can be conscious of in our experience. Science also 
 teaches us that the elements which condition our existence, 
 the air we breathe, the earth we walk upon, are exercis- 
 ing upon us a continual pressure or weight, of which we 
 are unconscious but which is enormous as compared with 
 the weights we measure in scales. Not only are we absolutely 
 unconscious of this movement and weight, but it is part of 
 our nature and a condition of our existence that we should 
 be unable to be conscious of it. We have only to imagine 
 an individual organized like ourselves, but consciously 
 experiencing these movements and weights as actual sensa- 
 tions, to see that such a one would be totally unfitted even 
 for a single instant to exert or maintain the human form 
 of activity. It is clearly then an a priori condition of 
 human life and consciousness that the individual should 
 suppose the earth at rest, the ground beneath him firm, 
 the sky above him open and free. In precisely the same 
 way idealism shows that it is an indispensable and absolute 
 condition of living and conscious activity that things thought 
 of should present themselves as independent of, prior in 
 existence to, and alien in reality from, thinking. It is the 
 condition of thinking that object thought should present 
 itself and confront the mind as pre-existing cause, not 
 merely that it should appear to the mind as such but that 
 it should exist for the mind as such. This is the meaning 
 of the dialectic, and to fail to see it is to miss the true 
 discovery which it claims to have made. The ego in affirm- 
 ing itself posits the non-ego, not a sham or dummy
 
 298 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 appearance, not a shadow of itself. The non-ego is the 
 negation of the ego, but there is no falsity in the negation. 
 If there be no non-ego, no non-ego in its own right, then 
 also there is no ego. In the logic of thought, the logic 
 which shows us the real and not the merely formal movement 
 of thought, the moment of nature is when nature is affirmed 
 with its own positive content. Suppose it possible that 
 nature could appear as immediately identical with the 
 consciousness of it or with thinking about it, in the manner 
 which the solipsist argument declares to be reality, then so 
 far from affording an illustration of the Hegelian dialectic 
 it would destroy it. There would be no dialectic, for it 
 would be lost in a single self-identity. Nature is the im- 
 mediate negation of the ego, and the ego cannot posit or 
 affirm itself without in the same act positing and affirming 
 the negation. The negation is not pure nought, it is posited, 
 and therefore opposition. The movement of thought is 
 the passing over into this opposition and the discovery 
 that in this difference there is identity. The concrete 
 reality of life and mind is then seen to consist not in the 
 passing to and fro from affirmation to negation, from 
 negation to affirmation, from thesis to antithesis, from anti- 
 thesis to thesis, but in the synthesis of a pure act which 
 holds together at the same time that it holds apart, the 
 distinct factors of reality. This, as I apprehend it and 
 accept it, is the philosophical doctrine of the concrete 
 universal. 
 
 The theory of idealism is not, then, that a subject, 
 supposed already existing, by thinking produces thought, 
 as a spider spins a web from its own tissues, and then 
 proceeds to endow its thoughts with objective reality. 
 The theory is that reality is activity, and that activity 
 manifests itself in a primary and necessary antithesis, 
 the antithesis thinking- thought, subject-object, act-deed. 
 The conditions of our finite individuality and the nature 
 of our activity require that our outlook on reality shall 
 be in the moment when the antithesis is complete, when 
 mind and nature are absolute in their opposition. The 
 activity of thought, the necessity of a continual attention
 
 CHAP, xn THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 299 
 
 to life, the need to act unceasingly from moment to moment, 
 binds the mind to the observation of nature, directs it out- 
 ward, prevents it looking back or within on its own activity. 
 Nature appears, therefore, as a hostile opposing force con- 
 fronting life and mind and indifferent to them. The philo- 
 sophical theory of idealism is a discovery and a constructive 
 theory based on discovery. The discovery is that in nature 
 mind finds itself ; the constructive theory is that the original 
 synthesis is mind in its undifferentiated unity as activity, 
 and that the process of this activity opposes a new negation 
 to every position it attains. 
 
 The principle of idealism is, therefore, that the complete 
 world-view never does and never can appear immediately 
 and simply reveal its reality to the discerning mind of 
 the finite individual, just because his finitude means that 
 he is actively participating in the world process he seeks 
 to understand. Idealism declares that it is possible to 
 construct the world-view by attending to and interpreting 
 the activity itself. 
 
 To sum up : the concrete universal is the formulation in 
 logical terms of the philosophical doctrine of the nature of 
 the reality of the world. It describes the factors and their 
 relation which constitute for knowing the objectivity of 
 nature, and for being the possibility of knowledge. It is 
 not an arbitrary or ingenious hazarded hypothesis, it follows 
 from the perception of the mode of the activity of mind. 
 The mind in the first moment of its conscious activity 
 finds an independent alien reality confronting it, a reality 
 which it possesses the power of contemplating and finally 
 of understanding. In knowing nature mind finds itself, 
 and the logical process is seen to be the discerning of identity 
 in difference. This is held to imply an original synthesis, 
 logically prior to experience and the condition of its possi- 
 bility. The concrete universal is the concept of the mode 
 of working of that synthesis. 
 
 Concreteness is the character of thinghood. The con- 
 crete universal means that reality in the full meaning of 
 the word is of the nature of the concept. In the concept, 
 opposite antithetical factors are held together in and by
 
 300 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 the continuous synthetic act of thought. The factors in 
 themselves are purely abstract ; only their synthesis in the 
 concept is concrete. 
 
 Universality means that the whole is present in every 
 part. The universality of a finite individual human being, 
 for example, is not the number of his abstract, external, 
 resemblances to other individuals, by means of which the 
 group man is classified. It is the humanity or the complete 
 human nature which exists in every man. There is no core 
 round which qualities cluster or to which properties are 
 adherent. 
 
 There are two alternatives to the theory of the concept 
 as concrete universal. One is materialism, the affirmation of 
 infinite and absolute space, time, and stuff, as the primordial 
 conditions of all diversity and variability, including mind. 
 This primordial reality may be conceived as in itself inert, 
 matter ; or, as essentially active, energy or force. The 
 other is solipsism, the denial to the individual mind of the 
 possibility of transcending its own state of consciousness. 
 Both are blind alleys. It is only in the concept of the 
 monad that the concrete universal is both realized and 
 individualized.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 
 
 Before the beginning of years 
 
 There came to the making of man 
 Time, with a gift of tears ; 
 
 Grief, with a glass that ran ; 
 Pleasure, with pain for leaven ; 
 
 Summer, with flowers that fell ; 
 Remembrance, fallen from heaven, 
 
 And madness risen from hell ; 
 Strength without hands to smite ; 
 
 Love that endures for a breath ; 
 Night, the shadow of light, 
 
 And life, the shadow of death. 
 
 SWINBURNE. 
 
 IF we accept the principle of the Hegelian dialectic, then, 
 apart altogether from any particular world-view or from 
 any arbitrarily developed system, we are able to conceive, 
 and to see why we are able to conceive, reality as activity. 
 We see that matter is in the first moment of its presentation 
 to consciousness, whatever positive character it may after- 
 wards acquire, essentially negative. We cannot set out 
 from pure negation. Negation in itself affords no foothold, 
 no starting ground from which any process, logical or 
 alogical, can push off. We may indeed conceive the creation 
 of the world from nothing, meaning by nothing non-pre- 
 existing matter and form, if we posit a creator within whom 
 the being and the non-being are synthesized. It is a simple 
 impossibility of thought to conceive God as arising from 
 nothing, or rather to conceive non-being as a distinct and 
 unconditioned moment of God. This seems to me the great 
 truth expressed in the ontological argument. We must 
 
 301
 
 302 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 start with affirmation if advance through negation is to be 
 possible ; we cannot start from pure nought. 
 
 It is evident, however, that in this we are confronted 
 with a profound problem. We cannot eliminate negation 
 from thought at any moment of the process of thinking, 
 and yet negation can be neither the starting-point nor the 
 resting-place. Thus we have an antinomy in the very con- 
 cept of ultimate reality. Reality affirms itself and cannot 
 deny itself ; yet also reality can only affirm itself in so far 
 as it negates itself by affirming its opposite. Opposition is 
 in the very nature of the concept, and thought cannot 
 transcend the concept. 
 
 There is no nothing and creation is fact. Reality is not 
 inert stuff, it is a becoming, the continuous upspringing of 
 what is new, what is unforeseen and unforeseeable. This 
 is the concept of life as creative evolution. Its formula- 
 tion marks a new and great advance in philosophy. We 
 owe it to our contemporary philosopher, Bergson. It brings 
 intelligible unity into the concept of God and the world. 
 
 The biological problem, the nature and origin of life, 
 is familiar to us in the progressive research of the last 
 half-century. It presents the problem of philosophy in 
 the most concrete form, and at the same time it puts us in 
 possession of the key to its solution. Life in its strictly 
 biological meaning is a twofold problem, a problem of 
 nature and a problem of genesis. Every living creature 
 has a material basis of its existence, and this material 
 basis is a simple structural design comparatively easy to 
 comprehend as compared with the extraordinary complexity 
 of function which it develops. Any particular individual 
 organism may be traced from its condition in which it 
 appears almost structureless, apparently homogeneous, and 
 exceedingly minute, a speck of stuff we name protoplasm. 
 We can follow the stages of its growing complexity and 
 mark what seem to be absolute moments in the emergence 
 of its various functional activities. There seems a limit 
 of absolute simplicity in its origin, an integration of in- 
 finitely complex and diversified functions in its maturity, 
 and when its functions end in the state we call death,
 
 CHAP, xra CREATIVE EVOLUTION 303 
 
 the structure disintegrates but the stuff remains. When, 
 further, we study the material basis itself, it seems wholly 
 unaffected by the temporary function or functions it has 
 subserved. This is one aspect of the biological problem. 
 There is another. 
 
 Every living individual form is the product of an evolu- 
 tion which appears indifferent to the material basis of the 
 organism and only to affect its form and function. To this 
 form and function we can assign no material origin. The 
 evolution which has determined the mode of any individual 
 activity is definite, continuous. The moments we may find 
 it convenient to mark off in it as stages in its history are 
 external and arbitrary. We can assign no moment as that 
 of its birth or death, nor can we understand how it has 
 arisen. We can neither induce the living out of the inert 
 nor conceive the conditions under which at any specified 
 moment the evolution of life had an absolute beginning. 
 We speak indeed of evolution as a great expansion of life, 
 quantitative and qualitative, from simple beginnings. 
 " From the amoeba to man " is our expression of this fact. 
 But the slightest philosophical reflexion convinces us that 
 the concept of an amoeba with the potentiality of a man 
 cannot be the concept of the amoeba as an infinitesimal 
 speck of undifferentiated jelly endowed with active inte- 
 grative form. 
 
 Moreover, when we consider life in either of these aspects, 
 in its individual form or in its evolution, our thinking 
 requires the creation of special concepts for its compre- 
 hension, the concepts of physics and chemistry being 
 completely irrelevant. The fact that they enter into living 
 organisms does not affect in any way the atoms with their 
 positive nuclei and planetary electrons or even the molecules 
 with their stable combinations. It is true indeed that the 
 material basis of life seems to be conditioned by the in- 
 stability of carbon compounds, but neither carbon nor any 
 of its compounds is changed in its nature by life, it is only 
 affected in its disposition. The attempt has indeed been 
 made by those who are fascinated with the idea of mechan- 
 istic interpretation to dissect and separate out individual
 
 304 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 characters and transmitted tendencies, to trace their origin 
 in the germ, and to assign to each a distinct and definite 
 material possessor. The vital elements have been named 
 " ids," and it has been sought to appropriate each "id " to 
 an individual material constituent of the germ. It was 
 discovered, however, that even if it were sufficient to assign 
 to each " id " only a single atom there would not be enough 
 atoms to go round. It is in quite another direction that 
 the solution of the problem of life is to be sought. 
 
 With regard to the mechanistic hypothesis of the con- 
 tinuity of inert and living matter, we may, so far as our 
 present standpoint is concerned, content ourselves with 
 the plain fact, which no one disputes, that the sciences 
 of matter, physics and chemistry, of themselves offer 
 no interpretation of life, and their problems are not 
 in any aspect of them relevant to the problems of the 
 sciences of biology and psychology. There is no direct 
 passage from the mathematical and physical sciences to 
 the biological. 
 
 Life is a mode of behaviour sui generis. A living thing 
 behaves in a different mode, in every minutest particular, 
 and on a different principle from any mechanical combination 
 of elements brought together by external agency. There is 
 not one single mode of li ving activity, there are many ; but 
 whatever classification we adopt all are variations of a unique 
 principle. This principle is best described by the term con- 
 sciousness, though consciousness in any actual living form 
 may rarely attain the special state of self-consciousness 
 which is the archetype. Life therefore presents a profound 
 metaphysical problem, for consciousness is an immaterial 
 force. Now we are unable by our very mental constitution 
 to represent or imagine any activity without a material 
 substratum. Activity conceived as in itself, as unsupported, 
 in the air, as it were, detached from anything palpable 
 to sense or expressible in imagery, is a pure abstraction 
 lacking the essential quality of reality. We speak indeed 
 of spiritual forces, of the potency of ideas, but we always 
 tacitly imply the material manifestations hi which they 
 find expression. " Strength without hands to smite " may
 
 CHAP, xin CREATIVE EVOLUTION 305 
 
 pass as a beautiful poetical fancy, it may even serve an 
 abstract logical analysis of ideas, but if we try to translate 
 it into concrete experience it lacks the embodiment which 
 even pure imagination requires for its expression. And yet 
 this poetical image expresses literally the life -force or 
 mind-energy which we know in daily experience and study 
 in the biological and psychological sciences. It was the 
 perception that the substance of the mind is not material 
 like the substance of the body which led Descartes to dis- 
 tinguish two substances, one whose essential attribute was 
 thinking, another whose essential attribute was extension. 
 
 A metaphysical problem is presented then in the 
 very fact of life, and we may state it briefly and in its 
 broad outline as follows : Life can only be interpreted by 
 positing a substance which is not material and a cause 
 which is not mechanical. The alternatives therefore are 
 
 (1) that there are two substances, and two causal principles, 
 mutually exclusive in their essential attributes and in their 
 modes, equally self-subsistent and yet mutually related ; 
 
 (2) that there is one substance and one causal principle, 
 essentially simple, and that this substance possesses the 
 infinite capability of attaining complexity of form by 
 mechanical disposition, and that the highest mode of the 
 activity of this substance differs from the lowliest only in 
 degree ; (3) that life or consciousness is the one substance, 
 that it is a creative activity, that matter is an aspect or 
 view coincident with and dependent on intellect, which is 
 a mode of the activity, and that intellect and matter are 
 correlative and the product of creative evolution. 
 
 It is this third alternative which is the theory of creative 
 evolution, and I propose now to examine its metaphysical 
 ground. 
 
 A material object, whatever be the general form of it, 
 gaseous, liquid or solid, is determined as to its particular 
 form at any and at every moment of its existence by the 
 distribution of matter in space at that moment. The 
 distribution of matter at any moment and therefore 
 the configuration of an object at such moment is deter- 
 mined externally for the object by the movements of the 
 
 x
 
 306 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 constituents of the universe previously to and continuously 
 up to that moment. Space and time are therefore essential 
 formal conditions of the concept of a material object, but 
 not in the same degree, for while space is intimately part 
 of the concept, and mathematically speaking a constant, 
 time is both independent and variable. Space is necessary 
 to the concept of matter, time to the concept of movement, 
 and both matter and movement are necessary to the concept 
 of a physical object. It was this which led Descartes to 
 the definition of material substance as extension, and it 
 gave meaning to the mechanistic theory he expressed in 
 saying, " Give me matter and movement and I will create 
 a world." To know how a material object behaves, placed 
 in any particular situation, we have to know the actual 
 spatial distribution at the moment. That and that alone 
 determines it. Whatever movements are in being at any 
 moment, the mechanical object will respond to the external 
 compulsion brought to bear on it, and any doubt we may 
 have as to the behaviour of such an object is purely due 
 to ignorance of these external conditions. In other words, 
 the forces which determine it are then present and existent, 
 and no forces then non-existent are acting upon it. 
 
 The characteristic mark of the behaviour of a living 
 object is the direct opposite. At every moment it is deter- 
 mined by forces acting from within and not from without. 
 If we knew exhaustively the distribution of matter at a 
 given moment we could not deduce from that the living 
 response. So long as an object is living it maintains its 
 form by a force inwardly exerted and inwardly adapted to 
 the external situation. But the essential thing is that the 
 force of which it disposes and the behaviour which expresses 
 that force are not existent in the universe either within 
 or without the spatial boundaries of the living object. 
 This is as true of the lowliest living object, plant or proto- 
 zoan, as it is of the most highly organized and specialized 
 creature. The springs of its activity which determine the 
 form of its response to external influences, lie in the non- 
 existent past, and so far as they are present and actual 
 must be referred to an immaterial non-spatial reality, a
 
 CHAP, xni CREATIVE EVOLUTION 307 
 
 spiritual substance which cannot be discovered by analysis 
 of experience, external or internal, and cannot be included 
 in any inventory we can make of the entities which con- 
 stitute the spatial universe. 
 
 Spiritual substance, if we adopt the expression to indicate 
 whatever the reality may be which underlies the nature of 
 living beings, is the antithesis of material substance in this, 
 that while a material object is wholly determined by its 
 spatial and temporal conditions the living being is neither 
 spatially nor temporally conditioned. The activity of life 
 is displayed in space, the evolution of life is displayed in 
 time, but the concept of life is not dependent on the space 
 and time which condition the display of its activity. The 
 spatial and temporal conditions which apply to every 
 particular living creature, plant, insect, man, apply to it 
 solely in so far as it is material object, and have no reference 
 to the plant-nature, insect-nature, human-nature of which 
 it is the individual expression. 
 
 In the same way if we consider the metaphysical con- 
 cept of cause we find that, as in the case of substance, 
 the principle which we apply to the energetical system 
 of physics will not comprehend nor interpret the pro- 
 cesses of life. Spiritual activity requires the formulation 
 of an energetical principle completely antithetical in its 
 mode to that of physics. The most general characteristic 
 of the spiritual principle is integration. Life is a whole 
 acting as a whole, and not the mechanical whole of a com- 
 posite or aggregate of self-subsisting parts. Life means 
 that there is more in the present and acting than is com- 
 prehended in the physical constituents spatially disposed at 
 that present. Consider for example such a simple illustra- 
 tion as that afforded by the hardy- annuals whose seeds 
 we sow in our gardens in the spring. The whole energy 
 of any one of these plants is concentrated in and adjusted 
 to and exhausted in the production during the short warm 
 summer season of seeds which will resist the winter cold 
 and await the time of germination in the following spring. 
 The most curious and complex and, speaking metaphorically, 
 ingenious contrivances are brought to subserve this purpose,
 
 308 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 and at every stage of the life process we may stop and admire 
 the adaptation of means to ends in the disposition of the 
 material affected by purely physical forces. But what 
 mechanical principle of efficient causation will include the 
 non-existent past and the non-existent future which enter 
 as present factors into this living activity ? Physical forces 
 account for the disposition at any moment of the physical 
 constituents, but what accounts for the non-existent physical 
 conditions, the anticipated winter temperature and succeed- 
 ing spring warmth and light which determine that present 
 disposition ? 
 
 Life then transcends matter in the meaning that it 
 brings into play principles which cannot be comprehended 
 within any exhaustive aggregation of physical constituents. 
 Nevertheless, however predominant the spiritual principle 
 in living activity, and however antithetical in its nature 
 to the material principle, yet we have to admit that life is 
 bound to matter, that it is never experienced and cannot 
 be conceived in separation from material existence, while 
 on the other hand matter is easily and indeed familiarly 
 conceived, and appears to be actually experienced, in separa- 
 tion from life. Regarded from the standpoint of philosophy 
 there can be no reasonable doubt that existentially life 
 and matter are one. The materialist affirms it and the 
 idealist cannot consistently deny it. Idealism is generally 
 associated with the denial of existence to matter and the 
 reduction of matter to a mere mode of mind. With this 
 form of subjectivism I am not here concerned. From the 
 standpoint of physics and biology and psychology we are 
 bound to admit that life is existentially one with matter, and 
 we are not bound to admit the converse. It is no doubt for 
 this reason that we find ourselves by nature disposed to 
 accept the hypothesis of materialism that there is a hierarchy 
 of the forms of existence, starting with simple stuff, simpler 
 we think than any form of object known to us, rising 
 continually by an inherent force, developing, as it grows, 
 the immense variety and diversity of the living forms. So 
 natural does this seem that the progression from the simple 
 to the complex is proclaimed as the obvious fact of existence,
 
 CHAP, xin CREATIVE EVOLUTION 309 
 
 and therefore the model to which scientific method should 
 conform. 
 
 The theory of the evolution of life, as it has been pre- 
 sented by science in the hypothesis of natural selection and 
 other scientific hypotheses, has always been based on the 
 more or less unconscious assumption that it is possible to 
 pass from the simple to the complex, from homogeneity to 
 heterogeneity, by direct, real progression, that this accords 
 with an innate logical principle, and that therefore there is 
 no inconceivability or irrationality in the thought, as there 
 is no improbability in the fact, that the living has arisen 
 from the non-li ving. Herbert Spencer accepted the principle 
 uncritically in philosophy. It is admitted that we have not 
 discovered, it may even be thought unlikely we shall ever 
 discover, the actual links of the progression, but no con- 
 sciousness of essential irrationality disturbs the conviction 
 that it is at least possible, indeed overwhehningly probable, 
 that it is fact. 
 
 The theory of creative evolution strikes right athwart 
 this easily accepted presupposition. It defends itself by 
 purely scientific arguments, arguments based on the facts 
 of biology and psychology, but it starts by challenging the 
 rationality of the ordinary scientific assumption. Life is 
 the primary and original fact, matter is the dead product 
 it casts off. The concept of matter is reached by way of 
 diminution. It is less than life. The derivation of life 
 from matter implies the origin of something from nothing, 
 an irrational concept. Just as in the case of the Hegelian 
 dialectic the principle is seen with the greatest clearness 
 in the barest category, so here the principle is most manifest 
 when we compare the notions of inertia and activity. Given 
 the concept of the inert, by what process of thought is it 
 possible to deduce the concept of activity ? How can an 
 essentially static reality of itself produce in itself movement 
 and change ? Clearly it cannot. Movement and change 
 must be imposed from without, and by the hypothesis there 
 is no without. But the converse is not true. From activity, 
 from change, from movement, we can deduce the concept 
 of the inert, the changeless, the static. We obtain them
 
 3io A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 not by adding something to the reality but by diminution, 
 by arrest, by framing,, by inhibiting, by shutting out of 
 consciousness, by selecting. The product we thus obtain 
 is not simpler and more elementary, still less is it the original 
 constituent. It is arbitrary and relative. Such in the 
 theory of creative evolution is matter. 
 
 The metaphysical doctrine on which the theory of creative 
 evolution is based is then that the concept of matter is 
 reached by diminution. To speak in allegory, matter is 
 the dead shell which life casts off. Matter is less than life, 
 and it cannot be conceived as potentially holding life, for 
 that is to conceive it as more than life. If the metaphysics 
 implied in a scientific theory is bad the science itself is 
 insecure. The bad metaphysics of naturalism is the as- 
 sumption that the intellect is absolute. The intellect is 
 accepted uncritically as being what it directly purports to be, 
 the characteristic activity of a mind which contemplates, 
 and which in pure contemplation finds revealed to it, the 
 nature of an independently existing reality unaffected by 
 any relation in which it stands to the mind aware of it. In 
 opposition to this metaphysics the theory of creative evolu- 
 tion affirms that the human intellect is as completely a 
 product of the evolution of life as any mode of conscious 
 or unconscious activity realized in living beings from the 
 lowliest to the most exalted in the scale. And moreover, 
 it discovers that the intellect has not for its purpose the 
 revelation to us of theoretical truth, its purpose is, con- 
 sistently with what we may observe throughout the whole 
 range, severely practical. It serves our activity by restrict- 
 ing our outlook. It defines our actions as they are forming 
 themselves. It gives efficiency to our actions by confining 
 the human mode of existence to a particular circum- 
 scribed range of activity. Intellect and matter are cor- 
 relative, generated by one and the same force creative 
 evolution. Intellect imposes on life the static form 
 of matter, and life assumes to intellect the aspect of 
 fixity. 
 
 Before I try to show the support this philosophical theory 
 derives from science, and the light it throws on scientific
 
 CHAP, xin CREATIVE EVOLUTION 311 
 
 problems, let me try and put in clear and unmistakable 
 terms the metaphysical issue. 
 
 The theory of naturalism is that objective reality rests 
 on a concept of things-in-themselves. It postulates beneath 
 the phenomenal form which the object may assume to any 
 conscious apprehension of it a real object indifferent to the 
 relation in which it stands to the mind knowing it. It is 
 a postulate which seems called for and justified as the only 
 alternative to a self -stultifying subjectivism. This thing- 
 in- itself is taken as the basis of objectivity and as the 
 underlying unity of all the various and diverse modes of 
 apprehension which may exist. For example, a man, an 
 ox, a hawk, a beetle, may be together in a particular 
 environment, each will apprehend hi a different manner 
 and with a different interest, but it is from one absolute 
 indifferent objective universe that each will select. 
 
 The direct converse of this is the theory of monads. It 
 rejects the postulate that there is or can be an absolute 
 system of reference, an objective universe as thing-in-itself. 
 It rejects the postulate not merely because it is otiose but 
 because it is irrational. What then is the converse meta- 
 physical concept of the absolute ? It starts from the 
 indissoluble unity of subject and object, of knower and 
 known. Its absolute therefore is the individual subject 
 of experience. How then does it avoid the impasse of 
 solipsism ? Individuals are mutually exclusive, if objects 
 are inseparably united to subjects there can be no tran- 
 scending the individual. The individual will comprehend 
 all existence. The answer is that no individual living 
 being is circumscribed in its nature by the limits of its 
 existence, nor confined within the time and space boundaries 
 of the actual exercise of its activity. Each individual when 
 we compare his life with his nature is but as the bud of a 
 tree, part and manifestation and representative of a larger 
 whole. Each species is likewise part and expression of an 
 activity of life. In the finite individual we do not see the 
 whole individuality, it transcends itself in activity as a 
 whole. It becomes the concept of life or mind. 
 
 What advantage then do we claim for this metaphysical
 
 312 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 concept over that of naturalism ? In the first place we 
 do not postulate reality, we indicate it. The reality we 
 indicate transcends the limitations of our finite individuality, 
 but it does not and cannot transcend the nature of which 
 an individual is the expression. There is no gulf between 
 the attributes we know and the substance we infer, no breach 
 between the effect and its cause which the mind is called on 
 to overleap by an act of faith. No miracle is appealed to in 
 order to account for the naturally inexplicable correspondence 
 of truth and reality. The concept gives us the reality directly 
 in the living experience and does not pose it as a problem 
 of what may lie beneath and beyond. In the second place 
 it gives us a principle which is really interpretative. The 
 science of naturalism has no interpretative principle. It is 
 reduced to descriptions and to hypotheses based on observed 
 sequences, tentatively put forward as laws of nature, and, 
 guided by utility, erected into more or less arbitrary 
 systems. Science prides itself on its pure empirical method. 
 To criticize this method is not to depreciate it but only 
 to point out how limited and narrow its success is, and how 
 useless and indifferent to its progress is the metaphysical 
 principle to which it appeals. The metaphysical principle 
 of creative evolution, on the other hand, anticipates with 
 its interpretation the problems which for common sense 
 and physical science are insoluble. If we accept it there 
 is then no mystery in intersubjective intercourse, in the 
 knowledge of other minds, in the continuity of consciousness 
 simply insoluble on the empirical principle. There are 
 problems no doubt, but their direction is reversed. Con- 
 sciousness is no longer a problem because life is the concept 
 of a reality which is conscious in its own right, but 
 unconsciousness is now the problem. How and to what end 
 has unconsciousness been brought about ? How does un- 
 consciousness serve the progress of evolution ? The task of 
 science is still weighted with problems, but at least it is not 
 rendered a priori impossible from the outset. 
 
 Let me now try and illustrate the principle itself. Let 
 us suppose we are walking along the cliffs of some rocky 
 coast, and reflecting on the various forms of life which
 
 CHAP, xni CREATIVE EVOLUTION 313 
 
 have adapted themselves to the environment. Any other 
 scene may give rise to similar reflexions, but along the 
 fringe which divides or unites land and ocean we meet with 
 a more striking diversity in the range of living action than 
 anywhere else. Here at our feet or below us within a very 
 narrow range are forms of plant life adapted to most 
 precarious and capricious conditions of wind-swept, water- 
 sprayed rocks. Below in the tidal area are zones of vegeta- 
 tion each conditioned by the exact proportion and variation 
 of the bi-diurnal ebb and flow of the salt water. Here also 
 are zones of animal life determined by the conditions of 
 the plant life or by the degree of the salinity of the water 
 or the range of constant pressure or density. And outside 
 or above these land and water conditions are the ranges 
 of bird activity, the life conditions of gulls, cormorants, 
 terns, with sandpipers, jackdaws, and it may be, if the 
 place is wild, ravens and falcons on the shore or cliffs. The 
 whole is a harmony, in the broad sense of the word, which 
 would include the preying, and also the parasitism, of one 
 species on another, and there is maintained a more or less 
 stable equilibrium. Watch then the behaviour of any of 
 these creatures. Here, for example, are the cormorants 
 sitting motionless on the outer rocks or flying low in a 
 straight line over the sea beyond the rocks exposed at low 
 tide. Why have they no curiosity ? Why are they un- 
 disturbed and unconcerned when the gulls surrounding them 
 are excited or circling round in noisy flocks ? Senseless 
 questions, you say. True, but not from our human stand- 
 point, not if they share with us some degree of conscious 
 awareness of a reahty independent of and external to us. 
 They are creatures of high organization, with a perfectly 
 adapted capacity of integrative purposive action. We can 
 only understand their nature at all by supposing some 
 identity between their mentality and our own. Why 
 then are they so entirely lacking in the curiosity which 
 we feel would be potent in us were we placed in their 
 circumstances ? They evince no sort of interest in the 
 motives which actuate creatures outwardly resembling them 
 in their activity and inwardly resembling them in the type
 
 314 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 of their organization. As we watch those cormorants 
 motionless on their rocks amidst a changing world of in- 
 finitely varied interest which by their organization they are 
 capable of entering, but which their nature has inhibited 
 them from entering, holding them fixed to the narrow range 
 of the actions in which alone their interest is vital, it seems 
 to us that they must be circumscribed by their nature 
 itself to the fulfilment of the bare material needs of their 
 existence. The fundamental difference between our own 
 mentality and theirs seems to be the power we have of 
 detaching our minds from utilitarian needs. It seems as 
 though even in the most exalted of creatures hi the scale of 
 life below the human, the mind is fixed in attention to the 
 immediate needs of hie, and that in man intellect has set 
 the animal free from attention to purely animal needs and 
 transported it into a world of purely speculative interests. 
 Because of this we reason that there must be a world of 
 absolute value and infinite resource over which conscious 
 beings have a certain power of apprehension and accommo- 
 dating action, and that man possesses this power or has 
 acquired it in a superlative degree. 
 
 The theory of creative evolution recognizes an essential 
 difference in kind between instinct and intelligence and a 
 difference in degree in the perfection of each mode of mental 
 activity, but it declares intelligence to be in every respect 
 as much a product of evolution as instinct. It declares 
 that man with all the difference of degree in the range of 
 his activity is yet as narrowly circumscribed and as fixed 
 in his attitude of attention to life as the lowliest living 
 species, animal or plant. Despite the range of our activity, 
 in all that is essential to it, and so far as the evolution of 
 life is concerned, there is absolutely no difference between 
 the case of the cormorant on the rock, indifferent to what 
 does not concern its life, and man. The same evolution, 
 the same direction and purpose of evolution, which has 
 produced the mind of the cormorant has produced the mind 
 of man. We cannot understand intellect if we assume it 
 to be a power of direct discernment and also assume the 
 object of the discernment to exist independently of the
 
 CHAP, xin CREATIVE EVOLUTION 315 
 
 mode. We can only understand our human nature when 
 we realize that the aspect of the world to the mind and 
 the mode of the activity of the mind in the world are not 
 two independent things but one active living process which 
 in its realization creates two factors, necessarily opposed 
 and strictly correlative. Can we doubt this in the case of 
 the cormorant ? The aspect of the world to the cormorant 
 is clearly as essential a part of its evolution as the mode 
 of its responsive activity. If not, then how can evolution 
 be appealed to for any interpretation ? Evolution can only 
 mean that in some inexplicable way some small degree of 
 conscious awareness arises at certain stages of complex 
 organization and increases with the mechanical, equally 
 inexplicable, growth of the complexity. If awareness be 
 contemplative discernment there is nothing in its concept 
 which restricts it, yet we are to suppose that only in the 
 human intellect is it unrestricted. How far will such a 
 theory take us ? How far is it even a credible hypothesis 
 when we face the problem of evolution ? 
 
 Is there not then, it will be asked, an objective world, 
 or at least some objective basis in reality, common to 
 cormorant and man, and is not the difference in their 
 mentality solely concerned with their relation to this world ? 
 If this means what it implies, that something abstracted 
 from the experience of cormorant and man may be identical 
 in the experience of each, then the answer of creative evolu- 
 tion is a distinct and unqualified negative. The nature of 
 the reality of any living individual creature precludes the 
 possibility of dividing its experience into independent self- 
 subsistent factors. What is identical in cormorant and 
 man is not anything abstracted from their experience but 
 the life of which each is the expression. The theory of 
 creative evolution is that there is no difference in the life 
 which is finding complete expression in every individual ; 
 the difference is in the form and mode in which it is realized 
 in action. Evolution has created in man the range and 
 sphere of his activity, the mode of the exercise of his activity, 
 and the form which actions take concordantly with range 
 and mode. It has created in the cormorant, concomitantly,
 
 316 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 the range of activity, the mode of activity, and the con- 
 cordant form of action. In each case the objective aspect 
 of reality and the subjective control of reality are the 
 creation of the evolution of life. Compared with one 
 another, man may be on an altogether higher plane than 
 cormorant and may express a more perfect achievement. He 
 may belong to a higher type possessed of greater efficiency, 
 and this higher type and greater efficiency may be directly 
 due to man's intellect, but intellect and the world it appre- 
 hends are not independent factors which may be separated 
 from human nature, they are the factors which constitute 
 it and they exist only in and for it. Man is no more free 
 than the cormorant if being free mean being unrestricted 
 to the mode and range of activity which the evolution of 
 human nature has created. Were it possible for man to 
 view this human mode from a non-human standpoint it 
 would doubtless be its narrowness not its breadth, its 
 bondage not its liberty, which would characterize it, just 
 as these are the characters which impress us in the cormorant 
 when from our standpoint we survey its activity. 
 
 What then is this world of objective reality which I 
 regard, and by my nature am formed to regard, as existing 
 in itself and independently of my life and particular mode 
 of living activity ? It is clear that I apprehend it in two 
 quite distinct ways, first, immediately in my percepts, 
 second, reflectively in my concepts. Let us ignore the whole 
 philosophical problem of knowledge and consider only the 
 nature of this reality apprehended by sense and under- 
 standing. It is essentially a spatial and a static reality. 
 Yet the only reality which we actually know intimately, 
 know in the very act of knowing, know in the mental 
 activity we exercise, is essentially a time reality, a flowing 
 or continuous change, the ceaseless moving on in time of 
 something which is not of a spatial nature at all, has no 
 extension, but is a tendency, or striving or direction. The 
 external world which we suppose is revealed to our mind 
 in knowing is therefore, in its nature, in striking contrast 
 and direct opposition to the reality we most certainly know. 
 Yet there is in regard to our knowledge of this external
 
 CHAP, xni CREATIVE EVOLUTION 317 
 
 world one very significant fact. Notwithstanding that its 
 static and spatial character presents itself to us as funda- 
 mental, yet the more deeply we study nature the more its 
 static and spatial character dissolves and disappears. In 
 physics, for example, it is now accepted that mass is a 
 function of velocity, and generally that the solidity of 
 objects is never absolute but always relative to the power 
 of the subject to discern and discriminate, it simply marks 
 the pro tempore limit of discernment and discrimination. 
 It becomes evident therefore even to common sense and 
 scientific investigation that the aspect of our world is 
 purely relative to our power of influencing it. We view 
 the world as spatial and static because in that way alone 
 are our actions shaped. 
 
 The world we apprehend, however, whether or no its 
 spatial and static characters be its external aspect and 
 not its inherent nature, is yet apprehended by us, not as 
 continuous, but as discrete. It consists of objects mutually 
 excluding one another. It is difficult to suppose that this 
 division of the world into juxtaposed separate things belongs 
 only to its aspect and is not due to a real articulation 
 inherent in nature. Here again let us ignore the philo- 
 sophical problem of the association of sense qualities and 
 consider the question purely from its common-sense and 
 scientific aspect. At once we are struck by a significant 
 fact. When we study the behaviour of other forms of 
 conscious activity, of the various species of mammals, 
 birds, reptiles, fish, insects, worms and protozoans, it is 
 quite inconceivable that their objective world can be 
 articulated along the same lines or following the same 
 principle as ours. By what right then do we affirm that 
 ours is absolute and every other relative ? Clearly we have 
 no right. What then determines for them the shapes of 
 objects, the outlines and definitions of separate things, the 
 lines of natural articulation ? Surely it is no other than 
 the actions themselves which the living creatures are 
 severally fitted to perform. Can our case be different ? 
 
 Directly we apply this principle a new meaning and a 
 new interpretation of the activities of perception and
 
 318 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 memory come to view. Perception is preparatory to action, 
 and memory in conditioning perception serves action. 
 What then are the objects we perceive ? Plainly they 
 cannot be things-in- themselves, such things would have no 
 relation to our actions nor to our activity. The outlines of 
 the objects we perceive are the lines along which we are 
 fitted by our mental constitution to exercise our peculiar 
 influence. Our world is articulated to conform to our 
 mode of activity, and our mode of activity is designed to 
 take form in actions. There are no things, there are only 
 actions, and actions, actual or virtual, take the form of 
 things by reason of the spatializing, fixing, activity of the 
 intellect. 
 
 If there be nothing absolute in our objective universe, 
 it follows that the absolute is within us. It is not within, 
 however, in any abstract meaning of the term, any meaning 
 which would isolate the subject of experience from its 
 object. The absolute is the life of_wjncji every_individual 
 of^every species, including and not excluding his world, 
 isjthe product of creative evolution. There is then a real 
 articulation, there are lines of division which are not aspects. 
 This real articulation is the plurality of the monads. Also 
 there is pre-established harmony of the monads, if we impart 
 to this old term the new meaning. Creative evolution has no 
 need to posit a creator God, because creation is seen to be 
 the essential character of life. By pre-established harmony 
 we do not mean that to an infinite mind all the possibilities 
 of non-existent universes were present in idea, and that 
 the infinite mind, having perfect knowledge and infinite 
 power, brought into existence the best of all possible worlds. 
 To suppose this is simply to create God in the image of his 
 own intellectual creature. We cannot if we would, and no 
 metaphysical need requires that we should, transcend the 
 reality in which we live and move and have our being, the 
 reality of life which is a creative evolution. The harmony 
 is not imposed upon us by the fiat of an intelligent creator, 
 it is the a priori synthesis which is the condition of the 
 possibility of experience. 
 
 Let me now recapitulate briefly the theory I have
 
 CHAP, xiii CREATIVE EVOLUTION 319 
 
 tried to expound in this chapter. Creative evolution is 
 the theory that the subjective modes of living activity, 
 vegetative, instinctive, intelligent, and the objective 
 aspects of the sphere of living activity have been created 
 concomitantly by the evolution of life. In particular as 
 applied to human nature the theory is that the human 
 intellect and the material aspect of man's universe are 
 correlative and have been generated pari passu. There 
 are two metaphysical assumptions generally accepted by 
 common sense, and in physical science regarded as self- 
 evident. The first is that matter is absolute. Without 
 implying any theory as to its nature and genesis, its exist- 
 ence is held to be independent of life which is conditioned 
 by it and of mind which, contemplates it. The second is 
 that the intellect is absolute. Whatever activity the 
 intellect may exercise, it is conceived as prima facie a 
 passive contemplation of reality. The world is revealed to 
 it and ideally represented by it in perception. The first 
 assumption is irrational. Even if matter be conceived as 
 uncreated, yet the idea of a progression from simple to 
 complex, from homogeneity to heterogeneity, from the inert 
 to the living, involves the notion of the creation of some- 
 thing from nothing, and this contradicts the principle of 
 sufficient reason to which it appeals. On the other hand, 
 if we posit God as the first cause, the argument is simply 
 circular, for we find nothing in the concept of God except 
 what we have put there in order to account for the existence 
 of matter. If, on the other hand, we argue from the idea 
 of God to his existence, then we destroy the whole force 
 of the reasoning if we separate God from the world, or 
 suppose a creator existing independently of creation. The 
 alternative is to conceive the absolute reality as active life. 
 This is to conceive a God who cannot not exist, a reality 
 in whom we live and move and have our being, affirmed 
 in the thinking which thinks it. This reality is life, con- 
 ceived not as adjective but as active substance. From life 
 we can deduce matter because matter is a diminution of 
 life. Also matter can take the aspect of a reality inde- 
 pendent of life because we can take abstract and partial
 
 320 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 views of our activity from the standpoint of the acting 
 centre of activity. Every living individual creature has as 
 counterpart of its subjective mode of behaviour a corre- 
 sponding objective universe represented in its perceptions. 
 By the relation of these factors actions are determined. 
 Both the mode of subjective activity and the aspect of the 
 objectivity of the universe are created by the evolution of 
 life. In man this subjective mode is the intellect, the 
 objective aspect of the universe, matter. The objects of 
 intelligent activity are spatial and static. Both mode and 
 aspect are generated pari passu by creative evolution. The 
 absolute lives ; for life is the absolute. The basis of exist- 
 ence is process. Reality to every observer assumes a 
 twofold aspect activity and action. Spatial objects or 
 separate things are the articulation of reality which is 
 relative to its intellectual apprehension. The real plurality 
 is that of the monads, each the active centre of the one 
 universal principle.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD 
 
 If God gave to things accidental powers detached from their natures, 
 there would be a back door for recalling the occult qualities which no 
 power can understand. LEIBNIZ. 
 
 IT follows from the metaphysical principle expounded in 
 the last chapter that a certain practical character attaches 
 to all knowledge and a certain theoretical character to all 
 action. There is no absolute truth in the sense of pro- 
 positions which would retain their meaning were every 
 human interest absent from them. There is no independent 
 criterion to which an appeal can be made. Life is reality, 
 to live is to exist, and there is no reality transcending this 
 existence. Monadology is based on this a priori impossi- 
 bility of dissociating mind and universe. In order to see 
 the full import of any theory it is necessary to keep the 
 antithesis clearly in mind, because all affirmation is negation. 
 The strength of the antithetical theory, which dissociates 
 mind and universe, and posits in the object of knowledge 
 independent existence somehow revealed to a contemplating 
 mind, is that it purports to afford an absolute basis for the 
 truth and also a principle for the progressive advance of 
 the sciences. The apparent defect of monadology and the 
 antipathy which it has to encounter is not only that it 
 seems to fail to provide, but that it seems positively to 
 deny, for the sciences, an independent foundation in reality. 
 It declares them to be anthropomorphic in their very 
 nature. The logical problem of monadology is to determine, 
 and if possible justify, the status it assigns to the mathe- 
 matical, physical and natural sciences. 
 
 321 Y
 
 322 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 Philosophy is scientia scientiarum, and the philosophical 
 ideal in all ages has been an organon embracing the whole 
 range of human knowledge and exhibiting all departments 
 of special sciences as links in a chain. 
 
 We are accustomed to date the modern period of philo- 
 sophy with the rise and development of inductive science 
 under the experimental method. We owe to this method 
 the peculiar aspect of our modern world. It has brought 
 to mankind a vast expansion of knowledge and has given 
 to knowledge a direction which has tended, and increasingly 
 tends, to change completely the conditions of human life 
 and to widen and strengthen, in growing proportion as it 
 progresses, man's control over the forces of nature. The ex- 
 perimental method had always some expression in scientific 
 inquiry, for it is of the essence of the scientific spirit, but 
 the predominant place of experiment in science and the 
 obviousness of it is entirely a modern thing. It would 
 never have occurred to a Greek philosopher, it is doubtful 
 if it would even have seemed relevant, to make the experi- 
 ments which Galileo carried out on the leaning tower of 
 Pisa. It is true that Archimedes invented machines and 
 made discoveries which were for a time successfully applied 
 in the defence of Syracuse against the besieging Roman 
 armies, but his inventions were deductions from general 
 principles, and it is doubtful, to say the least, if it ever 
 did or ever could have occurred to him to establish rational 
 principles by simple induction from particular experiments, 
 still less to devise laboratory experiments in the modern 
 manner. Aristotle was one of the greatest naturalists who 
 have ever lived, a careful observer and minute describer of the 
 various forms and functions of vegetable and animal organ- 
 isms, but it would probably have seemed a priori absurd 
 and contradictory to him to suppose that rational principles 
 were to be inferred from observed uniformities and not 
 vice versa, viz. that the uniformities were to be interpreted 
 by rationally discovered principles. If we can claim 
 therefore in modern philosophy to have advanced beyond 
 the Greeks, it is not merely in the extent and the range of 
 modern science, but in the method and principle which
 
 CHAP, xiv THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD 323 
 
 have made modern science possible. The experimental 
 method represents an attainment of the human mind, 
 which has raised it to a higher intellectual level, with all 
 that this implies in width of outlook and world-view than 
 that which has ever been reached before. Any philo- 
 sophical theory which fails to take account of and interpret 
 the significance of this latest, truly amazing, victory of the 
 human intellect stands self-condemned. 
 
 It is no doubt the consciousness of this emergence of a 
 new scientific principle and the victory it is assuring to 
 man in his struggle against natural forces, which must be 
 taken to account for the rise and attractiveness of the 
 scientific philosophies, or philosophy of the sciences, of the 
 nineteenth century, in particular, the positive philosophy 
 of Auguste Comte and the synthetic philosophy of Herbert 
 Spencer. The idea underlying both is that in these latter 
 days there has arisen a new method and a new spirit of 
 inquiry, and that humanity is now called upon to cast 
 away the shell of outworn metaphysical systems which 
 had cramped and confined the spirit, and enter with a new 
 life into possession of a new inheritance. 
 
 The experimental method never presented itself as a 
 device or invention. Its exponents always claimed for it 
 that it is the natural and obvious way in which knowledge 
 is acquired, retained and accumulated. The simple teach- 
 ing of nature had been, it was said, overlaid and obscured 
 by superstitions and conventions, which with their growth 
 had acquired vested interests and established a lordship 
 over the human spirit. The one thing needful was to fling 
 off the old man of the sea. The experimental method 
 purported to be nothing but the interrogation of facts 
 without presuppositions, the acceptance of facts at their 
 face value, and the interpretation of them in relation to 
 human interests. This was simply to observe nature. It 
 was not an acquirement or an attainment of the intellect, 
 but the ordinary untrammelled mode of the mind's activity. 
 Now at last, declared the positivists, the bonds are broken 
 and the human spirit is set free. 
 
 The positivist theory of three stages in the historical
 
 324 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 evolution of human mental activity in relation to objective 
 knowledge, the theological, the metaphysical, and the 
 positive, pre-Darwinian, and without reference or relevance 
 to biological evolution, has had a quite extraordinary influ- 
 ence in determining the present intellectual attitude towards 
 science and philosophy. Although its claim to delineate 
 definite historical periods and to pass judgment generally on 
 the history of philosophy was soon modified, it nevertheless 
 gained wide acceptance as a classification and natural history 
 of the mind, and of its progress in the acquirement of know- 
 ledge. It fixed on metaphysics an absurd and irrational 
 meaning from the reproach of which it has been slow to 
 recover. According to the theory of positivism, the first 
 impulse and direction of thought, confronted with the 
 phenomena of nature, is to create in imagination super- 
 natural agents, fashioned in the image of man, but endowed 
 with the powers necessary to account for the forces of 
 nature. In time these imagined agents and powers fail 
 to satisfy the conditions of experience and become im- 
 possible to harmonize with experience, and then the mind 
 passes naturally to the second stage. This second stage 
 is when the mind duplicates the phenomena of nature with 
 shadowy unsubstantial abstractions posited ad hoc as causal 
 explanations, superior to the old theological ideas only in 
 the fact that they are deprived of volition and caprice, the 
 fruitful source of enslaving superstition. As soon as re- 
 flexion discovers and exposes the insipidity of this device, 
 the human mind attains the positive stage. Recognizing the 
 reality which is presented to it in experience, the mind now 
 accepts it as self-sufficient in its revelation and proceeds to 
 classify and organize it instead of seeking to delve beneath it. 
 But to decide to stop short of metaphysical inquiry, 
 whether for utilitarian or any other reason, is not one 
 and identical with disproving metaphysics, discrediting its 
 results and demonstrating its impossibility as a science. 
 Yet this is what positivism claims to do. To assume 
 arbitrarily that in the mathematical and natural sciences 
 we possess knowledge in its objective and absolute meaning, 
 and to denounce all investigations into the basis or ground
 
 CHAP, xrv THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD 325 
 
 of the assumption as prejudiced and vicious, is to adopt 
 an attitude of irrational dogmatism as the only alterna- 
 tive to complete scepticism. It is so because the moment 
 we attempt to justify the assumption as rational we are 
 involved in metaphysics. Is it not then verging on foolish- 
 ness to pretend we have any power to refrain ? What 
 gives to the positivist the appearance of self-sufficiency in 
 the science he appeals to is its amenability to classification 
 and organization. Pure mathematics, which is not an 
 empirical science, seems to supply a body of intuitive, un- 
 questionable truth, and on this absolute basis is raised 
 the whole hierarchy of the empirical sciences, growing in 
 complexity but interrelated and organically subordinated. 
 Above all, the positivist points to the triumphant progress 
 of knowledge which has followed the employment of the 
 experimental method and its practical outcome in the 
 extension of the range of human activity. Against this 
 experimental research, continually increasing the sum total 
 of knowledge, the positivist pictures the speculative philo- 
 sopher, blindly wandering in the obscurity of metaphysics, 
 ever darkening council and mistaking shadows for substance. 
 Yet positivism, with all its protesting, has a metaphysics, 
 and a metaphysics which is not simply equated with un- 
 knowability. It has a metaphysics of the knowable, of 
 the positive character of the reality which science affirms. 
 How can it be otherwise ? Consider the aspect of the 
 world which science presents to us. A spatial universe, 
 infinite in extension, a series of events with an infinite 
 past and future, laws of mass and movement identical at 
 all times and in all places, this is the knowable universe. 
 Its limitations are not the unknowable but the unknown. 
 Is it not prima facie extravagantly improbable that such a 
 knowable universe, assuming it to be objectively independent 
 of our mind and absolute in its existence, should reveal at 
 once its nature and existence to any infinitely insignificant 
 mind willing to contemplate it without prejudice ? Yet 
 this amazing assumption is to satisfy the inquiring mind 
 without any support from metaphysical theory. It does 
 not satisfy, and it is impossible that it should, because
 
 326 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 it strikes athwart the natural disposition of man's intellect 
 which is framed and fashioned to seek reasons for what it 
 believes. 
 
 The study of the history of human intellectual develop- 
 ment discloses a very different course of evolution from the 
 imaginary stages of the positive theory, and shows that so 
 far from the experimental method being the original and 
 natural mode of investigation, only obscured by convention 
 and superstition, it is a high and very late attainment. 
 It rests on a new concept of reality, a concept unknown 
 to the Greeks and unknown to the patristic and scholastic 
 philosophy, or at least a concept which never reached 
 expression in their thought. More than this it is a concept 
 which could not have found expression in modern philosophy 
 had we not the Greek and the Christian philosophy as our 
 inheritance. 
 
 The concept of nature which underlies the experimental 
 method is the direct opposite of the concept of animism. 
 The animistic concept is that the movements or changes 
 which appear to us in external nature are the actions, or 
 the results of actions, of beings actuated by desire and 
 volition. The phenomena of nature are conceived on the 
 exact analogy of our own actions, which are the outward 
 expression of inner understanding and will. The rational 
 attitude of a creature in a world animistically conceived 
 is propitiatory not cognitive, or cognitive only with a view 
 to propitiation. It is clear that with such a concept experi- 
 ment as a means of discovering truth is irrational, though 
 it may indeed be a means of obtaining favours. Imagine 
 an animal for whom all nature is its human environment, 
 as it practically is for the domesticated dog, or the sheep, 
 or the canary, whose life and activity depend on human 
 routine actions and dispositions. Suppose such an animal 
 to develop a high degree of intelligence of a form analogous 
 to the human. For such a creature human beings and 
 their dispositions of inert matter are the external world. 
 Any concept of external nature such a creature might 
 acquire must of necessity be animistic ; if it were not, and 
 to the extent that it was not, it would be untrue. It is
 
 CHAP, xiv THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD 327 
 
 difficult to imagine in what way for such a creature any 
 concept not animistic would work, or any meaning in which 
 such concept could be true. But the same animal in the 
 wild state would be in a totally different case. It would be 
 in fact in an analogous condition to man himself, and if it 
 acquired the human mode of intellect it might adopt an 
 animistic concept of its external world, but would not be 
 under a necessity to do so, and if it did it might advance 
 beyond it. 
 
 The animistic concept is neither irrational nor non- 
 rational. It is the characteristic, original and universal 
 concept of primitive peoples. Even more striking is its 
 persistence in the highest stages of culture. Consider how 
 anthropomorphic we are in our ordinary experience, despite 
 any degree of scientific discipline, and anthropomorphism 
 is the essence of animism. How impossible it is for us to 
 see the dog looking up into our face and realize its essentially 
 different mentality ! How difficult to throw off the notion 
 that the fly which is worrying us with its persistent attentions, 
 and warily avoiding our attempts to capture it, is inspired 
 in its behaviour by suspicion, fear, cunning, and such like 
 incentives ! 
 
 It is most important, however, to recognize that even 
 in its most extended application the animistic concept is 
 not irrational. Were we not subjects of experience, con- 
 scious of our active psychical powers, we should have no 
 knowledge. What surer principle then can we appeal to 
 than that inner experience itself ? Moreover, we start our 
 experience, not as minds confronted with an unresponsive 
 world of inert matter, but as helpless members of a re- 
 sponsive community. The really extraordinary step to 
 explain is how we come to recognize a non-living world, 
 how we reach the concept of inert matter, how we have 
 attained to the fundamental concepts on which we have 
 been able to erect the mathematical and physical sciences. 
 
 What then is the fundamental concept on which the 
 experimental method depends ? It is the concept of an 
 external world the laws of which are definitely and absolutely 
 determined by the nature of its constituents, and whose
 
 328 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 constituents are completely independent of any conscious 
 process or order of knowing. More precisely, it is the 
 concept of a material substance and of an efficient causation 
 which are independent of life and consciousness. Without 
 this concept there might be psychical science, there might 
 even be mathematical science, but there could not be 
 physical science. The experimental method is serviceable 
 in physical science just because that science excludes from 
 the concept of physical reality the possibility of caprice. 
 
 Mathematics is not experimental in its method in the 
 sense in which physical science is essentially so. A clear 
 illustration of this is afforded in the case of the non-Euclidean 
 geometries. The truth of these is their logical consistency, 
 and their content wholly depends on the choice made of 
 postulates. Their claim on our acceptance depends purely 
 on their convenience in working. But in regard to any 
 one of them or to the Euclidean geometry itself we may 
 raise the question, is it physically true ? The question 
 can only be decided by an application of the experimental 
 method, and such an application may or may not be possible. 
 To set about it, the first condition is to determine some 
 natural phenomenon which, on the hypothesis of the truth of 
 the mathematical theory, would undergo in stated circum- 
 stances some definite alteration or some distortion in its 
 normal appearance, then to contrive the means of artificially 
 producing these conditions. The concept of reality under- 
 lying such a method excludes and rejects absolutely the 
 notion of any choice whatever so far as the physical basis 
 of the science is concerned. In this respect therefore 
 mathematical and physical science are in marked contrast, 
 and mathematics cannot be, as positivism claims, the basis 
 of physical science. 
 
 A remarkable instance of the relation of mathematics 
 to physics is afforded by the story of the Eclipse Expedition 
 of May 29, 1919. The expedition was organized with a 
 view to testing the general principle of relativity. So far 
 as pure mathematical science was concerned there was no 
 need of any test of that principle. That principle was 
 methodological and proposed no more than the non-
 
 CHAP, xiv THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD 329 
 
 Euclidean geometries proposed, namely, to choose other 
 postulates than those in ordinary use. Those physicists 
 and mathematicians who rejected it, did so, not on any 
 ground of truth or falsity, but purely on the ground of 
 convenience and expediency, the same ground on which 
 the non-Euclidean geometries are rejected in practice. 
 In one sense there is no meaning in asking whether the 
 principle of relativity is physically true or false, because 
 being a mathematical and not a physical principle all that 
 is necessary is to establish that it is not contradictory. 
 But there is an overpowering bias in the human mind 
 which prevents it resting satisfied with non-contradictory 
 principles and requires it to determine the relation of every 
 principle to actual existence. This is the basis of the 
 experimental method. It brings theory or hypothesis to 
 the test of physical fact. We want to know of everything 
 not merely whether or not it may be so but whether as 
 matter of fact it is so. Einstein in formulating the general 
 principle of relativity, and particularly its application to 
 the laws of gravitation, had suggested an experimental test. 
 He worked out a particular effect and foretold a hitherto 
 unobserved phenomenon. The eclipse of the sun on the one 
 day of the year (May 29) when there are bright stars very 
 near the disc, afforded the opportunity, and the English 
 Expedition carried out the observation. The test was this : 
 the light which reaches us from the fixed stars is assumed 
 to follow a straight line the stars are fixed in the sense 
 that their relative positions are unaltered throughout the 
 diurnal and annual revolution of the firmament ; but we 
 only see the stars at night, and then their light is far removed 
 from any gravitational disturbance such as takes place in 
 the neighbourhood of the sun ; Einstein predicted that 
 during the eclipse, when the stars near the sun would be 
 visible, it would be found that they had suffered a definite 
 shift, the amount of which he calculated. What was the 
 meaning of this ? It is simply impossible to imagine a 
 curving of the light rays as due to light itself following a 
 devious path. The trajectory of a light signal must be 
 the shortest distance between the point of origin and the
 
 330 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 point of observation ; were it not, it would be conceivably 
 possible to see a point of light before the light reached us, 
 and such an idea is a self-contradiction. If then the light 
 from a star is curved in the gravitational field it cannot be 
 because the light is not following the shortest path, but 
 because the space is warped or curved. Einstein's test 
 was therefore a true experimental test of the nature of 
 space whether it is Euclidean or not. The warp in space 
 would reveal itself in the displacement of the star. The 
 prediction was verified, and the result of this single observa- 
 tion was, allowing for doubts as to possible explanations, 
 to establish as physical fact that space cannot be regarded 
 as Euclidean, or that the Euclidean postulates are not 
 universally valid. A more complete illustration of a reversal 
 of theory, amounting practically to a revolution, following 
 on a single application of the experimental method, could 
 hardly be found. What then is the nature, and what is 
 the ground of that complete confidence which we place in it ? 
 Why is one experiment sufficient to establish the fact that 
 when analogous conditions are present an analogous result 
 is to be expected and will surely take effect ? 
 
 Let us notice then, in the first place, that the certainty 
 we feel in the application of the experimental method and 
 in the predictions of physical science based upon it is totally 
 different in its nature from the intuitive certainty of mathe- 
 matics. Experiment deals with concrete fact, with exist- 
 ence, mathematics deals with abstract relations and is 
 indifferent to the existence of the terms. The predictions of 
 science are not like the predictions of mathematics based on 
 perceptions of identity, but on perceptions of analogy. In 
 experience nothing is repeated. What happens in experi- 
 ence is an event, and no event can be identical with another 
 event or in any literal sense a repetition, and yet on the 
 basis of experiment physical science can predict with 
 absolute certainty the character of an event, given the 
 condition of it. The certainty of physical science "is not 
 only not based on mathematics as the positivist theory 
 supposed, it is distinguished by its complete contrast to 
 mathematical certainty. Physics is concerned only with
 
 CHAP, xiv THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD 331 
 
 existence. Euclid's propositions are true of any possible 
 universe to which Euclid's postulates apply, whether or 
 not such a universe exists. The same is true of Lobatchew- 
 sky's or of Riemann's geometry. Physical science on the 
 other hand depends on sense-given intelligibly-apprehended 
 existence, and this means that physics, whatever its rela- 
 tions to mathematics, is not the consequence of which 
 mathematics is the ground. There is no direct advance 
 from mathematical truth to physical reality. What then is 
 the ground of scientific certainty, a certainty which unlike 
 that of mathematics is never absolute, never rises above a 
 degree of probability, but which also unlike mathematics 
 gives a real satisfaction to the inquiring mind ? 
 
 There are two historical answers. One is the answer 
 of the English empirical school, according to which the 
 understanding possesses nothing but what reaches it through 
 the senses. Belief, assurance, confident prediction, are the 
 product of a habit induced by objective association. The 
 other answer is that of the intellectualist a priori school, 
 that the categories are frames which the understanding 
 possesses independently of experience, and which therefore 
 determine the form of knowledge in advance of experience. 
 The laws of nature or the uniformities of the objective 
 world are not a revelation to experience but an organization 
 of experience. The problem of modern philosophy has 
 been to decide the issue between these two interpretations. 
 It has taken the form of the relative claims of truths of 
 reason and of matters of fact, to precedence on the ground 
 of primacy. 
 
 Experience is not experiment, and the empirical principle 
 in philosophy is not identical with the experimental method 
 in science. Neither learning by experience nor the ability 
 to profit by experience implies or depends in any way on 
 experimenting. Moreover, the experimental method is not 
 and could not have been an empirical discovery. It could 
 not itself have been discovered by experimenting, for it 
 rests on a concept of reality which could not have been 
 learnt from experience. It depends on the concept that 
 objects or things are endowed with a determinate and
 
 332 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 inalienable nature of their own. The experimental method 
 is both theoretically meaningless and practically worthless 
 unless what a thing does reveals what a thing is, and not 
 merely what happens to it ; and what a thing does can 
 only reveal what it is if the action flow from its nature. 
 This is the concept of the monad, and the monad is the 
 only concept which completely realizes the experimental 
 method. Leibniz has expressed it in the passage from the 
 Nouveaux Essais (bk. iv. ch. 3) which I have quoted at 
 the head of this chapter. He states it in the terms of the 
 concept of the relation of the creator to the creation, but 
 the concept itself is clear. If there are no monads the 
 experimental method is irrational. 
 
 The classical argument in this case is Hume's sceptical 
 criticism of the concept of cause, or, as he called it, the idea 
 of necessary connexion. This philosophical argument is in 
 reality fatal to physical science, it cuts away its whole 
 ground. But inasmuch as science has always seemed in 
 some way to be peculiarly dependent on the empirical 
 principle, and its method to be practically identical with 
 the empirical method, there have been many and repeated 
 attempts to show that the idea of cause, like the idea of 
 substance, is one to which science can be and is entirely 
 indifferent. But what in that case becomes of the ex- 
 perimental method ? Experiment is quite different from 
 observation of sequences and the formation of expectations 
 based on probabilities. In a scientific experiment repetition 
 is entirely unnecessary for the establishment of fact or 
 truth ; if it be repeated it is to test the accuracy of the 
 experiment, not to add cumulative effect to the fact 
 established. It is the essence of the experimental method 
 that one instance is decisive. 
 
 It may be objected, perhaps, that although the monadic 
 concept may be implied when the matter of investigation 
 is the behaviour of conscious or even of living beings, 
 or of the actions which are attributed to them, it is quite 
 irrelevant when scientific inquiry is directed to the purely 
 mechanical actions and reactions of the spatio-temporal 
 material world. To introduce the monadic principle here,
 
 CHAP, xiv THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD 333 
 
 it may be said, would be a simple return from naturalism 
 or positivism to animism. This would be true were the 
 intention to personify or to consider as individual monads, 
 all the perceptions of physical things, or all sensible qualities 
 of things, or pure sensibilia, apprehended by the mind in 
 its perceptions. But these, as we have seen, are not monads 
 for they are not things-in-themselves. The monadic theory 
 is that anything which is a thing-in-itself is a monad. Only 
 in the meaning that it is a subject of activity with its own 
 point of view can a thing be real, and only when so conceived 
 is it a monad. So that whatever is real in the universe is 
 referred to the monads, for they are the only reals. In 
 order then to see how the experimental method depends for 
 its rationality on such a concept let us consider it in its 
 relation to the alternative theory, which we will call atomism. 
 Take the latest theory of the atom, and let us agree to 
 regard the atomic theory as in no sense hypothetical but 
 as demonstrably actual. The atoms then are the forms 
 which reality assumes in its basal and most elementary 
 constitution. The atom itself as we deal with it is not 
 simple, but we suppose it resolvable ultimately into what 
 is the limit of simplicity, the unit charge of electricity. 
 Let us accept this without raising the obvious difficulty 
 that a unit of charge of electricity, if it be positive, can only 
 exist so long as a negative charge is opposed to it, and that 
 therefore in positing a unit charge of positive electricity 
 we are positing also a negative. Now the whole rationale 
 of experimenting lies in its test character. We use experi- 
 ment as the crucial criterion which is infallible. We do 
 not use experiment for the purpose of calculating prob- 
 abilities. If all that an experiment could prove were that 
 what repeatedly or unfailingly has been found to occur 
 under certain circumstances will probably occur again under 
 like circumstances, it would be absolutely otiose. On the 
 contrary, the ground of the experimental method is the 
 certainty that what has happened once if rightly interpreted 
 reveals the absolute character of the real. If it enables me 
 henceforward to foretell what will happen, it is not because 
 it has established a probability, but because it has given
 
 334 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 me knowledge of a real nature. Apply this then to our 
 case in point. We are to assume that the ultimate reality 
 of nature is the unit electric charge ; how in such case are 
 we to rationalize the experimental method ? Whatever 
 result in any case flows from our experiment will not flow 
 from the nature of this unit electric charge, for by the 
 hypothesis it is what it is, it will flow from something 
 adventitious to that nature. By the very concept of reality 
 we are prevented from appealing to it for any character 
 or nature it exhibits ; all its properties and qualities must 
 flow from something which in itself it does not contain. 
 Do we demur, do we deny this indifference of the reality 
 to quality, do we affirm that all the properties and character 
 of nature flow from the unit electric charge ? Then we 
 find that instead of conceiving as we supposed something 
 absolutely simple and really elementary, the limit of inertia, 
 we are conceiving something active, self-centred and all 
 comprehensive, we are conceiving not the atom but its 
 opposite, the monad. There is no rationality in the ex- 
 perimental method unless the reality of the universe be 
 monadic.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY 
 Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Occam's Razor. 
 
 THE recognition that the experimental method implies the 
 concept of reality as monadic finds expression in the principle 
 of relativity. The purpose of this concluding chapter is to 
 make this clear. The principle of relativity is the direct 
 result of a discovery due to experiment. The actual dis- 
 covery was simple enough although it was negative and to the 
 conductors of the experiment disconcerting. It was that 
 whereas in the case of all ordinary velocities we are able to 
 compound them, and the results of the composition accord 
 completely with the mathematical calculations and physical 
 deductions, in the case of the velocity of the propagation of 
 light we are unable to introduce it into any composition, it re- 
 mains constant under all circumstances and for all observers. 
 Our failure to discover any variation due to our own velocity 
 of relative translation is complete. For example, I may know 
 precisely the movement of a system, say the earth, rela- 
 tively to another system, say the sun ; I may construct an 
 instrument fixed in regard to the earth, moving in regard 
 to the sun, accurately designed to register that velocity ; 
 I then compare the velocity of a light beam emitted from 
 my moving system, and reflected to a mirror also fixed to 
 my moving system, and in whatever direction I turn the 
 mirror I find no difference, the interferometer registers one 
 and the same constant velocity, showing that there is no 
 composition of the two velocities. What is significant in 
 this is not the fact but the interpretation. According to 
 
 335
 
 336 A THEORY OF MONADS PARTIH 
 
 the principle of relativity it is absolutely simple, but the 
 principle of relativity itself is revolutionary so far as the 
 methodology of science is concerned. First, then, let us 
 ask what is the simple explanation ? 
 
 In my ordinary experience I am able to compound 
 velocities, and I am continually doing so. What is the 
 condition which enables me to do so ? I do it without 
 invoking any aid from my individual experience of muscular 
 effort in moving. Thus when I run down a moving stair- 
 case I expend no more muscular energy than when I run 
 down a fixed staircase, but I find no difficulty in conceiving 
 and appreciating the increased velocity in the first case 
 when compared with the second, and this velocity is just 
 the sum of the two velocities, mine and that of the staircase, 
 in relation to the system in regard to which one staircase 
 is fixed the other moving. Now in this case and in all 
 such cases railway trains, passenger boats, aeroplanes, 
 even guns and engines which use high explosives the 
 composition of velocities depends for its condition upon 
 reference to a system at rest. And for the purpose of 
 any composition some system must be absolutely at rest 
 so far as the velocities compounded are concerned. Not 
 only must there exist such a system but we must be able 
 to utilize it, to refer our velocities to it, otherwise we are 
 helpless. Suppose when on the moving staircase I had no 
 fixed system to refer to, I could not compound the velocity 
 of my own muscular exerted movement with the movement 
 of the staircase, the condition would be absent and no 
 experience could supply it. I may arbitrarily consider any 
 moving system at rest, but so long as I do so I cannot 
 compound my velocity with any velocity it may have 
 relatively to some other system. If I would do so for 
 anything like a moving staircase or tram I must have the 
 earth at rest for my reference. If I wish to consider the 
 earth's movement and compound that, I can do so by 
 speaking fancifully of a translation of 5000 miles a minute 
 through space, but then I take the sun to be at rest. If I 
 am still unsatisfied and wish to compound the movement 
 of the solar system itself, I must take the stars or at least
 
 CHAP, xv THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY 337 
 
 the stellar system as at rest. There seems no limit, and 
 in nature so far as we can see there is none, but there is a 
 practical limit. It is only theoretically, for example, that 
 I can compound the velocity of my own muscularly induced 
 movements with the velocity of the earth's translation, and 
 when I do so in theory I have no possible means of using 
 the result I obtain. It is different with regard to all the 
 velocities which refer to the earth as at rest, for I am so 
 constituted that this earth is my terra firma for all the 
 purposes of practical life. I am able by making use of it to 
 compound all the velocities in which I take part. To 
 compound velocities, therefore, it is not sufficient to assume 
 some system at rest, it is absolutely necessary as a condition 
 of the compounding that there should be a system at rest, 
 and the earth is this system for human observation. Now 
 precisely the reason why we cannot compound the velocity 
 of light with velocities of translation is that for light there 
 is no system at rest, nothing absolute to which we can 
 refer it, no background against which we can observe it. 
 And it is not the slightest use to assume one, because we 
 cannot make practical use of any assumption. Newton 
 thought he could compound velocities by assuming absolute 
 space and time. It was an illusion. Even in his own case 
 the assumption was useless and his absolute space and time 
 did not and could not enter as factors into his own equations 
 of relative movement. It is quite simple, therefore, to 
 see what is the fact in the case of the constancy of the 
 velocity of light. We seem to think we have in space and 
 time (or in a hypothetical ether if we hold that theory) 
 an absolute system at rest, but it is a useless assumption 
 for the purpose, because at most it is no more than an ideal 
 background for thought, it stands for nothing in nature 
 which we can make practical use of as we do of the earth. 
 Consequently what happens is just what would happen in 
 the case of terrestrial velocities if we had not the earth 
 at rest for our system of reference, the velocity remains 
 constant, and the space and time units, whose ratio is the 
 velocity, automatically accommodate themselves. 
 
 Let me give as an illustration a terrestrial velocity 
 
 z
 
 338 A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 which must be automatically accommodated in this way. 
 The people who inhabit Tibet or the plateau of Chili clearly 
 have a longer day than those of us who live at or near the 
 sea-level. The day is not longer at the expense of the 
 night or the night at the expense of the day, the whole 
 twenty-four hours of the day is a longer period than the 
 twenty-four hours of the sea-level day. For a day is the 
 revolution of the earth on its axis, and the circle of revolu- 
 tion in Chili or Tibet is outside the circle, and therefore a 
 larger circle than that at sea-level. If those circles are 
 divided into spatial and temporal units, those units must 
 be different either in size or in number. If our clocks 
 registered millionths of a second we should detect the 
 difference at once. For example, take the difference to be 
 equal to ten miles of the circumference of the circle, then 
 if the circles were divided and the divisions measured by 
 the swing of a pendulum through half an inch, there would 
 be a difference of more than a million and a quarter swings 
 of the pendulum between the two. It is clear, however, 
 that the inhabitants of Chili and Tibet are unaware of, or 
 indifferent to, their advantage, if it be an advantage, and 
 it would probably be so if it were multiplied a million 
 times, but why ? Because human lives are so contrived, 
 or evolution has so brought it about, that such differences 
 are automatically compensated. Why must they be auto- 
 matically compensated ? Because we have no absolute 
 and utilizable system of reference. Things, therefore, which 
 for human beings are one and identical, or only numerically 
 different, may be totally different for non-human observers. 
 Before we leave this question one remark is important 
 in regard to what is known as the hypothesis of the ether. 
 It is only because it was thought that this hypothetical 
 medium or stuff could be utilized as the required system of 
 reference for the compounding of the velocity of light 
 that the principle of relativity has rejected it. In so far 
 as the ether is the necessary counterpart of the undulatory 
 theory of light, it is unaffected by the discovery that the 
 velocity of light is constant. We have no absolute frame- 
 work of reference, and ether therefore, if we assume it to
 
 CHAP, xv THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY 339 
 
 exist, performs no function and affords no independent 
 support to physical theory outside that function for which 
 it is postulated. 
 
 The work of Einstein has been to turn the principle of 
 relativity to general scientific account. This meant the 
 abandonment of any independent objective absolute as the 
 basis of physical science. It was at once seen to involve 
 much more than this. It implied the change to a monadic 
 concept of reality, a concept which had been treated 
 hitherto, not only by the scientific world but also by 
 philosophers, as the antithesis of a scientific concept. Ein- 
 stein is a philosopher in spite of himself, and like Moliere's 
 Medecin malgre lui, the consternation he has spread in the 
 realms of philosophy may be fitly compared to the havoc 
 the wood-cutter caused in the orthodox medical circles. 
 
 Let us see then what is the effect of the adoption of 
 the new principle and of its extension as a principle of 
 interpretation beyond the special case for which it had to 
 be invoked, in order to include all the laws of nature. 
 
 The principle is : Every law of nature, in so far as it is 
 a quantitative measurement and expressed in mathematical 
 equations, is measurable by co-ordinates chosen for a system 
 or frame of reference to which the observer is attached and 
 which consequently for him is a system at rest. The laws 
 of nature are the same for all observers in all systems 
 moving relatively to one another because all observers use 
 the co-ordinates of their own system. 
 
 There is no system of reference which is at rest 
 absolutely in relation to systems of reference which are 
 moving absolutely. 
 
 A system of reference is not a thing-in-itself ; it is a 
 system of reference only for the observer who co-ordinates 
 the universe from it. 
 
 The continuity of the laws of nature does not depend 
 on the systems of reference and their unchangeableness 
 relatively to one another, but on the automatic adaptations 
 of the axes of co-ordination of the observers which compensate 
 the changes in or of systems of reference. 
 
 The universality of the laws of nature does not depend
 
 340 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 on the objective existence of the system of reference but 
 on the common source and uniform aims of the activity 
 of self-centred subjects of experience. 
 
 Mathematical formulae and quantitative equations refer 
 to ratios and not to invariable units of dimensions : 
 they are meaningless when posited of a system of 
 reference assumed to be independent of an observer's co- 
 ordination. 
 
 Physical science implies an active subject co-ordinating 
 an external world, and the norm or standard of dimensions 
 of that world is relative to the system of reference which 
 for that subject is at rest. 
 
 Knowledge is selection, but there is no unselected matrix 
 and no unselecting subject, save as limiting concepts. 
 Neither mind in itself nor nature in itself is a system of 
 reference. Mind and nature are essentially distinct but 
 existentially one. 
 
 Activity simple and indivisible in its being and multiple 
 in its expression is the fundamental concept of reality. Its 
 simplicity and unity as mind, its variety and diversity as 
 nature, are seen from within, not surveyed from without. 
 There is no without. 
 
 The adoption of the principle of relativity means, there- 
 fore, that the subjective factor, inseparable from knowledge 
 in the very concept of it, must enter positively into physical 
 science. There is no mathematical equation and no scientific 
 concept which can claim to be even abstractly true when 
 the subjective factor is suppressed. I will now illustrate 
 the consequences which follow from this in physics, in 
 mathematics and in philosophy. 
 
 Let us start with physics and consider from this stand- 
 point the nature of the fact which has proved so disconcert- 
 ing from the old standpoint, the impossibility of com- 
 pounding the velocity of light with experienced velocities. 
 For the system of reference which human nature has 
 selected, light has zero velocity. We are accustomed to say 
 that the velocity of light is comparatively to terrestrial 
 velocities so enormous that for human beings in their 
 ordinary experience it is inappreciable. We put it in that
 
 CHAP, xv THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY 341 
 
 way simply because we happen to have learnt by astronomical 
 observations and calculations, and reasoning thereon, that 
 there is a velocity of light which can be definitely and 
 accurately expressed in terms of miles and seconds, and 
 with such precision that we can know it to be 186,330 miles 
 to the second in vacuo with a margin of error not exceeding 
 thirty miles a second. But this is a calculated velocity, 
 not a perceived velocity. The fact is that for a normal 
 human experience there can be no velocity of light, or if 
 we say that there is a velocity, then though theoretically 
 it exists, yet for human perceptual experience it is zero. 
 It is easy to recognize this if we consider that were 
 there a race of abnormal human beings who were sight- 
 less, yet responsive to other influences than light, then 
 for them some other propagated influence, say sound, 
 would necessarily have zero velocity. The discovery that 
 light has a velocity, originally an interpretation of the 
 discrepancies in the calculations of the eclipses of Jupiter's 
 moons, has brought a vast extension of knowledge and 
 given us a new unit for calculating the stellar distances. 
 But while theoretically the knowledge of this velocity is 
 of prime importance, practically it leaves us where we were. 
 It is not a new fact of experience which can be made to 
 take its place within the co-ordination of our human world, 
 simply because we have not, and in the nature of the case 
 cannot have, any means of introducing into our system of 
 reference a background against which that velocity can be 
 manifested and which would act as a standard for comparing 
 it or compounding it with other velocities. Take an actual 
 instance of the application of this knowledge and of its in- 
 appreciability in experience. Betelgeux, the bright star in 
 the constellation Orion, is discovered by astronomical obser- 
 vations and calculations to be 160 light years distant from us 
 and to have a mass some 800 diameters greater than that of 
 our sun. Every twenty-four hours that star completes a re- 
 volution of the firmament. If then we calculate the mileage of 
 that orbit (it is simply a sum in arithmetic), we find that 
 relatively to us that spot of light we name the star must 
 be moving in the firmament at a velocity some hundreds of
 
 342 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 thousands of times greater than the velocity of light. And 
 this is not a very distant star, there are some for which 
 the velocity relatively to us must be million times greater. 
 It may perhaps be objected that this velocity is not a real 
 velocity because it is the earth and not the star which is 
 moving. True, but that is the significant thing. The star 
 ought to have this apparent velocity and yet it has not, why 
 not ? Because it is merely a calculated orbit, and our system 
 has no means of communicating with the source of light 
 independently of the light, nothing which could inform us, 
 before the light signal appears, that the signal has set out 
 and may be expected, in the way that the lightning informs 
 us that the thunder peal is on its way. There is nothing 
 in the velocity of light which makes it in itself different 
 from any other velocity. Its constancy and our inability 
 to compound it with other velocities is due to the purely 
 negative fact that our system of reference, the selected and 
 organized range of our human world, has no background 
 against which the velocity of light can stand out and 
 challenge comparison. The result is that its known velocity 
 is a theoretical reality which appears as though it ought 
 to, and yet possesses no means by which it can, be brought 
 into accord with our experience. The principle of relativity 
 enables us at once to put it right but at the sacrifice of 
 apparent simplicity. 
 
 Let us now take an illustration of the application of the 
 principle in mathematics. When we ask ourselves what is 
 a straight line, we construct in imagination the interval or 
 distance between two points. It seems to us perfectly 
 obvious that in the case of any two selected points, the 
 distance or shortest line between them, whatever difficulties 
 it may offer to any one who would construct it by drawing 
 it, and independently of whether any one has ever succeeded 
 in doing so even in imagination, exists theoretically. This 
 existence appears to us so self-evident that we take its 
 definition, the shortest line, as an axiom or postulate and 
 found thereon the science of geometry. But what does 
 this imply ? It implies that for us there exists a system 
 in which between any two points there is one and only one
 
 CHAP, xv THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY 343 
 
 straight line, and that this is the shortest line that can be 
 drawn in that system between these points. But is there 
 an absolute system, a real extension or space, in which a 
 particular straight line is absolutely the shortest distance 
 for any and every system ? We have always supposed so, 
 practically from the beginning of mathematical science. 
 We have conceived this absolute system by the apparently 
 easy device of supposing emptiness, real and immobile, as 
 the necessary background of all movement, and we have 
 conceived geometry to be the science of this emptiness. 
 Then, possessing this concept, although the straight lines we 
 actually construct are constructed in and for a system moving 
 in space, and not for the space in which the system moves, 
 it seems that it must be with this absolute space that the 
 geometry is concerned. Our straight lines are not distorted 
 for our system, but when their properties are to be demon- 
 strated they are referred to the absolute system, and this 
 seems perfectly easy to do. But modern mathematics has 
 awakened to the theoretical inconceivability of absolute space 
 and to its practical unworkability, and the principle of rela- 
 tivity has come to its rescue. It substitutes for a logical 
 definition based on a metaphysical concept a purely empirical 
 fact. Instead of starting with a straight line as the shortest 
 between two points in a hypothetical immobile medium, it 
 starts with the law of inertia, the universal principle that 
 whatever moves moves in a straight line. It takes its 
 definition from the movement of a particle and not from 
 the logical deduction of a concept. A body free to move 
 and moving freely takes the shortest path, and this is the 
 straight line, but the straight line for one system of reference 
 moving relatively to another system is not the shortest 
 line for an observer in that other system. Thus from two 
 facts of experience, (i) that every freely moving particle 
 takes the shortest path, and (2) that all observation 
 of movement is from systems moving relatively to one 
 another, we get a new basis for a science of geometry. 
 From our terrestrial system, for example, the moon moves 
 through space in a complicated spiral, but the moon is 
 moving in the shortest path, and there is a system, let us
 
 344 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 call it the lunar system, for which the moon's path would 
 appear, as well as be, as direct as is to us the path of a 
 beam of light. 
 
 Let us now turn from the scientific to the philosophic 
 aspect of the problem. In choosing as an illustration a 
 purely philosophical controversy, the question of freedom 
 and determinism, we are dealing with what is still the 
 crucial issue, the supreme and culminating interest, in 
 philosophy to-day. How are we to conceive freedom ? 
 How are we to reconcile the essential contingency of mind 
 with the essential determinism of nature ? How are we 
 to conceive existence which in its nature and origin is 
 activity, and therefore freedom, and in its development 
 is necessity ? When we pass in review the work of the 
 leaders in the modern philosophical movement, we can easily 
 recognize beneath their special problems and particular 
 interests this fundamental problem. Let us see how under 
 the influence of the scientific development this problem of 
 freedom has been transformed. 
 
 Every one has heard of, even if unfamiliar with, the great 
 controversy concerning the freedom of the will which for more 
 than two centuries following the Lutheran Reformation 
 divided theologians and philosophers into hostile camps of 
 determinists and libertarians. The determinists (Calvinists, 
 Jansenists, Port Royalists) certainly seemed from the first 
 to have the best of the logical argument, for they pinned 
 their opponents the libertarians (Arminians, Molinists) to 
 a position which they named the liberty of indifference, 
 and which it was easy to show involved them in logical 
 self-contradiction and absurdity. Their argument was that 
 if the will is free it must mean that it does not obey any 
 motive, that it must in fact preserve a perfect indifference 
 in regard to the motives which would seem to determine 
 its choice of alternatives, and that in the last resource it 
 must be purely arbitrary. For, so the argument ran, 
 we are able in every volitional act to distinguish the will 
 which has chosen that action and the motive, end, or 
 purpose, of the action it has chosen to accomplish. More- 
 over, a volition always implies that a choice has been
 
 CHAP, xv THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY 345 
 
 exercised between alternatives each at least apparently 
 possible. Either, therefore, the choice is imposed on the 
 will by the motive, and then it is the strongest motive 
 which determines the will, or it is imposed on the motive 
 by the will, which, indifferent to motives, makes its motive 
 by arbitrarily choosing it. Hence the two sides found 
 themselves contending not about freedom at all, but about 
 moral responsibility ; for if the will is free there can be 
 no moral principle, if it is determined no moral responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 In philosophy to-day this controversy is completely 
 superseded. We are able to see what it was impos- 
 sible then to conceive, that the problem was insoluble 
 because it was propounded in abstract terms. In so 
 positing it, philosophers were simply following the natural 
 bent of the intellect, which only understands by analys- 
 ing, abstracting and fixing its terms. There seemed no 
 escape. The abstract concepts were forced on thought by 
 logical analysis. Because all willed actions are motived, 
 and as the will is one and identical while the motives are 
 many and diverse, so it seemed impossible not to regard 
 the will as a thing, existing apart from and independently 
 of the motives, and motives as being what they are and 
 self-identical whether or not they are willed. Either then, 
 it seemed natural to argue, the will acts in accordance 
 with what proves to be, and is shown by the action itself 
 to have been, the strongest motive, and in that case to 
 speak of freedom is absurd. Freedom can be no more than 
 an appearance due to our ignorance before the event of what 
 will prove to be the determining motive. Or else, the will 
 is entirely indifferent to the motives and able to act without 
 regard to what may appear to be their strength or weakness, 
 and then its freedom is a despotic, anarchic, irresponsible 
 lawlessness. Equally absurd in its abstractness was the 
 determinist view, for the motive fixed as an abstraction 
 was no longer a motive, it became indistinguishable from 
 the laws of nature which govern the movements of material 
 things. 
 
 The old problem of the freedom of the will has lost its
 
 346 A THEORY OF MONADS PART m 
 
 meaning. Modern philosophy has its problem of freedom, 
 but a problem completely transformed. Freedom is still for 
 us the characteristic of mind in its opposition to nature, but 
 we are delivered from a hopeless antinomy because we are 
 no longer compelled to conceive mind in its abstractness as 
 independent of nature or nature in its abstractness as inde- 
 pendent of mind. Our problem is to conceive the concrete. 
 Mind and nature for us exist only in their indissoluble unity. 
 The new scientific revolution has made it possible to 
 reconcile the concept of the freedom of mind with the 
 necessity of nature. For the principle of relativity is in 
 effect the insistence that reality shall not be taken as an 
 abstract mind or an abstract nature but as the concrete 
 integration in which they are correlative terms. Hitherto 
 the scientific problem has been to find a place for mind 
 in the objective system of nature, and the philosophic 
 problem to validate the obstinate objectivity of nature, 
 seeing that nature can only affect the mind in the shadowy 
 dream-like form of the idea. Now when reality is taken in 
 the concrete, as the general principle of relativity requires 
 us to take it, we do not separate the observer from what 
 he observes, the mind from its object, the agent from his 
 activity, the subject from the object, and then dispute as 
 to the primacy of the one over the other. There are for 
 the new principle no clocks which purport to measure time 
 in itself, we must always know whose time we are measur- 
 ing. There are no standard footrules by which to measure 
 length, breadth and thickness of empty space, we must 
 always know whose space we are measuring. This can 
 only mean one thing. We must think the reality in which 
 we are active centres of experience and in which we are 
 able to represent infinite actual and possible centres of 
 experience under the category of freedom. To suppose an 
 ultimate necessity controlling our activity, behind us or 
 above us (us, not as empirical individuals, but as universal 
 concrete mind), as Homer represented Fate as the power 
 behind Zeus, is to destroy the concept in the very act of 
 conceiving it. The freedom of the original activity is not 
 confronted with the iron necessity of nature, humbly
 
 CHAP, xv THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY 347 
 
 entreating that some place be assigned to it, if only as the 
 epiphenomenon, which the old scientific materialism reluc- 
 tantly conceded. It is freedom in the pure scientific meaning 
 of a character inherent in the nature of reality. The new 
 science cannot conceive reality except as activity. Original 
 activity is dependent on the concept of freedom. This 
 freedom itself creates necessity in every mode by which 
 activity expresses itself. Freedom characterizes the act, 
 necessity the fact. It is the act which produces the fact 
 and not vice versa. The freedom, therefore, which hitherto 
 has seemed the special privilege of self-conscious minds, 
 imagined as somehow rising in rebellion against the necessity 
 of an inexorable nature which has produced them, and from 
 which they seem to emerge as an apparition, is in very- 
 truth the fundamental character of the reality which has 
 produced nature. We have attained the concept of it in 
 its concreteness, not as the empirical mind which may be 
 yours or mine but as the universal activity. 
 
 And now it may be said, what use is this as a working 
 scientific principle ? It may be sound as philosophy, it 
 may be consoling as religion, but will it advance science ? 
 The scientific revolution is the reply. Its dethronement 
 of materialism, its affirmation of mind and mind's selective 
 activity, its principles of co-ordination, and its systems of 
 reference, prove that science no more than philosophy can 
 progress unless its working concepts are concrete. The 
 material atom has failed by reason of the abstractness of 
 its concept. Science is turning, unconsciously it may be 
 but surely, to the concept of the monad.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Acquirement of skill, 212 
 Activity, the concept of, 146 
 Aesthetic activity, the, 232 
 Animal mind, the, 177 
 Animism, 115, 326 
 Aquinas, the five proofs, 102 
 Atoms and the void, 64 
 Attention, psychological, 145 
 Attention to life, 150, 168, 314 
 
 Behaviourism, 209 
 
 Bergson, theory of matter and 
 intellect, 89; ilan vital, 176; 
 creative evolution, 302 
 
 Berkeley, 3 ; claim to represent 
 common sense, 41 ; doctrine of 
 God as continuous perceiver, 156, 
 277 ; Commonplace Book, 273 
 
 Body, the, a privileged object, 204 
 
 Brain and mind, 209 
 
 Calvinism and the ethical dilemma, 
 
 106 
 Change, sensed not inferred, 129, 
 
 134 ; perception of, 146 
 Common sense not dualistic, 44 
 Composition of velocities, 336 
 Concentration of consciousness, 148 
 Concepts in science and philosophy, 
 
 284 
 
 Consciousness, its momentary 
 character, 149 ; its continuity, 
 199 
 
 Cosmological argument, the, 102 
 Creation of monads, inconceiva- 
 bility of, 55 
 Creative evolution, 301 
 
 Darwinian theory, the, 5 
 Democritus, the atomic theory, 64 
 
 Descartes, 25, 187 ; principle of 
 universal doubt, 269 ; veracity of 
 God, 270 ; two substances, 305 
 
 Discrimination, a factor of recog- 
 nition, 167 
 
 Dream, reversal of time-direction 
 in, 142 
 
 Duration, the concept of, 142 
 
 Eclipse Expedition, the, 328 
 Einstein, 3, 329, 339 
 Energy, conservation of, 147 
 Epicritic and protopathic response, 
 
 230 
 Epiphenomenon theory, the, 175, 
 
 223 
 
 Ether hypothesis, the, 338 
 Experience, learning by, 163 
 
 Finite individuality, the substan- 
 tival and adjectival views of, 
 112, 118 
 
 Freedom and determinism, 220 
 Free-will controversy, the, 344 
 Freud, theory of dream-interpreta- 
 tion, 202, 236 
 Future as present existence, the, 141 
 
 Geometries, the non-Euclidean, 8, 
 
 331 
 
 Germ, the potentiality of body and 
 mind, 178, 213 
 
 Habit-memory, 167 
 
 Head, Dr. Henry, 206, 230, 233 
 
 Hegel, nature-philosophy, 86 ; con- 
 crete universal, 284 ; dialectic of 
 becoming, 289 
 
 History, present reality, 153 
 
 Hume, 182, 249, 332 
 
 349
 
 350 
 
 A THEORY OF MONADS 
 
 Hypothesis in science and philo- 
 sophy, 266 
 
 Imagery, its relation to sensation, 
 
 234 ; to emotion, 235 
 Imagination the fundamental mental 
 
 activity, 237 
 
 Individuality, the problem of, 113 
 Intellect and matter, 305 
 Interaction and parallelism, 195 
 Intercourse, the scheme of, 253 
 Intersubjective intercourse, 25 
 
 Job, concept of nature in Book of, 
 82 
 
 Kant, comparison of mathematical 
 
 and philosophical truth, 17 ; 
 
 theory of space and time, 46 ; 
 
 theory of thing-in-itself, 150 ; the 
 
 a priori synthesis, 277 
 Knowledge, the problem of, 262 
 
 Learning by experience, 163 
 Leibniz, controversy with Arnauld, 
 
 108 ; relation to Spinoza, 188 ; 
 
 the two clocks, 228 ; Nouveaux 
 
 Essais, 332 
 Life, the concept of, 148 ; as 
 
 substance, 305 
 Localization in the cerebral cortex, 
 
 229 
 
 Locke's notion of substance, 59 
 Lucretius, the argument for the 
 
 void, 65 
 
 M'Dougall, illustration of the tele- 
 gram, 192 
 
 Mach's sensations theory, 225 
 Malebranche, denial of magnitude, 
 
 46 ; relation to Berkeley, 275 
 Materialistic concept of life, 296 
 Mathematical continuum, the, 7, 151 
 Mathematical and psychological 
 
 time, 139 
 
 Mechanistic hypothesis, the, 304 
 Memory, the condition of conscious 
 experience, 157 ; a condition of 
 perception, 158 ; its two forms, 
 1 66 ; not a material fact, 198 
 Michelson and Morley's experiment, 
 
 77. 335 
 
 Mind, the two ways of regarding, 
 15 ; independent of quantity of 
 neural matter, 211 
 
 Mind-energy, 190, 240 
 
 Moment of experience, duration of 
 
 the, 126 
 
 Monadic order, the, 21 
 Monadology, 17, 321 
 Monads, Leibniz's definition, 18 ; 
 
 unities not units, 23 ; things-in- 
 
 themselves, 281 
 Monism, 50 
 Morgan, Prof. Lloyd, the incubated 
 
 moorhen, 172 
 
 Movement in a plenum, 68, 70 
 Miiller, Johannes, the specific energy 
 
 of the nerves, 229 
 
 Naive realism, 262 
 
 Neural substance in relation to in- 
 telligence, 211 
 
 Newton, theory of space and time, 
 70 ; first law of motion, 72 ; un- 
 workability of his assumption, 337 
 
 Ontological argument, the, 101 ; its 
 place in modern philosophy, 105, 
 271 
 
 Parallelism, 223 
 
 Perceptual reality, 238 
 
 Personal survival, 220 
 
 Physical reality, the scientific notion 
 
 of, 62 
 Pre-established harmony, the, 54, 
 
 318 
 
 Principle of relativity, the, 73, 335 
 Protopathic responses, 231 
 
 Recognition, the philosophical pro- 
 blem of, 159 ; condition of the 
 interpretation of perception, 162 ; 
 its immediacy, 164 ; the mark of 
 the past on the present, 170 ; 
 instinctive, 171 
 
 Reid, Thomas, 249 
 
 Retention, 166 
 
 Revival, 167 
 
 Selection, a mental activity, 167 
 Sensation, its apparent primacy, 
 
 157 ; its relation to the cerebral 
 
 cortex, 233 
 Sense-datum, the problem of its 
 
 objectivity, 144 
 Skill, the acquirement of, 212 
 Socrates and the Delphic oracle, 16
 
 INDEX 
 
 351 
 
 Solidarity and physical causality, 
 
 218 
 
 Solipsism, 243, 300, 311 
 Soul, various meanings of the term, 
 
 196 
 
 Specificity of neurones, 206, 229 
 Specious present, the, 135 
 Speech, the nature of, 244 
 Spencer, Herbert, the genesis of 
 
 space from simultaneity, 132 ; the 
 
 synthetic philosophy, 323 
 Spinoza, the science of God, 98 ; 
 
 the relation of mind and body, 
 
 176 ; monism, 188 
 Survival of personality, 220 
 
 Teleological argument, the, 104 
 
 Things and actions, 318 
 Trinity, the doctrine of the, 85 
 
 Unconscious mind, the concept of, 
 
 200 
 Unconsciousness as a product of 
 
 evolution, 312 
 
 Validity, the problem of, 224 
 Velocity of light, 76, 340 
 Vortex theory, the, 68 
 
 Weber- Fechner psycho-physical law, 
 
 the, 229 
 
 Windowlessness of the monad, 33 
 Wordsworth's " Ode on Im- 
 mortality," 83 
 
 THE END 
 
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