A FRAGMENT ON THE 
 HUMAN MIND
 
 Prevailing studies are of no small consequence to a State, 
 the religion, manners, and civil Government of a country 
 ever taking some bias from its philosophy, which affects not 
 only the minds of its professors and students, but also the 
 opinions of all the better sort and the practice of the whole 
 people remotely. 
 
 Has not fatalism gained ground during the general passion 
 for the corpuscularian and mechanical philosophy ? . . . . 
 
 But when it entered the Seminaries of learning as a 
 necessary accomplishment and most important part of educa- 
 tion, by engrossing men's thoughts and fixing their minds 
 so much on corporeal objects and the laws of motion, it hath, 
 however, undesignedly, indirectly, and by accident, yet not 
 a little indisposed them for spiritual, moral, and intellectual 
 matters. BERKELEY, Siris.
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 A FRAGMENT 
 
 ON THE 
 
 HUMAN MIND 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN THEODORE MERZ 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'A HISTORY OF EUROPEAN THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,' 
 'RKLIGION AND SCIENCE' 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 MCMXIX 
 
 All Rights reserved
 
 B 
 
 T..TTTTV 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF C ' T T^ORNIA 
 SANTA BAKBAliA 
 
 PEEFACE, 
 
 THERE are many defects in this little book, and many 
 things might be said to show that these defects may 
 form its chief interest. 
 
 With this paraphrase of a Captatio which has 
 become classical in English literature, I should like to 
 offer this Fragment to the attention of thoughtful and 
 benevolent readers. For indeed, some apology and 
 some explanations are needed in putting forward so 
 incomplete and so small a contribution to the ever- 
 increasing volume of Philosophical Writings of the 
 present day. 
 
 As these explanations refer largely to my earlier 
 writings and also to matters which are personal, I 
 propose to keep them out of the text of the Treatise, 
 bringing them together in this prefatory note. In 
 this way they will not disturb the simple course of 
 my argument or trouble the reader with historical 
 references. 
 
 In the first place, I must go back to my larger 
 work, the ' History of European Thought in the 
 Nineteenth Century,' which was published in four 
 volumes during the years 1896-1914. The reception 
 of this work by the reading public has been so favour-
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 able, and the many shorter and longer notices have 
 been with one exception so appreciative, that I feel 
 bound to express my sincere thanks to both readers 
 and reviewers. Some remarks have, however, been 
 made which prove that the plan as well as the main 
 argument of the work has not always been fully 
 understood. The reason for this is no doubt to be 
 found in the book itself and the incompleteness of 
 its execution. And one of the objects I have in view 
 in publishing the present Treatise is to give a reply 
 to some of the very pertinent questions which have 
 been put to me both in public notices and in private 
 correspondence. 
 
 After a sustained but frequently interrupted occu- 
 pation with philosophical studies during more than 
 twenty years of my life, I finally, about the year 1882, 
 fixed upon a definite subject and the title of a work 
 which should embody the main result of the labours 
 of a lifetime. 
 
 The first object I had in view was purely personal 
 it was the desire to satisfy myself as to the principal 
 changes which had come over European Thought in 
 the course of the nineteenth century, showing, if 
 possible, what amount of unity and consistency had 
 been arrived at in the three principal literatures with 
 which I was acquainted. I thought this a necessary 
 though laborious and absorbing preparation for the 
 further personal object I had in view viz., a clearer 
 definition of my own philosophical position. But as 
 it did not seem to me to be right to follow this out
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 for purely personal satisfaction, I resolved to put in 
 writing for the benefit of others what I originally 
 attempted merely to satisfy my own desire. 
 
 For this purpose I resolved to keep in the back- 
 ground all the attempts I had made to formulate for 
 myself a definite answer to what I early considered 
 to be the main problem of modern philosophy : the 
 problem of the relation of Religion and Science. I 
 therefore waited patiently to see what result would 
 be produced in my own mind by an impartial study 
 of those fundamental principles which in Science as 
 well as in Philosophy and in the general aspect of 
 Life had been slowly elaborated in the course of 
 the century I was living in. I was not prepared to 
 abandon the preliminary position to which I was led 
 by my earlier studies. These centred in the works of 
 Kant and Lotze, with a strong inclination on the one 
 side to go back to Hume and on the other to go 
 forward to a conception of Religion somewhat akin 
 to that adopted by Schleiermacher, in marked oppo- 
 sition to the widespread but very divergent teachings 
 of the followers of Hegel. 
 
 My school and college days fell into a period and 
 into surroundings in which doctrines of Materialism 
 formed the principal subject of philosophic interest. 
 Asserted vehemently by some and more insinuat- 
 ingly by others, this mode of Thought professed to 
 be based on Science as well as on Philosophy, and 
 brushed away ruthlessly my inherited religious 
 beliefs. Though deeply interested in the arguments 
 of the prominent Materialists, I instinctively turned
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 away from the cavalier manner in which they treated 
 the history as well as the principles of a spiritual 
 view of the World and Life. 
 
 As a graduate in mathematical and physical Science, 
 I was fully aware of the enormous value of exact 
 or mathematical Thought, which was pushing its way 
 into all regions of natural knowledge, but I was not 
 satisfied that the mental principles of religious life 
 and thought were equally clearly understood. 
 
 The philosophical problem thus shaped itself in my 
 mind as follows. Kant had put the question : How is 
 Scientific Knowledge possible in the face of those 
 doubts which Hume has for all time clearly laid 
 before thoughtful and penetrating minds ? It seemed 
 to me that another and equally important question is 
 provoked by Hume's doubts the question, namely, 
 How is Spiritual Thought and Knowledge possible ? 
 In both cases in that of Science as well as in that of 
 Religion there was no question in my mind as to 
 the existence of the objects of the studies, as there 
 certainly was no doubt in Kant's mind regarding the 
 former. The problem was not to build up scientific or 
 spiritual knowledge, for both these existed already, 
 but to answer the philosophical question : How are we 
 to conceive of the human mind in its individual and 
 social Life so as to explain the origin and growth 
 of two regions of Thought equally necessary, though 
 frequently in conflict in the course of human progress 
 and culture ? 
 
 Kant had attempted to answer the question : How 
 is exact Science possible ? but had left as it were a
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 blank in his doctrine as to the other question : 
 How is Religion possible ? Nor did I find any satis- 
 factory answer to the latter question in the writings 
 of either Materialists or Idealists, of whom the former 
 explained the spiritual aspect merely as a delusion 
 or at best as an attractive poetical creation of the 
 human mind, whilst the Idealists evaporated, as it 
 seemed to me, all religious truth into mere abstract 
 notions such as the Absolute, which had not even the 
 merit of being original. What attracted me in Lotze 
 was mainly the position he took up in the Preface to 
 his most original work, the ' Microcosmus.' He there 
 promised to give as comprehensive a survey of the 
 Mental and Spiritual World in us as, shortly before 
 that time, Humboldt had attempted to give of the 
 Physical World which surrounds us. 
 
 Lotze was little known in this country when I 
 returned to it fifty years ago in order to take up 
 practical work and make myself acquainted with 
 other interests and other lines of thought than 
 those which I had pursued during my school and 
 college days abroad. Without any definite plan 
 before me I felt sure that these new surround- 
 ings would react favourably on the clearance of 
 my philosophical opinions. This clearance, with an 
 accompanying change, came only very gradually in 
 the course of my studies in connection with my 
 larger work. 
 
 The plan of the work was explained in a lengthy 
 Introduction to the first volume, and somewhat more 
 precisely in the Introduction to the third volume.
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 I conceived of philosophical Thought as occupying an 
 intermediate position between scientific Thought and 
 Individual Poetical and Religious Thought. In 
 its general nature I considered philosophical thought 
 to be akin to Science, inasmuch as it proceeds by 
 definite method : but I also conceived its relationship 
 with poetical and religious thought as being essen- 
 tially introspective. Thus philosophy agrees with 
 science inasmuch as it proceeds methodically, but it 
 differs from science inasmuch as the latter is based 
 on circumspection, whereas philosophy is based on 
 introspection. 
 
 The whole work was thus planned to comprise 
 three sections : first, The History of Scientific 
 Thought during the Nineteenth Century in the three 
 countries, France, Germany, and England ; second, 
 The History of Philosophic Thought ; and third, The 
 History of Individual Poetical and Religious 
 Thought. Unfortunately I have not been able to 
 do more than complete the first two sections. 
 Advanced years and deficient eyesight have made it 
 impossible for me to attempt to write the third 
 section, although before beginning to put anything 
 in writing I had made very, extensive studies in 
 what may be called the Introspective Literature of 
 the three countries. This has caused some misunder- 
 standing as to the drift of the whole book and some 
 not undeserved criticisms. 
 
 It was urged by some critics that German Thought 
 was placed unduly in the foreground with a cor- 
 responding neglect of the large body of original
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 Thought in this country during the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. This defect would have been remedied had 
 I been permitted to write the third section. No 
 country has such an extensive and brilliant general 
 literature to glory in as England during the nine- 
 teenth century. The changes in the general aspect 
 of Thought exhibited in Poetry and Fiction, in the 
 discussion of questions of Art and Religion, have been 
 much greater in this country than abroad. 
 
 Against the long array of philosophical poets 
 beginning with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and 
 ending with Browning who have gained or are 
 now gaining great influence outside of their native 
 country, Germany has to set only one name of the 
 very first order, that of Goethe, and this belongs 
 in considerable part to the former century. 
 
 Though France has certainly continued in the first 
 rank in the domain of fiction and literary criticism, 
 England has created in fiction more than one style 
 of its own, and its influence on polite literature abroad 
 has been, if not greater, certainly quite as great as 
 that of France. 
 
 The great works of this country in Poetry and 
 Fiction have also been permeated by a religious 
 spirit and characterised by a purity of moral feeling 
 which contrasts favourably with the materialism and 
 flippancy which we find in much of the best writing 
 in modern foreign literature and also in the English 
 literature of the eighteenth century. Thus this 
 country would have stood foremost in an attempted 
 portraiture of that region of spontaneous Thought
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 which is the home of most of those leading ideas 
 that not only develop into philosophical systems, but 
 react also upon the deepest interests of social life. 
 
 But I cannot do more to remedy the defect referred 
 to than point out the cause of it and refer my readers 
 to the general Introduction and the three chapters 
 on the " Growth and Diffusion of the Scientific 
 Spirit" in the first volume; where it is shown that 
 during the nineteenth century France was pre- 
 eminently the country of pure Science, Germany of 
 Philosophy, and England of spontaneous and in- 
 dividual Thought. To work out this last statement 
 would have been for the author himself the most 
 fascinating portion of his work. 
 
 Some of my critics have generously expressed the 
 wish that I had given more of my own personal views 
 when discussing impartially the various and often 
 opposing doctrines of other thinkers. Some of them 
 even found this studied impartiality carried so far 
 as not infrequently to give the impression that my 
 leanings were quite in another direction than that 
 really and finally adopted by me. 
 
 What induced me to keep my own convictions so 
 carefully in the background was not only a desire 
 for impartiality in dealing with different aspects of 
 Thought, but quite as much the fact that I was 
 myself only gradually forming and strengthening 
 those fundamental views which took definite shape 
 at the end of my historical studies : only on rare 
 occasions, and mainly towards the end of the second 
 section, did I feel able to hint at the final con-
 
 PREFACE. xiii 
 
 elusions to which I had been led. It was indeed 
 through a process of induction that I gradually 
 arrived at clearer definitions, which I put forward 
 tentatively in some of the notes and in the conclud- 
 ing chapter of the fourth volume. 
 
 In the following brief and fragmentary Tract I 
 try to make some amends for the defects and short- 
 comings which have been correctly noted by some of 
 the most competent reviewers of the History. 
 
 Already in an Essay on the special problem the 
 interest in which led me originally to philosophical 
 studies, I have had occasion to enlarge on some of the 
 points which had been suggested in the larger work. 
 I was desirous, before it was too late, to give definite 
 expression to the main result of my lifelong con- 
 templation of the problem of the mutual relations of 
 Religion and Science. What I am now attempting 
 is to state more explicitly and in greater generality 
 that aspect of Thought which I have made my own, 
 and which was implied in my larger work and 
 only sketched with a special object in the essay on 
 ' Religion and Science.' 
 
 As this aspect of Thought follows very closely 
 the path which British speculation had prepared for 
 itself and followed down to the end of the eighteenth 
 century, I cherish the hope that it will commend 
 itself to thoughtful readers in this country to whom 
 Continental Transcendentalism and Positivism have 
 proved equally unattractive. 
 
 I am much indebted for help and encouragement to 
 a few friends who have for many years taken a warm
 
 xiv PREFACE. 
 
 interest in the progress of my work. Among these 
 I may specially mention Professor Sampson, F.R.S., 
 Astronomer-Royal of Scotland, and Dr F. B. Jevons, 
 Master of Bishop Hatfield Hall, Durham. 
 
 Mr Thomas Whittaker, B.A., has again, with his 
 unfailing care and ability, revised the proofs and made 
 many valuable alterations and suggestions, for which 
 I desire to thank him sincerely.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 PREFACE V 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . 1 
 
 I. THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD . . . . . 8 
 
 II. THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT . ... 31 
 
 III. OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE .... 50 
 
 IV. OF THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES ... . . 67 
 V. SUBJECT AND OBJECT . . . . . . .81 
 
 VI. OF REALITY IN GENERAL ...... 95 
 
 VII. OF THE INNER WORLD 127 
 
 VIII. OP TRUTH 141 
 
 IX. OF ACTIVITY . . . . . . . .155 
 
 X. OF THE PRINCIPLES OP EXACT SCIENCE . . > . . . 168 
 
 XI. OF VALUE ......... 191 
 
 XII. OF ARRANGEMENT AND ORDER . .V . . 204 
 
 XIII. OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE . . . . 211 
 
 XIV. THE WORLD OF FREEDOM OR OF VALUES . . . 229 
 
 XV. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION . . . . . _ 240 
 
 XVI. REVELATION. . . . . . . . . 266 
 
 XVII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION , 294
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 BRITISH Philosophy during the seventeenth and eight- 
 eenth centuries acquired and maintained that individual 
 character which entitles it to rank as one of the most 
 important phases in the history of human thought. 
 That in the comprehensive histories of philosophy, the 
 independent character of British thought has not found 
 adequate recognition may be explained by two principal 
 causes. 
 
 First, those comprehensive histories have been written 
 by foreign, mostly German, scholars. It is only within 
 the last fifty years that British thinkers have studied 
 the history of philosophic thought in its completeness, 
 and though some important contributions to this branch 
 of study have recently appeared in this country, they 
 refer mostly to ancient philosophy. 
 
 The second reason for the not uncommon neglect 
 with which British speculation as a whole has been 
 treated abroad, is to be found in the close connection 
 which exists between philosophy and general literature
 
 2 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 in this country. This makes it difficult for foreigners 
 to appreciate a body of thought which is essentially 
 home-grown. Expressed in the vernacular and even 
 in popular language, it has a close alliance with the 
 practical problems as well as the literary tastes of its 
 native country. 
 
 After the age of Francis Bacon, Hobbes, and Newton, 
 whose works were either published in the cosmopolitan 
 Latin tongue, or made their way on the Continent 
 through translation into it, we come upon three lead- 
 ing thinkers who governed British thought. They 
 came respectively from the three separate countries 
 which constitute the United Kingdom, and have stamped 
 their respective character upon their writings. Locke, 
 with his plain historical method, came from the south- 
 west of England ; the imaginative Berkeley came from 
 Ireland ; whilst Hume represents the subtlety of the 
 Scottish mind in its most clarified form. These three 
 thinkers, who form a close succession, received much 
 from Continental and earlier mediaeval and ancient 
 thinkers, but this provoked rather than hampered their 
 originality. And in return, in spite of the neglect just 
 mentioned, they gave more than they received. But 
 what they gave consisted more in definite well-marked 
 doctrines which had a stimulating effect on foreign 
 thought than in any general impression from that 
 original and independent method and line of thought 
 which they had made their own. 
 
 This special line of thought came to an end, after the 
 influence of Hume in this country had somewhat sub- 
 sided, in James Mill and the Scottish school. James 
 Mill led OP to John Stuart Mill, who abandoned the
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 plain historical method of Locke, attracted as he was 
 by the method of the natural and inductive sciences ; 
 whilst in the Scottish school the erudition of Dugald 
 Stewart, and still more of Sir William Hamilton, afforded 
 to British students a glimpse of the then compara- 
 tively unknown exploits of transcendental philosophy 
 in France and Germany. 
 
 The subject-matter of the classical school of British 
 thought was the human mind or human nature in the 
 whole circumference of its appearance within the larger 
 world of external nature. It was, in fact, a study of 
 the microcosm of mind as distinguished from the 
 macrocosm of nature, and its method was the "method 
 of ideas." As such, it was primarily introspective. 
 
 The titles of the great works of the three leaders in 
 this specifically British line of thought nearly all show 
 the comprehensive plan of their proposed investigations, 
 and with the exception of morals, which always formed 
 a matter of special and detached interest in this country, 
 the authors do not care to divide up their research 
 into separate well-marked sciences, such as Psychology, 
 Logic, Metaphysics, and Theory of Knowledge, con- 
 ventional in foreign philosophical treatises. This 
 comprehensive and independent study of the human 
 mind or human nature did not, however, escape 
 the influence of the contemporary study of the outer 
 world, the fruitful beginnings of which started somewhat 
 earlier in this country, though Newton's great work, 
 ' The Principia,' and Locke's ' Essay,' appeared within 
 the same decade of the seventeenth century. 
 
 And thus we find that after the middle of the eight- 
 eenth century, when Hume had brought the " method
 
 4 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 of ideas " to an impasse, the analytical and dissecting 
 process of thought which had led to such great results 
 in natural philosophy gained the upper hand, with the 
 result that the human mind suffered, as it were, dis- 
 integration through research after the manner in which 
 natural things were dissected and divided under the 
 hands of special students. 
 
 James Mill, in his ' Analysis of the Phenomena of the 
 Human Mind,' follows " the same method as that by 
 which any department of nature might be studied. 
 Mental phenomena are reduced to their simplest 
 elements, and the association of these into groups and 
 successions is investigated." J This means that research 
 is conducted by the combined methods of analysis and 
 synthesis. 
 
 Other critics of the "method of ideas" found the 
 cause of its failure or exhaustion to lie in the fact 
 that ideas cannot be isolated like physical things and 
 their constituent particles, and that a study of their 
 combination in judgments must form the beginning 
 of philosophical inquiry. This led necessarily to the 
 study of the connection of thoughts i.e., of logic 
 a step which had been independently taken by the 
 greatest critic of Hume on the Continent, by Kant. 
 
 This line of inquiry was, however, not consistently 
 followed in this country till much later. In its stead, 
 the doctrine of the association of ideas i.e., of the 
 synthesis of the elements of thought became for a 
 time dominant, mainly through the writings of Alexan- 
 der Bain, to which John Stuart Mill gave his hearty 
 
 1 W. R. Sorley in 'Cambridge History of English Literature,' vol. iiv., 
 chap, i., p. 5.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 support. The position of Bain is distinguished like- 
 wise by his introduction of the study of the physio- 
 logical phenomena connected with mental processes, in 
 which line of research he was influenced by the work 
 of Continental students. But Bain did not turn his 
 back upon that method which had become characteristic 
 of British philosophy ; he conceived it in a larger sense 
 as the "introspective method" rather than as the 
 " method of ideas," and. in one of his last deliverances, 
 still upheld it as by far the most important in the 
 domain of what was now called psychology. 
 
 In the meantime, contact with the natural sciences 
 on the one side and with Continental thought on the 
 other affected British philosophy very powerfully in 
 several ways. Among these the most noticeable is the 
 importation of those new aspects which had gradually 
 come out in the study of nature, and which found 
 their most pointed expression in this country in the 
 writings of Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley. The 
 phenomena of the outer world, notably those of the 
 living creation, ceased to be studied in isolation. 
 Their interconnection in space and time attracted 
 special attention. Environment and development 
 became watchwords in research and categories of 
 thought. 
 
 This way of looking at natural phenomena found 
 its classical expression in the doctrine of evolution, 
 which will always be connected with the name of 
 Herbert Spencer ; it became so popular as to per- 
 meate not only all philosophical writings but every 
 branch of literature and research, both on a large and 
 on a restricted scale. The idea was so comprehensive
 
 6 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 and attractive that it even brought under its sway 
 the opposite tendency of thought which, following 
 the lines adopted by Continental writers, aimed at 
 combating the naturalistic and agnostic doctrines 
 which seemed to be the first-fruits of the genetic study 
 of natural phenomena. 
 
 This latter tendency of thought connected itself 
 with the revival at Oxford of logical studies through 
 the influence of Mill. Not only was the study of 
 Aristotle continued and enlivened by a new spirit, but 
 the larger and deeper conception of logic, peculiar to 
 Hegel's system, attracted the notice of original minds, 
 and led to a new school variously termed Idealist, 
 Transcenderitalist, or Neo-Hegelian. These two dis- 
 tinct currents of thought, the agnostic of Spencer and 
 Huxley and the transcendentalist of Oxford, fill the 
 second half of the nineteenth century in this country. 
 In both schools we feel ourselves to be in an entirely 
 different atmosphere from that which surrounded the 
 introspective thought of previous centuries. In Oxford 
 itself, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume were not appraised at 
 their true value, and it was left to Scottish thinkers, 
 notably to Campbell Fraser and his followers, who 
 had continued the specifically British tradition, to 
 lead back to a better understanding of the plain 
 historical method, and to a comprehensive study of 
 the human mind. 
 
 The vitality of the introspective school of thought 
 is nowhere shown to greater advantage than in the 
 style of their writings, which is at once clear and 
 elegant, avoiding both the mystification of the tran- 
 scendentalists and the delusive plausibility gained by
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 an introduction of physical analogies into the dis- 
 cussion of purely mental phenomena. 
 
 Largely owing to the writings of this school, but 
 likewise also to the latest phases of transcendentalism 
 and the reaction which they produced in English and 
 American philosophic thought, it seems possible to take 
 a broader view of the introspective method ; defining 
 it more clearly and continuing it in immediate con- 
 nection with Berkeley and Hume. This was indi- 
 cated in the last chapter of the author's ' History of 
 European Thought in the Nineteenth Century ' ; and 
 the method has been applied to a special problem in 
 an essay entitled ' Religion and Science '
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 
 I. 
 
 MODEKN Philosophy, as distinguished from Mediaeval 
 Philosophy, is usually dated from Descartes. He may 
 be said to have inaugurated the introspective as 
 distinguished from the metaphysical or dialectical 
 point of view as the beginning of all fruitful mental 
 philosophy. Without entering into minute details, 
 the difference between these two points of view may 
 be stated as follows. 
 
 The adult thinking mind at that advanced stage of 
 civilisation when and where philosophy becomes a 
 desideratum if not a necessity, finds itself in possession 
 of a large number of abstract terms. Such terms, 
 words, or phrases are in general currency among 
 thinking persons, and are used in very various ways. 
 They are employed to prove certain statements of a 
 general character, and they are equally used to dis- 
 prove these same statements. Through this very 
 different use of the same terms a general confusion 
 arises, and this on its part leads to distrust and 
 scepticism. In Greece a special art came into existence 
 which purposed to show up this general uncertainty
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 9 
 
 which pervades all discussions on abstract and general 
 subjects. Those who practised this art most success- 
 fully professed to be in possession of such wisdom as 
 was attainable, and so were called " Sophists " or 
 professors of " Sophia." 
 
 The first prominent historical appearance of the 
 " Sophistic " phase of thought was among the Greeks. 
 But the appearance of the Sophists called forth a 
 further advance in abstract reasoning, and the object 
 of this was to fix the meaning of those abstract 
 words and terms which were in general accepted and 
 used without a clear definition of what is meant by 
 them. This new phase or manner of thought was in 
 antiquity termed "dialectic"; in modern times it is 
 called " criticism." It led in due course to two distinct 
 branches of philosophy : Logic and Metaphysic. And 
 these two distinct sciences reacted again upon the 
 earlier dialectic, making it more intricate, and as was 
 thought, a more powerful instrument of research. In 
 reality, though the dialectic of the Schoolmen and of 
 Hegel is much more refined and difficult than that 
 contained in the Socratic Dialogues of Plato, the main 
 characteristics of the process remain the same. It is 
 a process of cross-examination, not unlike that which 
 is carried on in the Law Courts of to-day, or which 
 the solitary thinker may carry on in the form of self- 
 questioning. The aim of the process is to attain two 
 fixed points. The first point is clearness and consistency 
 of thought, as expressed in the words of language. The 
 second is agreement between different persons; just 
 as in a legal trial the Judge, with the help of Counsel 
 and through cross-examination, tries to arrive at a
 
 10 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 consistent statement, and then expects the Jury to 
 agree in their verdict. 
 
 The aim of dialectic or criticism in philosophy is thus 
 to establish consistency of thought and agreement with 
 others. 
 
 II. 
 
 The historical development of this dialectic method, 
 though it led to great refinement of thought, proved, 
 nevertheless, in the course of many centuries, to be 
 incapable of securing the two points just mentioned, 
 namely, consistency and agreement of thought, and 
 it was therefore natural that thinking minds should 
 ponder over the causes of this failure and seek 
 for a different method of procedure. This different 
 method was first clearly practised in the Natural 
 Sciences. 
 
 In the domain of these the discussion of words and 
 terms of language was gradually superseded by direct 
 observation of things, and by a new language provided 
 by mathematics, and based ultimately on geometry. 
 This change secured at once the definition of the object 
 dealt with, and as this was accessible to every one, the 
 desired agreement of thought. Inasmuch, however, 
 as this abandoning of words in favour of facts and 
 symbols was only applicable to what is termed the 
 outer world i.e., Things in Space the task of phil- 
 osophy was only half solved. 
 
 The thinker who first clearly recognised the gradual 
 change which had come over the sciences, through
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 11 
 
 their escape from the thraldom and tyranny of words 
 into the open air of things and facts, and who pointed 
 out that this was the only safe road towards Natural 
 Knowledge, was Francis Bacon. And this will mark 
 for all time his position and importance in the history 
 of Thought. But though he was in addition possessed 
 of much worldly wisdom, and a master in giving ex- 
 pression to the same, he was not himself an adept in 
 the new language of the sciences : he did not recognise 
 the importance of Mathematics, and he still more 
 failed to realise that, by the new movement, the 
 whole task of philosophy had not been performed or 
 even approached. He did indeed allow that there 
 were other questions comprised under the general term 
 Theology which were of importance, but his attitude 
 towards them was never clearly denned. What Francis 
 Bacon never attempted was done somewhat later by 
 Descartes in France. 
 
 III. 
 
 Descartes agreed with Bacon in condemning the 
 dialectical method as practised by the Schoolmen. 
 But his objection to it and his scepticism rested 
 upon a different ground. Whilst Bacon denounced 
 these methods as not leading to Knowledge notably 
 Natural Knowledge Descartes denounced them because 
 they did not lead to certainty. He was the first 
 thinker in whose arguments we can trace a clear dis- 
 tinction between certainty and exactness of thought. 
 This is an important point. In order to be useful
 
 12 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 and progressive it is sufficient for Knowledge to be 
 clearly defined and generally accepted. Consistency 
 (or coherence) and concurrence (or agreement) in 
 thought is sufficient to make it a powerful agent in 
 progress. 
 
 Whole generations of civilised history and culture, 
 great societies of human beings, have existed and 
 thriven under the sway of systems of thought and 
 knowledge which, though consistent and universally 
 accepted, have to future generations and other societies 
 seemed to be full of superstition or error. And even 
 at the present day we have by no means got beyond 
 the possibility of such wholesale delusions and con- 
 sequent condemnation. 
 
 In the course of this search for certainty, for some- 
 thing that cannot be doubted, Descartes took a mem- 
 orable step in advance : discarding words and phrases, 
 he penetrated beyond and beneath them, recognising 
 that, quite apart from the nature or meaning of words 
 as such, they referred to an inner process in every 
 individual mind. This process is thinking. Even if 
 all our knowledge were reduced to uncertainty and 
 dissolved in doubt, there still remained as the remnant 
 which we cannot get rid of, our doubting itself; and 
 doubting is thinking. Thus the only certain thing is 
 thinking. Had Descartes remained there and recog- 
 nised what this statement implied, he would have not 
 only discovered but cultivated the large region of the 
 inner world the world or stream of consciousness. 
 Instead of doing this he fell back into the old tracks 
 of thought : he resorted again to metaphysics and 
 dialectics. Instead of saying, thinking or thought
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 13 
 
 exists, he said, because thought exists therefore I exist. 
 This statement contained an important truth the 
 truth, namely, that every one can be certain only of 
 his own thoughts ; but it conceals a hidden assumption, 
 namely, that thinking implies something or somebody 
 who thinks. 
 
 This, of course, is the common-sense view the view 
 of which all the dialectics and metaphysics of ancient 
 and mediaeval times could not rid themselves. It took 
 a hundred years of further thought before Berkeley and 
 Hume between them showed that the existence of a 
 process, be this external motion or internal motion 
 (that is, thought), though it suggests to us a something 
 which moves or thinks, leaves this something undefin- 
 able, and that our knowledge of it is reduced to the 
 simple fact of motion and thought. 
 
 As Descartes did not recognise the real importance 
 of his step in advance, but brought in the idea of a 
 Something which lies beneath or behind the thinking 
 process, he retained the metaphysical notion of sub- 
 stance, and in the sequel arrived at the notion of 
 two substances the inner thinking substance and the 
 outer extended substance. By opening out this track 
 of thought he became the father of a long series of 
 philosophical systems on the Continent, which adopted 
 in the main the old dialectical method, leaving aside 
 the introspective region of research which he had had 
 a glimpse of.
 
 14 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 IV. 
 
 There was indeed an inducement for Descartes to 
 desert the straight road which was indicated by 
 the important step he took. This inducement did 
 not exist for readers of his ' Discourse ' in this country 
 as much as it did abroad. Philosophy abroad conceived 
 its highest task to be the establishment of a reasoned 
 creed which should settle the doctrinal controversies 
 raised through the Reformation. In this country 
 philosophy was not appealed to in the same interest. 
 The object of philosophy in this country was not a 
 quest of faith but a quest of Knowledge, and essentially 
 practical and useful Knowledge. It was therefore 
 likely that the new road opened out by Descartes 
 would be followed in this country rather than on the 
 Continent. It was followed out by Locke, who adopted 
 what he termed the plain historical method : he searched 
 more closely within his own mind for the origin of the 
 contents of thinking, that is, of ideas : and he directed 
 his argument against the theory that ideas were innate 
 or inborn, and maintained that they had their origin in 
 the process of perception or experience, the mind being 
 originally like a tabula rasa or clean sheet of paper. 
 This constitutes a second and most important step in 
 advance. But he did not thereby get rid of the terms, 
 Mind and Matter, as denoting special entities or sub- 
 stances. He, however, occupied himself most with the 
 thinking process that is, with the different thoughts 
 which it contains or produces. Maintaining that these 
 arose from perceptions or sensations, he started to
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 15 
 
 analyse the latter, notably so far as they appear to us to 
 reveal the properties or qualities of external things. In 
 the sequel he divided these sensations into two classes, 
 which he regarded as indicating the primary and the 
 secondary properties of things : for men of science 
 had noted that many of the so-called properties were 
 changeable, purely in the precipient and as it were 
 accidental, and as it seemed did not affect the exist- 
 ence and nature of the things themselves which were 
 extended, possessing figure, solidity, and the like. 
 These latter, the primary qualities, he conceived as 
 belonging to the things themselves, whereas the 
 secondary qualities, such as colour, sound, temperature, 
 taste, and smell, were merely the manner in which 
 things affect us. 
 
 The next important step in following the psycho- 
 logical train of thought as distinguished from the 
 dialectical, was taken by Bishop Berkeley, who showed 
 that the primary qualities of Locke were no more than 
 the secondary, known as independent of our personal 
 sensations ; that our ideas of them were equally 
 elements in our thinking process ; and that they 
 therefore taught us nothing about matter that is, 
 about the independent substance of external things. 
 In the further course of his speculations he consist- 
 ently dropped the idea of Matter as quite unnecessary, 
 inasmuch as things external existed for us only in 
 our thoughts and ideas.
 
 16 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 V. 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing that although 
 English thinkers emphasised the mental process and 
 did not follow Descartes in the attempt to define the 
 essence or substance of Mind and Matter, they never- 
 theless did not abandon altogether the notion implied 
 in the common-sense view of the subject, that Matter 
 and Mind were two independent things, apart from 
 their properties, which consisted for us human beings 
 in their different ways of affecting us that is, in our 
 ideas concerning them. 
 
 Before going any further, it is only fair to say 
 that Continental thought, as carried on by Descartes' 
 successors, such as Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz, 
 no more than English thought, followed consistently the 
 road he had taken. For, with their purely dialectical 
 and metaphysical discussion upon Substance or Sub- 
 stances, they combined a considerable amount of pure 
 psychology. Further, Locke's analysis reacted upon 
 Continental thought, and notably in the celebrated 
 controversy between Locke and Leibniz a further very 
 important step was taken. 
 
 This controversy was carried on in a correspondence 
 between Leibniz and Dr Clarke, a follower of Locke 
 and Newton, and further elucidated in Leibniz' work, 
 discussing the views of Locke under his title, ' Con- 
 cerning Human Understanding ' ; which, however, was 
 not published before the middle of the eighteenth 
 century. The gist of the whole controversy is con- 
 cisely expressed in a Latin phrase which, like the
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 17 
 
 cogito ergo sum of Descartes and the tabula rasa of 
 Locke, forms a landmark in modern thought. The 
 human mind being compared to a clean slate, the view 
 of Locke was expressed in the dictum Nihil est in 
 intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu. He thus 
 not only looks upon the mind as a substance, but 
 considers it also to have two compartments or parts : 
 the intellect which contains ideas, and the senses 
 which contain impressions and perceptions. And he 
 maintained that ideas or thoughts refer only to sense- 
 impressions, and can add nothing to the contents of 
 the latter. To this Leibniz assented, if to the dictum 
 were added the words : nisi intellectus ipse. By this 
 addition he urged the truth that the sense-impressions 
 could not be converted into ideas without a Something 
 which retains, converts, and arranges, in fact elaborates 
 them. He therefore adopts the view of the mind as 
 substance which Locke had retained, pointing out, 
 however, that there must be a difference between the 
 same contents as given by the senses and as thought 
 of by the intellect. He thus set the problem of 
 deciding wherein this difference consists. 
 
 The further step beyond Locke which Berkeley took, 
 pointing out that we have nothing beyond ideas of 
 sense to correspond to what we call matter the 
 external and extended substance was not followed up 
 by Continental thinkers, neither by Leibniz nor by the 
 French School of Condillac, who professed to be followers 
 of Locke. The consequence was that Continental 
 thinkers held on still more persistently to the meta- 
 physical or scholastic notion of substance. And it 
 was not till a further step had been taken beyond 
 
 B
 
 18 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Berkeley that the introspective strain of British 
 thought made an impression upon thinkers abroad. 
 
 This further step was taken by David Hume, who, 
 agreeing with Berkeley that we cannot find in our 
 experience any sensation which can be the foundation 
 for the idea of material substance, added the further 
 reflection that we can as little find within our mental 
 experience any sensation or perception which would 
 form the foundation for the idea of a spiritual or 
 thinking substance, but only various sensations which 
 we fictitiously attribute to an independent entity 
 called Mind, Spirit, or the Self. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The consequence of this unanswerable contention of 
 Hume made it quite as impossible to uphold the 
 Berkeleyan theory that all is spirit or mind, as it had 
 appeared to Berkeley to uphold the position held by 
 Locke and Descartes, that, in addition to the thinking 
 substance, there existed a material or extended sub- 
 stance. This, added to various other criticisms by 
 Hume, which we need not discuss for our present 
 purpose, created a sort of impasse in the development 
 of philosophical thought, out of which Hume himself, 
 and still more his successor, Thomas Reid, sought an 
 outlet by appealing to common-sense. 
 
 On the Continent Kant was " wakened out of his 
 dogmatic slumbers " by reading one of Hume's writings. 
 He faced boldly the dilemma which Hume had estab- 
 lished, and somewhat contemptuously condemning
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 19 
 
 Reid's position, resorted to the dialectical method which 
 he termed " critical." 
 
 Whatever the difficulties might be in laying bare the 
 foundations of knowledge, there could be no doubt that 
 knowledge existed, and though much of it, as Bacon 
 and Descartes had shown, was uncertain, futile, or 
 useless, yet a certain amount of it was undisputed, 
 notably that which rested not only on observation, 
 but in addition upon the unchallenged method of 
 mathematics. Following this reflection, Kant betook 
 himself to examine and analyse such knowledge. 
 
 Agreeing with the dictum of Locke as amplified by 
 Leibniz, he fixed it as the main task of philosophy to 
 show what the thinking mind (or intellect) would 
 require to add to the material given by the senses in 
 order to convert it into a coherent and convincing 
 system of thought deserving the name of knowledge. 
 
 In carrying out this program, he again reverted to the 
 expression which knowledge had obtained in language. 
 Here he found ready what had been termed since 
 Aristotle the forms of logical judgment, in addition to 
 the two forms of order, space and time, in which all 
 our experience comes and appears to us. These forms 
 of order, with the logical categories which he took 
 from the forms of judgment, appeared to him to be 
 the contribution which the intellect makes to the 
 material supplied by the senses, converting the latter 
 into knowledge. 
 
 But though Kant accepted the position of Hume that 
 we could know nothing of substances such as Matter and 
 Mind, but only of their properties which constituted 
 their appearance to us, he did not abandon the concep-
 
 20 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 tion of external things, but allowed it to stand in the 
 form of an unknown something called " the thing in it- 
 self." This mysterious unknown something became in 
 the sequel the central notion from which Kant's 
 followers started in their speculations. 
 
 Two direct answers were given to this question, 
 "What is the thing in itself?" They were both 
 reached by the simple reflection that the mind, being 
 itself an existent, must look within for a definition of 
 the nature of existence. 
 
 Schopenhauer claimed to have discovered this in the 
 Will. Hegel, after a long dialectical argument, carried 
 on by Fichte, Schelling, and himself, confirmed, though 
 in somewhat different words, Descartes' initial state- 
 ment that Reality is Thought. Both these thinkers 
 elaborated and illustrated their respective central ideas 
 in a series of writings covering many regions of natural 
 and historical facts and events. 
 
 Scholars who are acquainted with the works of 
 German thinkers from Kant to Hegel, may with some 
 propriety object to this summary statement of the out- 
 come of that long dialectical process of thought which 
 started with Kant and ended with Hegel, and it would 
 not only be a mistake to deny the enormous historical 
 importance of that great school of thought, but still 
 more so, to overlook the fruitfulness of the many sug- 
 gestions and side-lights which are thrown out in their 
 writings. If nothing else, they succeeded in raising 
 philosophical thought to a much higher and broader 
 plane than that which it occupied even when culti- 
 vated by the comprehensive mind of Leibniz. But 
 nevertheless it must be admitted that, looked at from
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 21 
 
 the point of view which we have taken up, this 
 whole movement of thought known as the Idealistic 
 or Transcendental movement, led away from that plain 
 historical way which Locke had indicated. It must 
 also be admitted that both Hegel and Schopenhauer 
 left the whole development at a point beyond which 
 there seemed no possibility of progress, unless we 
 recognise as legitimate the attempt due notably to 
 von Hartmann to reconcile the two outstanding 
 conceptions contained in Hegel's and Schopenhauer's 
 respective systems. This latter attempt was certainly 
 not in the spirit of either of those two thinkers, as 
 they both agreed in holding that they had reached a 
 sort of finality beyond which no radically new step 
 was possible. 
 
 To a great extent it must also be plain to every 
 student of these Transcendental Systems that it is 
 extremely difficult to arrive at a clear understanding of 
 many very important passages so much so that 
 different historians and expounders have been able to 
 put very different meanings into the words of the great 
 masters. Perhaps, however, an exception must be made 
 for the writings of Schopenhauer, who, in contrast to 
 the others, cultivated a lucid and elegant style which 
 did much to popularise his doctrine. 
 
 So far as Kant, Fichte, and Hegel are concerned, 
 they invented a style of their own, added a large number 
 of new terms to the already overloaded vocabulary 
 bequeathed by ancient and mediaeval thinkers, and 
 indulged in a forbidding phraseology which appeared to 
 many readers a deliberate mystification.
 
 22 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Looking broadly at the whole development of 
 philosophical thought, especially in Germany, we are 
 struck by the absence of clear definitions of the many 
 words and phrases in which the various doctrines are 
 presented to us. To take only two examples : the 
 word "mind" is used in many different senses, some- 
 times denoting the " individual mind," sometimes the 
 "general or universal mind"; it is sometimes opposed 
 to "body," sometimes to "nature or matter"; the 
 adjectives denoting it signifying sometimes "mental" 
 and sometimes "spiritual." 
 
 Again the word " self," which in post-Kantian 
 philosophy appeared as the I or ego, stands sometimes 
 for that inner region of our being which is known 
 only to each individual ; sometimes it must mean 
 the external appearance of our being as one among 
 many not-selves, and these not-selves may be either 
 things or other selves. A still greater ambiguity pre- 
 vails in the use of terms such as "Eeason," "Under- 
 standing," "Sensations," and "Thought." These terms 
 sometimes appear as representing different parts of the 
 mental life, sometimes as generic names for mental 
 processes. 
 
 Compared with these complicated structures, built 
 up by German thinkers, the philosophy of this country 
 appears extremely simple, and was regarded by some 
 of the Transcendentalists abroad as childish and 
 trivial. The complicated structures of German
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 23 
 
 thinkers, their varied terminology and the ambigu- 
 ous meaning of their language, joined to the many 
 schools of thought, created, in the German mind, 
 a feeling of confusion and unsettlement which in 
 many cases led to a despair as to the possibility of 
 arriving at any reasoned creed which would command 
 general assent, and be of use in dealing with the 
 burning questions of the day. Practical persons 
 accordingly treated philosophy with indifference, and 
 thinking minds bestowed their labour on the more 
 promising fields of scientific or historical research. 
 
 The only two philosophers of eminence who 
 attempted to bring some order into the chaos of 
 philosophical thought itself, did not for a long time 
 gain that recognition which their efforts deserved, 
 and never rose to that popular renown which sur- 
 rounded the names of their great predecessors ; but 
 they paved the way for new departures. The two 
 thinkers I refer to are Lotze and Schleiermacher. The 
 latter, though the earlier in time, and a landmark in 
 theology, is even at the present day hardly appreciated 
 as a leader in philosophical thought ; whereas Lotze's 
 merits have been increasingly recognised, not only in 
 Germany, but also in this country and beyond the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 Schleiermacher and Lotze were thinkers of very 
 different stamp, and the former had little influence 
 on the latter, but they both employed the dialectical 
 method, not without a considerable admixture of good 
 psychology. They both emphasised in different ways 
 the claims of feeling or the emotional side of our 
 nature as an independent source in conjunction with
 
 24 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 the intellectual and the volitional side which had been 
 unduly urged by Hegel and Schopenhauer. 
 
 We must now turn to the state of philosophical 
 thought in this country. 
 
 Little original work was done after the Scottish 
 thinkers had settled down to expound, in answer to 
 Hume's scepticism, the philosophy of common-sense. 
 The only line of thought indicated already by Hume 
 himself which gave some promise, was the treatment 
 of mental phenomena by analogy with those of the 
 physical world. 
 
 This resulted in a sort of "mental chemistry" which 
 was elaborated under the conception of the Association 
 of Ideas. 
 
 The only branch of pure philosophy which received 
 special attention and original treatment was Ethics, 
 and this treatment was carried on by a dialectical 
 process which found its greatest representative towards 
 the end of the century in Henry Sidgwick. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 In general we may say that the Introspective 
 Method of dealing with the phenomena of the human 
 mind was not abandoned, although it was temporarily 
 pushed into the background. From many sides it 
 received tacit encouragement ; so much so that we are 
 now able to state more definitely wherein the fallacies 
 consisted through which it was arrested shortty after 
 the time of Hume. The first comprehensive critic of 
 Hume's Philosophy, Thomas Reid, called the method
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 25 
 
 the " Ideal Method." By others it was called the 
 method or Theory of Ideas, inasmuch as " Ideas " were 
 considered to be the elements of Thought, and an 
 analysis of them was expected to lead to a better 
 understanding of the nature of the human mind. 
 There is no doubt that this method of Ideas was 
 suggested to Locke by the practice of the Natural 
 Sciences, where definite things are studied in their 
 isolation, and dissected into their parts. 
 
 It was not recognised before Reid pointed it out 
 clearly that Ideas cannot be isolated like natural 
 objects ; that their definition is difficult, and that a 
 dissection of them into parts is wellnigh impossible. 
 Thus it becomes necessary to adopt a different point 
 of view, and to start, not with the isolated and naked 
 idea, but with the complexes or clusters in which ideas 
 present themselves to the introspective view, and to 
 recognise that the inner life of the human mind is a 
 " connected totality " of which a section only presents 
 itself to the inner view at any moment of time, this 
 section changing continuously. 
 
 To -express and fix this method two terms were 
 introduced by two thinkers who have revolution- 
 ised the philosophy of the human mind within the 
 English School. William James dilates on the " stream 
 of Thought," and James Ward on the " continuum of 
 Presentations." These terms are suggestive, but we 
 still require another word which shall concisely 
 characterise the modern as distinguished from the 
 earlier form of the introspective method. This term 
 has been used in Continental literature to designate 
 a general aspect which came into view in some of the 
 natural sciences.
 
 26 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 The German language uses the word Anschauung 
 to denote an attitude of thought which is only 
 awkwardly rendered by the English words " Sight " 
 and "Intuition." It implies that we look at things, 
 physical or mental, in their natural connection, as they 
 present themselves to our total view. 
 
 Goethe, who was gifted with an unusual poetical as 
 well as scientific insight into Nature, complained that 
 naturalists were too much bent upon analysing and 
 dissecting the objects of their study ; but his remarks 
 were little heeded at the time. Somewhat later, 
 Comte in France, when approaching, in his Course of 
 Lectures on Positive Philosophy, the biological sciences, 
 insisted on the different aspect of the living as com- 
 pared with the lifeless creation, remarking that the 
 former demanded the vue d'ensemble for its compre- 
 hension. We may render this term which gives a 
 more definite expression to Goethe's idea by the word 
 Synopsis (seeing together), contrasting this attitude of 
 the reflecting mind with the combined process of 
 Analysis and Synthesis. 
 
 If Comte found it necessary to recommend this vue 
 d'ensemble or Synoptic View to students of living 
 things, it is still more necessary to resort to it in the 
 study of the Inner Life. Introspection is primarily 
 Synoptic and only secondarily Analytic and Synthetic. 
 
 We may, therefore, lay it down as a first rule for 
 any introspective inquiry that it must regard its object 
 synoptically. 
 
 This Synopsis, or seeing Things Together and not 
 in isolation, applies to two different methods which were 
 introduced into the study of Nature in the middle of the
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 27 
 
 nineteenth century and combined in the Philosophy 
 of Evolution. Briefly stated, it means that we must 
 look at Things as they present themselves together 
 both in Space and in Time. We must look not only at 
 their surroundings or environment, but also at their 
 temporal succession or change. The latter leads to the 
 genetic view. 
 
 Thus, if we apply this to mental Things or Ideas, 
 we must not only look at the company of other Ideas in 
 which single Ideas present themselves to us, but we 
 must also look at their origin and development. 
 
 IX. 
 
 This genesis of ideas can be studied in two ways, 
 which correspond to the two ways in which living things 
 in the outer World have been studied, more especially 
 in recent times. The genesis or history of any in- 
 dividual Thing may be either a history of descent or 
 a history of its own individual growth. Thus, Ideas 
 may be studied in their origin and development in the 
 course of generations and centuries, going back, if 
 possible, to their early appearance among primitive 
 or savage races. But they may also be studied in 
 their separate growth in the individual life, and 
 traced back to their first appearance in the infant 
 mind. 
 
 These two methods may be mutually helpful. The 
 former method has found much favour in the many 
 recent and elaborate works on Ethnology. The other
 
 28 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 method, which is Introspective, is the one to which 
 we shall give special attention in this Treatise. 
 
 There is a third aspect of mental phenomena which 
 has been urged in modern studies of human nature, and 
 which we may also bring under the general head of 
 the Synoptic aspect. 
 
 The individual mind of any adult person is usually 
 considered to be self-contained and independent of the 
 minds of other persons. It is forgotten that this 
 independence or individuality has only been gained in 
 the advancing years of adolescence, and that even then 
 it is to a large extent only apparent. It is impossible 
 for me in my thoughts to isolate myself completely 
 from the thoughts of other persons with whom I asso- 
 ciate, and any train of reflection which I may carry on 
 ever so secretly and in seclusion is very largely in- 
 fluenced by the thoughts of others, which are in many 
 ways communicated to me through personal intercourse 
 or through spoken and written words. Still more is 
 this influence of other minds noticeable in younger 
 persons, and the further we go back in our individual 
 history, the more we find ourselves living in an atmos- 
 phere of feelings, impressions, and thoughts derived 
 from others, which surrounds us in the various and 
 changing circles in which we move from the nursery, 
 through the life of the home and family, on to that 
 of the school and college. This influence depends on 
 what has been termed intersubjective communion. 
 
 This intersubjective communion of different minds 
 with each other lasts all through life, though in a 
 decreasing degree, so that it may be neglected if we 
 deal with the adult mind ; but it cannot be left out of
 
 THE INTROSPECTIVE METHOD. 29 
 
 consideration if we trace our ideas and feelings in fact, 
 the whole of our experience back to its origin and 
 growth in earlier years. 
 
 The introspective view thus bids us look on what 
 we may call our individual and personal mind as largely 
 a product of the influence of other minds. We must, 
 in fact, look upon our own mind and its experiences 
 synoptically, not as an isolated unit of inner life, but as 
 a compound produced by innumerable and mostly in- 
 describable influences and contributions of other minds. 
 
 This leads us to speak of the mind and mental life in 
 general, though each person and each thinker can really 
 know only his own mind in its totality and changing 
 history. Thus Kant, e.g., introduces the phrase die 
 Vernunft iiberhaupt i.e., the intellect in general; and 
 a similar use of the words Mind, Understanding, Keason, 
 &c., is quite common in fact, indispensable though 
 writers on mental Philosophy often fail to give a clear 
 explanation of what is really meant by this usage. 
 
 Summing up the foregoing, we may urge definitely 
 three points of view which the Introspective and 
 Synoptic aspect bids us bear in mind in our studies 
 of the inner World : 
 
 (1) the interconnection of ideas or mental experiences ;. 
 
 (2) the change and growth of these experiences ; and 
 
 (3) the communion of individual minds. 
 
 It is on these three lines of thought that we shall 
 dwell especially in the following pages. 
 
 It is not, however, intended to convey the idea that 
 the point of view here mentioned marks the only 
 correct way of dealing with the phenomena of mind. 
 Other methods, such as the psycho-physical or the older
 
 30 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 psychological method, have done and are still doing 
 useful work in the exploration of mental phenomena. 
 What is said, therefore, in the following pages, professes 
 to be only a small contribution to a large body of 
 research, filling in recent times many important 
 treatises, some of them ponderous volumes filled with 
 minute investigations.
 
 31 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 
 I. 
 
 FROM what has been said in the foregoing chapter, it 
 will be clear to the reader that we shall not open our 
 discussion by dealing with detailed facts of the inner 
 life or by dividing the totality of the same either into 
 faculties or into ideas. We shall follow the example 
 set by James Ward and William James, and begin by 
 looking at the mental life or the human mind as a 
 whole possessing continuity and a continuous change or 
 flow of various experiences. We may then look out 
 for a term which designates the nature of continuity 
 and change in our mental life. 
 
 As all discussions concerning the inner world have to 
 be carried on in the words and language which we find 
 current, and which we can change only to a very small 
 extent, it is important to bear in mind that most of the 
 words and phrases which we are forced to use are de- 
 rived from things of the outer world, and used only 
 metaphorically to describe facts and events of the inner 
 world. Like all metaphors and analogies, the words we 
 thus use become misleading if carried too far or under- 
 stood literally.
 
 32 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Though we may be grateful to the two thinkers 
 mentioned for introducing these novel phrases with the 
 purpose of giving a new turn to mental philosophy, 
 it will be useful to indicate where the metaphors they 
 have chosen lose their meaning and are apt to mislead 
 us. The " stream or flow of thought," so happily 
 chosen by William James to designate the unceasing 
 change of our inner experiences by comparing it to the 
 flow of a river, does not take note of the fact that in 
 a river the special features such as waves, eddies, and 
 whirls, &c., never recur in the same way, and can there- 
 fore not be individually dwelt on. In the stream of 
 our inner experiences, be they thoughts, sensations, 
 or feelings, definite aspects recur ever and again. If 
 it were not so, our experience would be like that of a 
 traveller in a railway train who views the landscape 
 through which he passes only hurriedly, no single 
 aspect recurring in order to receive any fixation or 
 permanence. 
 
 Again, if we take James Ward's suggestive statement 
 that we are, when looking introspectively, aware of a 
 continuum of sensations or movements, we must at once 
 add that this continuity exists only during our waking 
 hours, and is then ever and anon broken though not 
 beyond recovery by discontinuities in the form of 
 sudden surprises or even of intervals which seem to 
 us void and empty. 
 
 In order to avoid any misunderstanding of our con- 
 ception of the nature of mind, we shall in the sequel 
 make frequent use of a different metaphor and compare 
 the aspect of our inner world with that of the starry 
 heavens if we gaze at them in the night-time. We
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 33 
 
 shall speak of this inner region as the "Firmament 
 of Thought," contrasting and comparing it with the 
 physical firmament. 
 
 In using this metaphor we employ the word Thought 
 in the widest sense, as any experience of our mind, be 
 this experience Thought in the narrower sense of the 
 word or Sensation, Feeling, Desire, &c. All these we 
 comprise under the term Thought, just as in speaking 
 of the external world we may call every appearance 
 a Thing, though in the narrower sense of the word 
 this may not be correct or conventional. 
 
 Employing the terms Thought and Thing in this 
 general way, we may say that the physical Firmament 
 is filled with various Things more or less distinct and 
 more or less permanent. In the same way we may 
 say that the mental Firmament is filled with thoughts 
 more or less distinct but only slightly endowed with 
 permanence. Observation leads us thus to a first 
 distinction between the physical and the mental firma- 
 ment or horizon. 
 
 Thoughts in the widest sense of the word have little 
 permanence and many of them little definition ; whereas 
 what we call external Things have a large amount of 
 permanent and clear definition. Again, both the 
 Things of the outer and the Thoughts of the inner 
 world recur i.e., they disappear and come back again, 
 but the recurrence of Thoughts of any kind is less 
 certain and less regular than that of Things outside 
 of us. 
 
 We may thus note a further important difference 
 between the outer and the inner worlds, inasmuch as 
 the former presents to a large extent order and regular- 
 
 c
 
 34 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND 
 
 ity, whereas the latter seems fleeting, difficult to arrest, 
 and even when recurring, never in exactly the same 
 manner. 
 
 Another characteristic which Thoughts and Things 
 have in common is this, that if they disappear out of 
 our horizon we consider many of them to be preserved 
 somehow or somewhere the former in Memory, the 
 latter in a comprehensive arrangement which we 
 call Space. But whilst Space and the Things in it 
 represent a comprehensive and orderly totality, each 
 Thing having a definite location, the contents of 
 memory are extremely uncertain, though from ancient 
 times one has been accustomed to the use of the 
 metaphor "the Tables of Memory." 
 
 II. 
 
 So far we have spoken of two worlds, the outer and 
 the inner, and it is in accordance with popular usage 
 that we contrast these two worlds. And yet, if we look 
 more closely, we find that this contrast cannot be 
 consistently maintained, inasmuch as there seems to be 
 no proper dividing line the two worlds standing not 
 as it were opposite each other but rather in a relation 
 such as night and day. These also are contrasted in 
 ordinary speech, yet a real dividing line cannot be found, 
 and at the confines they merge into each other, twilight 
 and dusk belonging to both. 
 
 In the same way we find that the outer world in a 
 certain sense belongs to the inner world, and that the 
 inner world, though in a different manner, plays a part
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 35 
 
 in the outer world. This is easily expressed and 
 recognised in popular language. Things of the outer 
 world belong to the inner world in the form of Sensa- 
 tions or Images, and the totality of the inner world 
 seems to be in some way located in the outer world 
 so much so that we recognise in the outer world two 
 classes of Things which we term Inanimate and 
 Animated or, in scientific language, Inorganic and 
 Organic. The exact relation between things of the 
 outer world and the sensations or thoughts which 
 represent them in the inner world cannot be accurately 
 stated, and the popular as well as the scientific mind 
 has many ways of describing it though none of these 
 ways is universally accepted. 
 
 The position of mind or the inner world has always 
 been recognised as a puzzle. Nevertheless, we are in 
 the habit of speaking both of Life and of Mind as 
 definite Things. 
 
 The fact that the outer and the inner world are thus 
 inseparable, their connection at both ends, as it were, 
 being for our understanding vague and perplexing has 
 led to much confusion in philosophy. And it took 
 thousands of years before any attempt was made to lay 
 down a workable definition of the difference between 
 the two worlds. 
 
 For our purposes we will adopt a definition which has 
 been arrived at in more recent times and of which we 
 find no distinct expression in the philosophy of earlier 
 times. We shall say that the outer world comprises 
 everything which we not only individually experience, 
 but which can also be experienced by other persons. 
 And we shall call the inner world that portion of our
 
 36 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 total experience which every individual personality 
 possesses for itself and which is hidden from other 
 persons. 
 
 III. 
 
 The progress of Human Thought in the course of 
 History, has lain in the direction of accentuating more 
 and more the difference of the outer and the inner 
 worlds. Thus Descartes, the founder of Modern 
 Philosophy, fixed this difference as that between the 
 extended and the thinking Substance, prescribing to 
 Continental philosophy through this distinction a 
 definite line of speculation. 
 
 It is not our present object to point out the merits or 
 defects of this definition. But there is no doubt that 
 this step, as well as other steps which followed it, 
 led more and more to a separation of two regions of 
 existence which are originally and naturally closely 
 connected and interwoven ; and it has become for us 
 more difficult to realise this natural and intrinsic union 
 than it was in philosophy and general literature in 
 earlier times. 
 
 This has been a loss so far as the philosophy of the 
 human mind is concerned, but it has proved to be the 
 essential condition for the foundation and the growth 
 of natural philosophy. 
 
 Whereas in antiquity natural and mental philosophy 
 were closely connected and interwoven, it has been the 
 work of the last three centuries to bring about an ever 
 clearer demarcation of these two formerly connected 
 regions of research so much so, that we have now not
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 37 
 
 only natural as distinguished from mental philosophy, 
 but in the former a further separation marked by the 
 use of the terms, the Exact as distinguished from 
 the Natural Sciences. 
 
 And the tendency has become more and more 
 marked to regard the Exact Sciences as the model of 
 Natural Knowledge, their method being increasingly 
 applied to all regions of the outer world. 
 
 This great gain, so far as pure Science is concerned, 
 has, however, not been secured without a sacrifice 
 and a limitation of the domain of science. For it has 
 been found that not all the phenomena of the outer 
 world, and hardly any mental phenomena, are capable 
 of that strict definition which is the first requisite of 
 the exact method of research ; of that method which 
 permits us not only to describe and explain but also 
 to predict and even to create, phenomena. 
 
 All attempts to extend this valuable exact method 
 beyond the region of those facts and events which take 
 place in space have been more or less doomed to failure. 
 The only exception has been, in comparatively modern 
 times, the independent growth and development of 
 the art of musical composition. Practically without 
 the assistance of any exact science, this wonderful 
 creation of the human mind has sprung up, unfolding 
 to us quite a new world of which Antiquity and even 
 the earlier Middle Ages seem to have had only the 
 faintest idea. 
 
 We may truly say that in the same degree as 
 research has become more scientific and more exact, 
 leaving on one side the vaguer, but more interesting, 
 phenomena of the inner life, the emotions, the joys,
 
 38 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 the sorrows and aspirations of the human soul ; the 
 world of musical sound has deepened and expanded 
 its own language for describing and penetrating into 
 those secluded regions. 
 
 Historians of Music have pointed out that that 
 century during which Exact Science was firmly 
 established upon an independent basis, the seven- 
 teenth century, witnessed also the great revolution in 
 the art of musical composition. "This period," says 
 Zamminer, 1 "witnessed also the blossoming of an Art 
 which has now like no other permeated all spheres of 
 life, and has become a real requisite of civilization ; 
 Music, liberating itself in the seventeenth century 
 from the more rigid rules of the older counter-point 
 and from the limits of Church Song, rose to fuller life." 
 
 And similarly Parry 2 describes this great revolution 
 in musical composition in terms which with little 
 alteration might be applied to the evolution of con- 
 temporary Science. 
 
 It is not a little interesting to see how many persons 
 who take a Rationalistic or even a Materialistic view 
 of life, find recreation and consolation in listening to 
 or performing those musical creations which have 
 sprung from the soul of artists who lived in the 
 spiritual world. 
 
 It is, however, possible to take a different view of 
 the progress and development of human thought in 
 recent times. Whilst admitting that the aspect of 
 the world nowadays does not present to the thinking 
 
 1 F. Zamminer ' Die Musik und die Musikalischen Instrumente,' 
 Giessen, 1855. 
 
 2 Sir H. Parry in the Introduction to the third volume of ' The Oxford 
 History of Music,' 1902.
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 39 
 
 mind, trained in the school of Modern Science, that 
 unity and harmony which belonged to a more youthful 
 or childlike period of civilisation, and that it has 
 become difficult to take that cheerful view which meets 
 us in some of the finest products of Grecian literature, 
 art and even philosophy, we must on deeper reflection 
 also admit that the more recent developments of philo- 
 sophic thought point to a new conception of that central 
 point of view which we seem to have been on the point 
 of losing for a time. To this we must now give our 
 attention. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In order to understand how human thought after 
 effecting the disruption of those two worlds the outer 
 and the inner which common experience always 
 presents to us interwoven with each other is now 
 again attempting to bring about a unification on a 
 higher level, it will be necessary for the reader to 
 grasp the following thesis : 
 
 All knowledge, of whatever kind it may be, is con- 
 tained for every individual person within the range 
 of his own consciousness. The horizon of any person's 
 mind contains everything that exists so far as he is 
 concerned. There is nothing in the world for any of 
 us but that which we in some way or other mentally 
 experience such experience being of various kinds, 
 such as Sensations, Perceptions, Ideas, Emotions, 
 Desires, Volitions or Feelings in general. These all 
 together in their existence within our consciousness
 
 40 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 form the only content of our knowledge, and outside 
 of them there is for us no knowledge and no world. 
 
 Anything of which we can have neither a Sensation 
 nor an Idea, nor an Image nor a feeling of any kind, 
 does not exist for us it does not belong to the world 
 as we know it. Everything that exists for us must 
 be a feature in the stream of thought, must enter into 
 the continuum of mental experience, must have, to 
 use our metaphor, a location at some moment or for 
 some time in the firmament of our thoughts, or to 
 use the more popular expression of our Soul. Any 
 one who nowadays enters upon the study of philosophy 
 must realise this first all-important truth. It is hardly 
 necessary to dwell on this any further. 
 
 Every person can by self - observation and self- 
 interrogation assure himself of its correctness. 
 
 This truth is contained in Descartes' dictum, that 
 the only thing which exists beyond doubt for every one 
 of us is his own thoughts, taking the word thought, 
 as stated above, in the widest sense as anything and 
 everything that happens in our own consciousness. 
 
 This truth which stands at the entrance of modern 
 philosophy and has governed in various ways its whole 
 subsequent course, received definitive expression in the 
 last great system which has exercised permanent influ- 
 ence on modern thought. The Hegelian system lends 
 prima facie plausibility to the higher truth that for us 
 human beings there is essentially only one form or 
 category of existence viz., Thought or Spirit. 
 
 This way of introducing the subject of the following 
 pages may seem paradoxical, and it will be the object 
 of our primary consideration to explain more fully
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 41 
 
 the real meaning of this seeming paradox and to draw 
 some further conclusions. 
 
 Thoughtful readers will probably admit that all 
 our knowledge is within the confines of our individual 
 experience, that it is primarily all personal ; but they 
 will add that nevertheless there is a marked difference, 
 which common-sense describes by the contrast between 
 outer and inner, external and internal, physical and 
 mental. 
 
 A portion of the experiences of our conscious life 
 is not only subjective but also objective, by which 
 latter term we mean that these have an existence 
 outside and independent of our respective individual 
 selves. They could not indeed exist for us individually 
 except they were a portion of our subjective experience ; 
 but they are in addition to this something more, as 
 we know by communion with our fellow-men, who 
 describe to us experiences so similar to our own that 
 we are for practical purposes led to call them the same. 
 By far the greater portion of our conduct in the course 
 of our life is based upon this conviction. 
 
 In fact, we extend the conviction, gained primarily 
 through communion with other persons, so as to assign 
 to things and events contained in this common expe- 
 rience an existence quite independent of any mental 
 experience at all, be it our own or that of other persons. 
 
 We objectify a portion of the total contents of our 
 individual consciousness, calling it the external or, par 
 excellence, the Real World, and contrast it with that 
 other portion which we term the Inner World, and 
 which, though possessed of some kind of reality, seems 
 to have less of it than the former portion.
 
 42 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 This conviction is very much strengthened by the 
 ordinary occupations of our life, which consist to a 
 large extent, and with many of us almost exclusively, 
 in dealings with or acting among other persons ; and 
 even when we retire into the sanctuary of our own 
 individual thoughts, we find these again almost ex- 
 clusively occupied with memory pictures of what we 
 term our external life. And though it is the special 
 task of mental philosophers be they scientific, philo- 
 sophical or purely literary to take special cognisance 
 of the subjective side of our experience, it has always 
 proved extremely difficult to carry through this intro- 
 spective view consistently, and not to lapse again and 
 again into a contemplation of the external world. 
 
 The reasons of this are manifold, and some of them 
 quite obvious, but there is one circumstance which 
 stands out prominently. 
 
 Psychologists, to whichever of the above-mentioned 
 classes they belong, whether students of psycho- physics, 
 introspective thinkers or psychological novelists, deal 
 almost exclusively with the adult mind. This induces 
 them to attach most importance to mental features and 
 abilities which have been acquired in the course of ado- 
 lescence, but many of which are much less marked or 
 perhaps totally absent if we go back to the period of 
 childhood or infancy. 
 
 This remark leads us on to a contemplation of mental 
 phenomena from a point of view which has been rarely 
 occupied but which seems to throw a new light upon 
 the paradox mentioned above.
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 43 
 
 V. 
 
 Before entering upon this unusual line of purely 
 introspective contemplation, it will be interesting to 
 return for a moment to the popularly accepted view 
 that there are two distinct worlds or firmaments the 
 physical and the mental ; two series of events the 
 physical outside of us, which comprises our own bodies, 
 and the mental inside of us, which comprises the outer 
 world in the form of Thought or Knowledge. 
 
 We will now note two fundamental differences in 
 the nature of these two, as it seems to us, independent 
 streams of events. 
 
 The first may be expressed in a second important 
 thesis, which we wish to impress on the minds of our 
 readers. 
 
 The outer world or universe is a continuum. It 
 exhibits no breaks and no gaps : the inner world on 
 the contrary is full of discontinuities, that is, of breaks 
 and gaps. 
 
 The latter part of this thesis will probably be readily 
 admitted. Not only does every individual conscious- 
 ness begin in time and, so far as we can observe it, 
 end abruptly, but it is characterised by periodic lapses 
 into non-existence in the form of sleep, and though 
 preserved by memory, even the limited duration of 
 any individual consciousness could probably not be 
 maintained without those periodic intervals of rest or 
 non-existence. 
 
 And further, our waking hours are full of breaks 
 and discontinuities, and would cease to be of any
 
 44 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 interest to us if such breaks were destroyed, and 
 monotony or uniformity reigned throughout. Such a 
 state would become tedious and intolerable, leading 
 probably to weakened consciousness, and ultimately 
 to its temporary or permanent disappearance. 
 
 It is more difficult to maintain the first part of our 
 thesis, which in the emphatic statement in which we 
 have given it, belongs only to recent times, though 
 the natural philosophy of older times had already 
 arrived at the two well-known adages of the horror 
 vacui and natura non facit scdtum. It is, however, 
 only within the last hundred years that the doctrine 
 of the continuity of a substance which fills all space, 
 of the uniformity of nature, and of the slow progress 
 of changes and variations, has formed one of the 
 leading features in the theory of evolution. 
 
 And yet just at the moment when continuity has 
 been pronounced to be a supreme rule in the natural 
 order of things, when space has been filled with a con- 
 tinuous substance and the organic creation declared to 
 be a product of imperceptible variations ; natural phil- 
 osophers have, once again, resorted to the older hypo- 
 thesis of the atomic nature of physical things, involving 
 action at a distance, and have filled space with cor- 
 puscles flying about, while naturalists have invented 
 the term Mutations in order to explain the sudden 
 appearance of new species. 
 
 This may be so ; yet the fact remains that the 
 mathematical treatment of single phenomena is only 
 possible on the assumption of continuity of some kind. 
 In the visible world of living things, on the contrary, 
 the vital principle seems bound up with discontinuity.
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 45 
 
 For the latter reason we are forced to the conclusion 
 that all those principles which govern the purely 
 scientific or exact study of the outer world, such as 
 the uniformity of the laws of Nature, the rigid sequence 
 of Cause and Effect, and the continuity of Matter and 
 Motion, refer only to a portion of that world as we 
 see it, and that they leave untouched those features 
 which are most prominent in the everyday aspect of the 
 world which surrounds us. 
 
 They represent the properties of a framework or 
 skeleton which science, after thousands of years, has 
 only in quite recent times been able to discover and 
 to strip of that engaging drapery of changing colours, 
 sounds, and manifold impressions which meets the 
 glance of every one who looks round with his natural 
 senses, and which it is the prerogative and special 
 task of the artist to grasp and impress upon our 
 minds. 
 
 And thus we find in the early period of that revolu- 
 tion in Science which has led to the foundation and 
 elaboration of the mechanical view of Nature a special 
 doctrine advanced which distinguishes between the 
 primary, more permanent and more definable, qualities 
 of external things and the secondary which stand, as 
 it were, between the rigid features of mechanism and 
 the continually changing and rapidly fleeting events 
 of our inner life. 
 
 It is also well to note that whilst every individual 
 soul may be able to take a full and comprehensive 
 view of the natural world which surrounds it, it is 
 impossible for any single person to experience through 
 direct observation the intricate though regular lines
 
 46 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 and features of that mechanical framework which has 
 been elaborated in the course of the centuries by the 
 co-operation of thousands of observers and thinkers. 
 
 The actual experience of even the most compre- 
 hensive scientific mind contains at any moment only 
 a few traces of that inwoven cypher which we now 
 believe to pervade the whole of Eeality from the largest 
 to the smallest dimensions. 
 
 VI. 
 
 But there is another distinctive feature which marks 
 even more emphatically the difference between the 
 outer and the inner worlds. This feature is indeed 
 visible enough, and yet, strange to say, it has only in 
 quite recent times been clearly defined by philosophers. 
 It may be described in the following thesis : 
 
 The outer world or the physical firmanent is now 
 conceived to be characterised by the conservation 
 of certain factors or principles which constitute its 
 real essence, such being subject neither to increase 
 nor decrease, showing neither loss nor gain but 
 only transformation and rearrangement. Contrary 
 to this, the inner world is continually growing, this 
 growth forming its characteristic nature. 
 No one will deny that the activity and the interests 
 of the mind are very different in different persons ; 
 further, that this activity and these interests have grown 
 enormously in the course of the history of civilised 
 humanity, and have been perpetuated in the multi- 
 farious products of culture. The latter begin with the
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 47 
 
 earliest forms of social life, its customs, laws, and order ; 
 its combined labour and thought setting out from the 
 useful and advancing to the Fine Arts, acquiring 
 definite features through Poetry, Literature, and Art as 
 well as the later products of Science with its manifold 
 applications. 
 
 All these are creations which continually increase, 
 forming quite a new world the world of Thought in 
 the widest sense of the word. Though much is lost in 
 the progress of centuries, the growth of this inner world 
 is unmistakable. The amount of crude material used in 
 the creation of this new and continually extending 
 world is comparatively infinitesimal and has not lost 
 any of its natural properties. The same small amount 
 of material and of physical labour which through the 
 genius of a sculptor and a painter has produced a 
 Venus of Milo or a Sixtina might have served a savage 
 to produce a meaningless effigy or a daub on the 
 canvas, creating in the latter case nothing new, whilst 
 in the former a whole world of beauty and a joy for 
 ever has come into being. Nor have we any reason 
 to believe that the total mental energy which has been 
 employed in making physical matter become the bearer 
 of mental creations, has in any way diminished the 
 total amount of physical energy in the outer world. 
 
 In fact, the totality of what we term Culture or 
 Civilisation, its manifestations and products, is a creation 
 out of nothing and would again disappear into noth- 
 ing if no human minds existed who could understand 
 and assimilate it. Its whole existence, so far as our 
 outlook is concerned, is only in and for them. 
 
 This circumstance, which must be patent to every one,
 
 48 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 has found in modern philosophy two distinct formu- 
 lations. It has been described by Wilhelm Wundt as 
 " the growth of mental energy " as compared with the 
 mere conservation of physical energy. The same fact 
 finds expression in the writings of Alfred Fouillee in 
 the conception of the Idees-Forces, according to which 
 every idea which arises in the human mind is a creative 
 centre. 
 
 These terms are suggestive : for our purpose it 
 seems desirable to choose a different word to mark more 
 distinctly this characteristic difference between the 
 outer and the inner worlds. The word Energy implies 
 some similarity between the processes which are active 
 in the two spheres of existence. We shall therefore in 
 the sequel, in order to mark the contrast according to 
 which outer things and events appear to have a 
 permanence of their own kind, whereas the products of 
 mental activity exist only in and for human beings, call 
 the things of the inner world Values and those of the 
 outer world simply Things. We shall thus contrast the 
 World of Values with the World of Things, and 
 maintain that in the latter there is neither gain nor 
 loss, whereas in the former there is a continual increase 
 or gain. 
 
 And here again, as in the case of Continuity, we are 
 bound to limit the principle of the conservation of 
 Matter and Motion (or of Mass and Energy) to finite 
 regions of the outer world. For it is impossible to put 
 any sense into this statement if we regard the Universe 
 as having no limits but stretching out as a whole into 
 the infinity of Space. 
 
 We may now sum up the main characteristics, as we
 
 THE FIRMAMENT OF THOUGHT. 49 
 
 see them, of the inner world by saying that it is an 
 unending stream or a changing firmament of Thought, 
 that it contains the whole of the outer world in the 
 form of Thought, that it escapes the modern method 
 of the Exact Sciences, exhibiting in opposition to the 
 outer world the two characteristics of discontinuity and 
 of unlimited growth. 
 
 In using the introspective method, we shall have 
 to bear in mind constantly these characteristics of 
 the Firmament of Thought. 
 
 D
 
 50 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 
 
 IN the foregoing pages we have adhered to the popular 
 or common-sense view that there are two distinct worlds 
 or regions of existence the outer World and the inner 
 World. At the same time we have maintained that the 
 outer World or the physical universe exists for every 
 one of us individually only in so far as each one of us 
 is able to think about it or to experience it in some 
 form or other, be it as Sensations, Perceptions, Ideas, 
 Feelings, Desires, Volitions, or any other conscious 
 state by whatever term we may describe it. 
 
 The most general term which comprises all these 
 different forms of inner existence is Experience, and we 
 may thus call the inner World the world of Conscious 
 Experience. No existence of any kind whatever, 
 whether it appear to be very near to us or very far 
 removed, exists for us at all except it has or had at 
 some time a place in the all-comprehensive stream of 
 our thoughts or in the changing firmament of our 
 consciousness. 
 
 This fact can be brought home to unbelieving be- 
 ginners in philosophy by the following contemplation.
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 51 
 
 The totality of our thoughts, sensations, or in general 
 our experiences, at any moment is a limited aggre- 
 gate, changing continually. Anything we may fix our 
 attention on occupies a definite place within this cir- 
 cumference, and must expel something else in order 
 to find a place in this circuit or field of thought. 
 The field of thought is in the course of our life 
 continually growing, but mostly only through memory. 
 How many different arid distinct features or experi- 
 ences the whole of our experience may at any moment 
 have is a question almost impossible to decide. They 
 may be different in different persons, but that there 
 is a great number of features can hardly be denied. 
 
 But just as little can it be denied that this number 
 is limited, and that for every new-comer, some other or 
 others have to make room. 
 
 Thus, for instance, a definite feeling, be this what we 
 term bodily or mental, may drive out of our field of 
 consciousness or experience the perception of a special 
 thing ; and again, the sudden appearance within this 
 field of a sound or a flash of lightning may make us 
 forget a pain we are suffering from. A landscape 
 spread out before our view may pass unnoticed if we 
 are occupied by some absorbing train of thought, built 
 up entirely out of reminiscences. 
 
 It does not seem that the perceptions of our physical 
 senses differ in this respect from mere creations of our 
 imagination or objects of our desire. Any of these 
 very different kinds of experience may drive out the 
 other, engross us at one moment and be chased away 
 the next. In fact, all our experiences lie as it were 
 on the same plane. A lover with the image of the
 
 52 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 beloved object before him, the aspiring politician with 
 a lively picture of his ambitious aim filling his mind, 
 may be quite oblivious of scenes and occurrences which 
 absolutely engross the attention and fill the minds of 
 others near him. 
 
 Using the metaphor which we introduced in the fore- 
 going and calling the whole expanse of our inner field 
 of vision the firmament of Thought, we may draw some 
 inferences from the analogy with the aspect of the 
 starry heavens which suggested this expression. 
 
 In both instances the total expanse presents corre- 
 sponding and similar features. Both firmaments, "the 
 starry heavens" as well as the "field of inner vision," 
 appear unlimited, possessing a more or less definite 
 central portion which, all round, shades away into a 
 dim horizon : only that portion upon which our gaze is 
 fixed appears more or less definite and clear. And 
 here we discover in both cases features marked by 
 greater distinctions either singly or in clusters, and 
 these we find surrounded by, or imbedded in, a back- 
 ground of shade or darkness. 
 
 If we gaze at the starry heavens two impressions 
 seem to be suggested : the impression of a grand whole 
 and all-comprising totality ; but just as much also the 
 impression of definite lustrous points or larger bodies. 
 And some of the latter arrange themselves into definite 
 structures called constellations ; and though they pass 
 away out of our sight, we find on repeated trial that 
 they come back again : their appearance is periodical 
 and recurrent. 
 
 Similarly and correspondingly, our inner field of 
 vision or experience appears at one time as a totality,
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 53 
 
 as a whole, at another time as a disorderly collection 
 of definite experiences, parts, or features ; arid lastly, 
 some of these are clustered together and return or recur 
 in the same order and arrangement. 
 
 Employing the terminology which we have used 
 above, we may say that in both cases, in that of the 
 physical as well as in that of the mental firmament, we 
 may conceive the object of our contemplation either 
 analytically or synoptically. We may look at single 
 parts and features, isolating them from the whole, or we 
 may look at them in that connection and arrangement 
 which they naturally present to our first glance. 
 
 We may also combine the isolated and abstracted 
 details of our observation into complexes or clusters 
 which are different from those which they originally 
 present to our gaze. This process is termed Synthesis, 
 and it forms, together with Analysis, the leading 
 method of scientific research. It is, however, im- 
 portant to note that although we desire, in the process 
 of synthesis, to come nearer to the actual arrangement 
 of the features which are given to us, we are never 
 able completely, or even approximately, to recover the 
 original aspect from which we started. This is gained 
 only, if at all, not by thought in the narrower sense of 
 the word, but by sight. It is Synoptical, that is, see- 
 ing things Together ; it means being absorbed in, and 
 at one with, the Whole. 
 
 The needs of practical life and the methods of science 
 continually exact from us the abandonment of the 
 Synoptic view, of the whole firmament of our thoughts. 
 In the same way the history of astronomical know- 
 ledge shows how this started by a study of the simpler
 
 54 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND 
 
 movements of definite things in the heavens, such as 
 the rising and setting of the sun and moon, the recur- 
 rent appearance of the planets, their number, the con- 
 junction and eclipses of the sun and moon, or the still 
 rarer appearance of comets. But when this chapter of 
 stellar science had been successfully written and was 
 drawing to something like an end, the astronomer 
 looked back again at other events and features of the 
 starry firmament and opened out new lines of research, 
 taking in other phenomena, such as those of light, 
 colour, and heat, the movements of seemingly stationary 
 objects, such as double stars, the changing face of the 
 sun and moon, the erratic behaviour of meteorites, 
 and many other objects which formed new and special 
 fields of research. All this progress was possible only, 
 and stimulated through, a recurrent synoptic glance, 
 taking in the whole and overlooking nothing in the 
 whole of the starry expanse. 
 
 A still more striking example of what the human 
 mind can achieve by leaving behind it the laborious 
 collections of single objects of nature, the artificial 
 classification and arrangement of specimens, and look- 
 ing out into the great expanse of the natural world 
 that is, by abandoning the analytic and synthetic 
 method and resorting to the synoptic view, is to be 
 found in the birth of the modern science of Biology, 
 which we have already glanced at.
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 55 
 
 II. 
 
 The "firmament of thought," the all - comprising 
 experience which contains in its slow and recurrent 
 changes the whole of the world and existence, so far 
 as this is accessible to us, presents the same alternation 
 between analysis and synthesis on the one side and 
 continually repeated synopsis on the other. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that Hume, in his study of 
 the Human Understanding, confined himself to analys- 
 ing and dissecting the content of our mind, and to the 
 processes of artificial bringing together, that is, of 
 synthesis and association of ideas ; that he seems 
 to have overlooked the original order or setting in 
 which these ideas occur and their totality or ensemble. 
 Descartes seems to have taken a wicler view of the 
 philosophical task when he laid down his " Regulae " or 
 rules of method. The first three of these mark the 
 three stages of thought just mentioned, defining them 
 as : first, immediate evidence ; second, division ; and 
 third, order. Now order or arrangement is not an 
 idea derived from single definite sensations or percep- 
 tions ; it is a something that remains in our mind, even 
 if we neglect or forget the single elements which are 
 arranged ; it is what we retain of the comprehensive 
 glance at a multitude of elements, or of the totality 
 which the synoptic view revealed. 
 
 This totality or ensemble of what at any moment 
 constitutes the firmament of our thoughts grows richer, 
 wider, and more intricate in detail and order, as our 
 experience grows : this enrichment is owing to memory
 
 56 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 of former states which we conceive as continuously 
 connected and coherent with the immediate present ; 
 and it is thus much larger and wider than the present, 
 but also much less defined and clear in its remoter 
 regions. The immediate present seems to be contained 
 within the larger area of our whole past, so far as 
 memory has preserved or can regain it. 
 
 This latter region appears, therefore, as a dim back- 
 ground with less defined features. From it stands out 
 what we experience and take in at any moment ; and 
 so we establish involuntarily a difference between what 
 we see clearly before us, and the larger and vaguer 
 background which we nevertheless always feel with less 
 or greater vividness. 
 
 This larger background, in which we conceive the 
 present experience to be located, we call our Self : it is 
 identical with the total experience before us, including 
 the vivid present and the dimmer past ; and being much 
 larger, wider, and deeper, changing continuously, taking 
 in what is new, but not altogether relinquishing what is 
 old, it forms the plane of reference of our experience. 
 
 The language of common-sense shows clearly that 
 our Self is identical with that whole of experience 
 which constitutes at any moment our inner firma- 
 ment : when it is ranging over a large area, full 
 of reminiscences, the immediate present dwindles into 
 a small compass, or is absolutely unnoticed ; whilst at 
 other times startling sensations absorb the whole of 
 our attention and contract our view so much that the 
 larger and dimmer background becomes still more 
 obscure, the feeling of it vanishes, and we have lost 
 our Self in an absorbing present.
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 57 
 
 In common parlance, we call the Self I or Ego, and 
 oppose it to what is immediately before us, because 
 we are dimly conscious that it is much larger and 
 wider than any momentary experience. 
 
 Nevertheless what we at any time know of it, its 
 existence and essence for us, is simply our experience 
 in its totality. 
 
 And so we may call it the " experient " and contrast 
 it with our experience. But, in reality, the two are 
 identical, as expressed in the following equation : 
 
 Experient = Experience. 
 
 As often as we regard our experience as a whole, 
 and any momentary experience as a portion of this 
 whole, we take the synoptic view and call it our Self 
 or Ego. Whenever we fix our attention on what is 
 immediately before us, singling out as we usually do 
 some portion, some parts or features within it, we call 
 it our experience, referring it as something else to 
 our total experience or our Self. The difference then 
 between Experient and Experience is that the same 
 thing appears to us either as one or as many. 
 
 To this idea of the Self we shall return later on in 
 a different connection. At present we have to note 
 the fact that although all our knowledge refers ulti- 
 mately to experiences which we have had in the past, 
 and although, outside of the totality of this experience, 
 nothing really exists for us, we are nevertheless com- 
 pelled to speak of an external experience as forming 
 a special part in the totality of our whole experience, 
 and are equally compelled to give this outer experi- 
 ence a separate existence, maintaining that it has, as
 
 58 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 it were, a double existence, not only as a portion of 
 our own total experience, but somewhere else in a 
 special world which we call Space. 
 
 The things in this other world we call real things, 
 and distinguish them from their existence at some 
 time or other within the world of Thought. This 
 latter form of existence we call their appearance. 
 
 We thus have two forms of existence : first, that 
 kind of existence which belongs to everything which 
 enters the field of our consciousness, which is, or has 
 been at some time, a feature in the firmament of 
 Thought. And secondly, we have the world of Real 
 Things which, though known to us only through the 
 first form of existence, possess, we are convinced, an 
 existence when they are not present in our conscious- 
 ness, when they do not return to us through memory. 
 We distinguish between Appearance and Reality, that 
 is, between that which simply exists and that which 
 has, in addition to existence, Reality. 
 
 Of this difference or duality of existence which some 
 of our experiences possess we have no doubt in 
 practical life. The very fact that language has two 
 words which both express Existence is an indication 
 that there are at least two different forms of 
 Existence. 
 
 That these two forms are in common life and speech 
 not consistently kept asunder, but treated very fre- 
 quently as identical, does not extinguish the real 
 difference ; but it indicates that this difference is diffi- 
 cult to define, and that the boundary between bare 
 Existence and Reality is not clearly marked. 
 
 The words Existence and Reality are promiscuously
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 59 
 
 used to denote the same thing, and even in strictly 
 philosophical writings there is no fixed and authorised 
 usage. 
 
 For our purposes we shall use the word Existence 
 in the wider sense as comprising Everything, and we 
 shall limit the use of the words Real and Reality to 
 such things as have a double existence, that is, to 
 what we are convinced has an additional existence 
 outside our consciousness. The latter are, in fact, not 
 only appearances to us, that is, personal experiences, 
 but have, in addition, an existence of their own. 
 
 The difference is clearly marked if we take special 
 instances. Things of the outer world such as Stones, 
 Trees, Mountains, Stars, Animals, Human Beings, &c., 
 exist in space and are called real things. They also 
 exist for us as our Sensations, Impressions, Perceptions 
 or mental Images. 
 
 On the other side there are a great many things 
 which exist only if we think of them, to which, 
 however, we attribute no reality. Extreme cases of 
 this kind are Dreams, Fancies, Errors, Falsehoods, 
 Lies, &c. That the latter exist there is as little doubt 
 in our minds as with regard to the former, but we do 
 not call them Real, they seem to exist only in our 
 thoughts about them. 
 
 And again, there are Sensations or Thoughts in 
 the widest sense which only exist for us individually 
 but to which we are accustomed to attribute Reality, 
 though not in the same sense as we attribute reality 
 to things of the outer world. Among such experiences 
 are, for instance, pleasure and pain. Nobody will deny 
 that a severe toothache is a very real thing, though
 
 60 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 one would not admit that it had any existence outside 
 of our consciousness. 
 
 We will not in this connection dwell any further 
 on these differences between the larger conception of 
 Existence and the more limited idea of Reality, but will 
 remark only that the facts just mentioned indicate that 
 Reality has prima facie various forms and degrees. Of 
 these we shall speak in the sequel. 
 
 III. 
 
 Taking the words Existence and Reality in the sense 
 just defined, we may say that Existence has, strictly 
 speaking, for each one of us no negative. No one of 
 us can say, this Thing does not exist, for the simple 
 reason that to speak or think of it at all, it must in 
 some definite or indefinite form be in our mind. On 
 the other hand, we are continually making statements 
 to the effect that such and such a thing is not real, 
 meaning by this, that it has not a double existence, 
 that it has no existence outside of our thought 
 about it. 
 
 We may be tempted to say that certain things, be 
 they Sensations, Ideas, Feelings or any other experience, 
 do not exist for another mind. Thus, we may say that 
 colour does not exist for a blind man, but the blind man 
 cannot correctly say, "Colour does not exist for me," 
 because he does not know what colour is. The word 
 colour, if he uses it at all, is only a sound which he has 
 learned from others who are not blind, but it conveys no 
 meaning to him, and his knowledge of it is limited to
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 61 
 
 a repetition or recollection of a certain sound in the 
 speech of others. 
 
 Another important remark is that Experiences may 
 lose or acquire Reality through some process or other ; 
 their existence, being primarily only a Sensation or 
 Idea in our individual mind, may acquire or lose 
 Reality, that is, outer existence, in various ways. This 
 we will not investigate further at the moment, but will 
 only give a few examples. 
 
 We may in the dead of the night hear a noise which 
 wakens us and which we are apt to take for the ex- 
 plosion of a bomb ; it therefore figures in our mind as 
 a real occurrence, but on inquiry amongst our friends 
 and neighbours we find that nothing has happened, and 
 that no other person has heard the sound. We then 
 conclude that we have merely dreamt it ; the event 
 from being a real event in the outer world falls back 
 into our inner world as a merely personal experience. 
 It loses Reality but not Existence. 
 
 Another instance is that of the so-called mouches 
 volantes. These are things which pass before our eyes 
 and which we take for real flies or flying midges till 
 we, in some way or other, find out that they are purely 
 subjective personal experiences in our sight-organs. 
 They thus cease to be called real or objective and 
 become purely subjective. They lose Reality. 
 
 It may here be argued that they are not quite the 
 same as an imagination, illusion, or delusion, as some- 
 thing real has happened which we could locate in space. 
 This indicates the varying forms of things we call real. 
 
 An illustration of a Thought or Idea which exists for 
 one mind only, but acquires Reality, being transferred
 
 62 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 as it were from the larger sphere of mere existence to 
 the narrower but more distinct sphere of external 
 Reality, may be found in the process of the discovery of 
 a new star or planet, in which also several stages of 
 Reality may be distinguished. The planet Neptune 
 existed in the mind of Adams as well as independently 
 in the mind of Leverrier before it could be said truly 
 that it existed in Reality, that is, in the heavens. But 
 when Galle", on the suggestion of Leverrier, looked for 
 it and found it with his telescope within a certain con- 
 stellation, it became a Reality, whereas before that it 
 was either a mere idea or possibly a point on the stellar 
 hart of its inventor or discoverer. 
 
 A still more impressive illustration of the wandering 
 of purely personal experiences into the region of Reality 
 where they acquire a fuller and larger existence may be 
 found in the case of many convictions, ideals, or beliefs 
 which, being primarily purely personal, become more 
 vivid and more real through our imparting them to 
 others among our fellow-men. Thus, a political ideal 
 may acquire Reality by becoming the watchword of 
 a party ; a philosophical creed may gain reality, force, 
 and vividness, by being imparted to and embraced by 
 a, school of pupils and followers ; and the most sacred 
 belief, a religious faith, becomes stronger and more real 
 in the exercises of public worship or even only through 
 the presence of surroundings in which other persons 
 and things are felt to point all to a common object 
 .of reverence and adoration. 
 
 These examples show how things may move from one 
 sphere of existence to another, losing or gaining Reality
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 63 
 
 through various causes. And they suggest the fact, 
 which we shall discuss later OD, that Reality has various 
 phases and degrees. We shall also have to inquire into 
 the criteria of Reality and its different forms. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The term Reality has, independently of the various 
 phases and degrees of existence which it suggests, 
 received another very important and striking extension 
 or pregnancy of meaning ; both consciously and uncon- 
 sciously in the common usage of language, as also in 
 some of the earliest systems of philosophy. 
 
 It was notably Plato who, to express this mode of 
 thought, invented the term, oi/r<w9 oi>, which designates 
 not only that which is real but that which is really 
 or truly real. And this conception of the truly real 
 has all through subsequent philosophical writings 
 played a great part. It is important to dwell on 
 this further distinction and limitation of that which 
 exists primarily in our mind, but further, not only in 
 our mind but apparently also outside of it. In this 
 outside region of thought existence has acquired for us 
 a still more weighty meaning. 
 
 Experiences, such as Sensations or Ideas, may, as we 
 have seen, acquire for us the narrower but more pregnant 
 attribute of Reality or real Existence, forming in their 
 aggregate or totality a seemingly independent world, 
 a real world, as distinguished from, and yet incorporated 
 in, the purely mental region of thought. We shall see
 
 64 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 later on that this greater distinctness is mostly acquired 
 by a personal experience when it becomes associated with 
 other real things, entering, as it were, into another com- 
 plex of existence with a distinct but different location, 
 whilst at the same time not losing its place in the all- 
 comprehensive world of thought or personal experience. 
 
 It is, however, possible, not only for purely personal 
 experiences, be they Sensations, Ideas, or Feelings, but 
 also for real or external things to acquire additional 
 reality by being associated with other purely mental ex- 
 periences, notably such as those of pleasure or pain, of 
 joy or sorrow, of liking or disliking in fact, those 
 purely internal experiences which we term Feelings in 
 the narrower sense of the word or Emotions and, in 
 general, Interests. Both purely mental experiences and 
 external or real things may become interesting to us 
 through being surrounded by an emotional fringe or 
 atmosphere. For this attribute language has coined 
 the term Value. Experiences, both inner and outer, 
 may become valuable to and for us, rousing, as they 
 present themselves, emotional feelings which do not 
 belong to them in their naked form and which they 
 may acquire, retain or lose again, according to the 
 various occasions on which they arise. 
 
 We thus come to the conclusion that Existence may 
 not only refer to simple experiences which are purely 
 personal, but may be or become real, and, still further, 
 may become interesting or valuable, such value being of 
 very different degrees or forms. 
 
 In general we may say that any individual mind or 
 person attains to a higher, wider, and deeper life in the 
 same degree as it has a greater number of interests,
 
 OF EXISTENCE, REALITY, AND VALUE. 65 
 
 not only becoming possessed of a larger inventory of 
 present recurring and stored experiences, but also view- 
 ing its inner and outer experiences with a larger 
 number of interests accompanying them, as they recur 
 with deeper and more varied feelings and emotions. 
 
 Existence then for us has three distinct phases : mere 
 Existence as a mental experience, Reality as a double 
 and more pregnant form of existence, and Value as the 
 highest form of existence. And we might be tempted 
 to go a step further, and to say that for the adult and 
 fully developed mind there exists a frequent, though not 
 invariable, movement of thought between these three 
 regions of existence. Many things which acquire Real- 
 ity for us in the course of life exist primarily as mere 
 thoughts or internal sensations which strive to acquire 
 Reality, that is, independent existence, without losing 
 their primary existence in our mind. This is a process 
 of externalising or objectifying in order to project, as 
 it were, and through manifold means and processes, fre- 
 quently accidental, throw outside of us and make real 
 purely personal Sensations, Ideas or other mental experi- 
 ences such as Desires and Volitions. And after seeing 
 ourselves surrounded by what we call a real world, we 
 clothe many of its things and events with a special 
 attribute of interest ; they become valuable to us. 
 
 This attribute of Value, which is purely personal, be- 
 comes, owing to the reverse process of taking things back 
 into the inner and secluded region of our thoughts, a 
 process of absorbing them without destroying their in- 
 dependent existence. Perhaps in this double process of 
 externalising and reabsorbing in a more real form the 
 various experiences had during our life, we may see an 
 
 E
 
 66 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 exemplification of that triad which forms the celebrated 
 dialectical evolution in Hegel's System : the Self, the 
 not-Self, and the absorption of the not-Self in a higher 
 and richer Self. We thus conclude that there are three 
 worlds of existence simple existence, which is purely 
 personal, real existence in an outer world, and reap- 
 pearance in an inner world of Value.
 
 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES. 
 I. 
 
 IT may be that I have carried my readers so far with 
 me, but it is quite certain that they will not be satisfied, 
 and that there is something wanting in the description. 
 Though they may admit, somewhat reluctantly, that all 
 our knowledge and experience is one, a changing whole, 
 our inner self, and that this inner self contains every- 
 thing, so far as it is known to us, yet they will assert 
 that there are many experients or other selves besides 
 our own self. 
 
 It will therefore be necessary to explain how we 
 arrive at this knowledge of other selves, seeing that, 
 according to our foregoing statement, we cannot get 
 outside of the circumference or the firmament, that is, 
 the totality of our inner world. 
 
 And secondly, they will probably maintain that in 
 speaking of our Self, we mean something more compact 
 and solid than the momentary events which constitute 
 our immediate experience, and which are embedded in 
 the shadowy environment of changing and fleeting 
 memories. What we have so far described as our Self 
 appears on reflection to be only one side of this I or
 
 68 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Ego, and hardly to deserve the name Self, if deprived 
 of a multitude of other selves which surround us, 
 reducing the wide expanse and all-embracing Totality 
 which we have been speaking of to a very small figure 
 among many other figures in the outer world. 
 
 The explanation of this lies in the fact that among 
 the many experiences which constitute the totality 
 of our one experience, among the many sensations 
 which at any moment crowd upon us, there are a 
 certain number which cluster together in a definite, 
 recurrent, and seemingly unchangeable order. This 
 distinguishes them from other complexes which are 
 changing, and do not necessarily recur ; many of them, 
 though for a moment quite as clear and evident, simply 
 passing away. 
 
 This cluster of sensations, which is always there, 
 and accompanies us through life, is our physical self 
 or body. We cannot get rid of it, and it is probable 
 that a general sensation of it is always with us, forming 
 a more or less prominent feature in the flow of our 
 thoughts and feelings. 
 
 Though the different sensations which in their 
 ensemble constitute it are the same as those we perceive 
 apart from it, and which we call things, this unique 
 cluster or complex is always more or less surrounded 
 by, or mixed up with, indefinite but very real feelings 
 of pleasure, enjoyment, and comfort, or, on the other 
 hand, of discomfort, suffering, and pain. 
 
 Now we observe within our own inner experience 
 other clusters of sensations similar to what we call 
 our body; and we infer that these other clusters are 
 connected in a similar way with what we term
 
 OF THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES. 69 
 
 an inner life, that is, with a similar flow of thought, 
 and a similar firmament of experience. But it is 
 important to realise that we know nothing directly 
 of this inner life of others, and are only very 
 moderately successful in guessing at it and figuring it 
 to ourselves so that it may enter into the circumference 
 of our own total experience. 
 
 The fact that the whole of our immediate experience 
 is most intimately connected with one portion of it, 
 which we term our body, gives to the conception of 
 self a compactness and vividness which it would other- 
 wise lack. We see ourselves as it were from two sides, 
 first, as the totality of our present and remembered 
 experience ; and secondly, as a definite assemblage of 
 vivid sensations, which occupy only a very small 
 portion of the whole field embraced in the first view. 
 
 Our Self is thus compounded of two selves, an inner 
 and an outer self. The first is the firmament of our 
 thought ; the second is our body. In contrast to the 
 latter we call the former our Mind, and both together 
 our Personality. 
 
 Looking at it from this point of view, we arrive 
 at the first and most important characteristic of 
 Personality, which we involuntarily attribute also to 
 other selves or persons who surround us. The first 
 or inner view of our person, the totality of our whole 
 experience, present and past, contains the second aspect 
 as a small but permanent complex of sensations ; a 
 part, a feature in the whole, in fact a thought, taking 
 this word in its widest sense. Yet the other aspect, 
 our outer self or body, appears to us as containing in 
 some indefinable manner the whole of our inner world
 
 70 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 or existence as a thing : popularly speaking we look 
 upon our body and the whole of the outer world of 
 which it forms an infinitesimal portion, as containing 
 in a small corner the whole of our inner life, that is, 
 our mind ; and vice versa, our mind contains every- 
 thing, including this outer self, as a thought. Per- 
 sonality thus consists of two aspects, each of which 
 contains the other. 
 
 II. 
 
 The foregoing train of reasoning may suffice to per- 
 suade one or another of my readers, who has perhaps 
 with difficulty and reluctantly convinced himself that 
 everything we know, all existence for us, is contained 
 in the firmament of our own changing thought ; and 
 who, having gained this speculative and artificial 
 standpoint, desires to find his way back into the 
 common-sense view of things, such as practical life 
 forces upon us. 
 
 The rationale of this complicated argument is that 
 we form our view of other persons and a fortiori of 
 other things, by analogy with ourselves. And this is 
 something like the step which Berkeley took to escape 
 solipsism, that is to escape from the first position 
 which I have induced my readers to take up. Sol- 
 ipsism is a term compounded of two words : solus, 
 which means alone, and ipse, self, and it describes 
 the self as the only existence, in the same way as 
 we have done in our first description. It is, however, 
 quite evident that man and mankind have not arrived
 
 OF THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES. 71 
 
 by such a process at the knowledge either of the 
 outer world or their own self. For the argument 
 has only been carried through by an intricate and abs- 
 tract process of introspective search. Also in the history 
 of thought, it was not put forward distinctly and 
 concisely before Descartes ; and the implications con- 
 tained in his aphorism were neither fully realised by 
 himself, nor have they, under the hands of a succes- 
 sion of prominent thinkers, been even yet completely 
 stated and followed up. 
 
 The whole argumentation is accordingly an after- 
 thought or retrospect, and the true process, the practical 
 experience, by which human beings have arrived at 
 knowledge of the world and of themselves must be 
 quite different. 
 
 We have seen that the analytic and synthetic treat- 
 ment of the human understanding by Hume required a 
 corrective, through which not only the ideas or con- 
 stituents of human thought, but also their order and 
 arrangement, could be described. 
 
 This corrective we have termed the "synoptic 
 aspect." 
 
 But both Berkeley and Hume were deficient in 
 another direction, which was indeed indicated by 
 Locke, but not followed up. 
 
 Modern thought has added and strongly urged this 
 other way of looking at things. It showed itself first 
 in the Natural Sciences, as did likewise the synoptic 
 view. This latter view is essentially dependent upon 
 the Arrangement of things in Space be this the outer 
 space around us, or the inner expanse of our sensations, 
 feelings, or thoughts. But there is also, as William
 
 72 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 James's term implies, an expanse or succession in Time, 
 and the contemplation which makes use of this is what 
 we now term the genetic view, or, in fact, the plain 
 historical way of Locke. 
 
 The Genetic or historical view has, in the Natural 
 Sciences, been adopted in two distinct ways. It was 
 first applied to the origin and growth of individual 
 things, both living and lifeless : notably in embryology 
 and geology, the history of the individual human 
 frame and the history of the Earth. But the investi- 
 gation of the human body, and also that of animals 
 and plants, led on to the question of the development 
 of species, to the genealogy of living things. The 
 earlier studies in genesis, those referring to individual 
 beings, was termed Ontogenesis ; the later form of 
 genetic study was termed Phylogenesis. 
 
 Now this genetic study may also be carried on with 
 the human mind as its object, arid so it has been 
 in recent times, under various aspects. The study of 
 savage and half - civilised peoples has led to various 
 theories regarding the growth of the forms of human 
 speech, the customs and habits of many countries, the 
 religious and moral ideas, as also the beginnings of 
 methodical thought, and the rudiments of science. A 
 second class of thinkers have studied the development 
 of child-life, the dawn of mental and moral achievements 
 in infants and children. 
 
 But in both cases we are met by a great difficulty. 
 As stated above, we know directly and observe only 
 the physical side, the external and bodily manifesta- 
 tions of the subject we are interested in : and this 
 latter we infer or picture to ourselves only by analogy
 
 OF THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES. 73 
 
 with ourselves ; each observer having only his own 
 total inner experience to guide him. 
 
 And this latter experience is, to far the greatest 
 extent, that of his adult mind ; with very scanty re- 
 miniscences of the slow and gradual steps by which he 
 reached this. 
 
 From this it follows that the results gained by these 
 various methods are extremely uncertain and precarious. 
 
 No consistent attempt has ever been made to confine 
 oneself to the purely introspective aspect, and to see 
 how far one could get on this road alone. 
 
 III. 
 
 The task lying before us, as indicated in the last 
 sentence, may be termed the exploration of the field 
 of consciousness, of the stream of thought, or of the 
 firmament of the soul whichever term we may choose 
 to describe the total expanse and changing aspect of 
 our inner life : this is a life including also the whole 
 of what we term the outer world, in the form of sensa- 
 tions, or ideas and memory pictures derived from them. 
 But it in addition contains, probably as the predomi- 
 nant part of itself, the whole world of feelings, defined 
 and undefined desires, longings, volitions, willings, 
 and efforts, &c. And it is, as stated above, important 
 to note that these different occupants of our field of 
 consciousness alternate with each other, one chasing 
 away the other, occupying, so to speak, the space of 
 others which depart or linger in shadowy distance, 
 forming a fringe or background to clearer objects which
 
 74 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 lie immediately in front of our inner eye, commanding 
 our attention and interest. 
 
 There seems in this respect to be no difference be- 
 tween what we term the clear and definite impressions 
 and perceptions of some of our bodily senses and the 
 quite indefinite feelings, physical or mental, which 
 we are inclined to consider as purely personal. We 
 may compare these with the clouds which in our 
 physical firmament obscure the definite objects, such 
 as sun, moon, and stars, either rendering them dim and 
 shadowy or hiding them altogether. 
 
 But continuing the analogy still further, we may 
 be inclined to look upon these different objects in 
 our outer firmament as more or less real ; deeming 
 the sun, moon, and stars, owing to their greater vivid- 
 ness, distinctness, and periodic recurrence, to be more 
 real than the fleeting mists and clouds which possess 
 less definite contours, many varying shapes, and never 
 come back again in the same way. This was indeed 
 a view quite common even among civilised peoples 
 before the age of science ; but nobody nowadays would 
 deny that a cloud or vapour has as much reality as 
 the sun, the stars, or the earth. 
 
 The first axiom or rule which the introspective 
 psychologist must lay down and follow in his studies 
 is the recognition that everything within the field of 
 consciousness, every object or feature in the changing 
 firmament of thought, deserves the same epithet of an 
 existent : the whole of this changing firmament being 
 the only and all the reality we know of, the primordial 
 existence, the great fund from which we draw all the 
 special things which we deal with, either in the open
 
 OF THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES. 75 
 
 daylight of what we term the outer world, or the half 
 illuminated regions of our private personal experience. 
 
 But, when once he leaves pure introspective psy- 
 chology, the philosopher will have much more difficulty 
 in convincing the popular mind that these two regions 
 deserve, in the same sense, the same epithet of reality. 
 To convince my readers that the difference which 
 common-sense asserts, and which a philosopher cannot 
 deny, is not the primary state of things in our slowly 
 acquired experience, it will suffice to consider for 
 a moment what can possibly be the state of mind of 
 an infant when awakening to the sensations of its 
 earliest moments of existence. It certainly has no 
 idea of what we term reality, for as Locke tells us, 
 and everybody accepts, ideas are not innate or inborn, 
 but follow definite sensations ; and the range of sensa- 
 tions of an infant must be very small, consisting 
 probably of feelings of comfort or discomfort, pain or 
 pleasure, desire or satisfaction. Definite perceptions 
 can only gradually present themselves in this small 
 field of consciousness as the higher senses of sight, 
 hearing, and touch become developed ; they will emerge 
 out of the chaos of indefinite feelings something like 
 our experiences in the first moments when we awake 
 out of sleep, or when, as we lie awake in a dark room, 
 a dawn of light slowly discloses a variety of external 
 objects with their colours, figures, and outlines. If 
 this account of the dawn of consciousness is correct, 
 we may ask the question what impressions, or clusters 
 of impressions, are probably the first which distinctly 
 appear and stand out within this general chaos of 
 feelings and sensations.
 
 76 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Now it has occurred to some thinkers, and notably 
 in more recent times, 1 that the first sensations and 
 impressions which stand out clearly in the flow of an 
 infant's consciousness, the stars as it were in its 
 firmament, must be the sensations connected with its 
 first movements and experiences in life. All these are 
 connected with the person who nurses the child. The 
 feeling of warmth and comfort, of hunger and satis- 
 faction, the pressure of a caress, the glance of a pair of 
 eyes, the voice with its modulations ; the check which 
 the infant receives to its unconscious but restless 
 movements ; the definite outline of a face and figure ; 
 are the first experiences in the earliest days of our life, 
 and they, changing and recurrent, cluster together and 
 present the image of a person. And as this cluster of 
 sensations and impressions suddenly, after a lengthy 
 dawn, starts into full daylight, forming a compact whole 
 in the same way as the two blurred pictures in a 
 stereoscope start all at once into one solid image, so 
 also the moment when the infant sees clearly for the 
 first time its mother or nurse, constitutes for it a 
 revelation the first revelation of what we all call the 
 outer world ; the not-self within the all-comprehending 
 circumference of what the infant learns to call itself. 
 And be it also noted that all the lifeless things which 
 are dangled about in order to attract and awaken an 
 infant's attention and interest, are connected with the 
 same person or persons that form its earliest outer 
 experience. 
 
 Now the appearance of a definite image within the 
 firmament of the infant's mind is not gained by any 
 1 Cf. ' Religion and Science : A Philosophical Essay.' Part I., sect. vii.
 
 OF THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES. 77 
 
 conscious process of analysis or synthesis, but is a 
 synoptic object of sight. It comes, as it were, by itself, 
 as the image in relief in a stereoscope does, without any 
 conscious effort of our own. In both cases the whole 
 is seen clearly before its parts, which attain clearness 
 and receive attention only after they are recognised a 
 elements or parts of the whole. 
 
 If we adopt this view, we must maintain that the 
 sight of a person or persons is the first clear knowledge 
 of what we term an outer existence, of an existence 
 other than, but still contained within the totality of 
 our experience. If this is so, Personality is the first 
 instance, and becomes for us the first category of 
 reality ; lifeless things becoming only gradually de- 
 tached from Personality, and found to possess a different 
 sort of existence. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A full-blown Personality seems thus to be the first 
 definite experience within the horizon of an infant'^ 
 flow of feelings, and of mixed and confused sensations. 
 
 This gains vividness through alternating disappear- 
 ance and reappearance. Some lifeless things may 
 gradually gain similar importance, but the spontaneous 
 mobility of the personal appearance will gradually 
 mark it off from the more rigid and unchanging en- 
 vironment of lifeless things. We know, however, that 
 both with children and primitive people, it takes a 
 long time before a clear distinction is realised between 
 the living and freely-moving personality and lifeless
 
 78 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 objects. What we may term the attribute of animation 
 clings for a long time to many inanimate things. 
 
 But now we must register a further important ex- 
 perience in the child's mind ; and this experience is 
 the gradual perception of its own body. 
 
 Not until the child recognises the continual presence 
 of this cluster of sensations, their proximity, and the 
 fact that they cannot be got rid of, is it likely that a 
 fairly definite contrast between the not-self and the 
 self, the object and the subject, will arise and become 
 the dominant feature in all succeeding experience. It 
 is well known that children talk of themselves as 
 definite outer beings before they learn to use the word 
 I. The principal point which we should bear in mind 
 is that what we term the not-self in the form of 
 Personality must be an earlier experience than that of 
 our own Self, although it will, to begin with, in the 
 history of the child's mind, not appear as a not-self 
 but only as a definite mark and vivid cluster of sensa- 
 tions, embedded in and surrounded by a confused halo 
 or penumbra of indefinite feelings. 
 
 The moment when the child sees itself in its outer 
 figure as standing among other similar figures, be they 
 adults or other children, marks an epoch in its mental 
 development. For not only does this bring perfect 
 clearness between the " me " and the " not me," the self 
 and other selves and things, but it throws into the 
 background that less defined flow of experiences, feel- 
 ings, and sensations, which really form, in their totality, 
 the primordial content of the child's mind. From that 
 moment, and probably increasingly so in the course of 
 our life, we, in thinking of ourselves, unavoidably lay
 
 OF THE SELF AND OTHER SELVES. 79 
 
 the greater stress upon our physical outer appearance, 
 which distinguishes us from the great variety of other 
 beings ; all moving about, as it were, on the same 
 plane. We now realise that we are one among many, 
 a very small unit in a multitude ; and we have some 
 difficulty in remembering that all these beings and 
 things, moving about on the same plane, which we call 
 the external world, exist and are known to us only 
 through impressions of our senses, that is, as features in 
 the stream of thought. Forgetting this, we enter and 
 live in a new world, seemingly though not really 
 different from and opposed to the inner world of 
 thought ; and so great does this difference appear that 
 we henceforward involuntarily look upon this new 
 world of persons and things as endowed with more 
 reality than the primordial self with all its experiences, 
 from which this new world has become detached. 
 
 In fact, we may assert that only at this stage does 
 the idea of reality, the attribute of being real, enter 
 into the stream of thought, and this attribute has an 
 opposite namely, the unreal. It has a different mean- 
 ing from mere existence ; for unreal things, such as 
 illusions, dreams, imaginations, memory pictures, &c., 
 exist, but we do not call them real, their existence 
 being limited but included in the stream of our 
 thoughts : they have a place in the firmament of the 
 soul, in the field of consciousness. This latter or prim- 
 ordial form of existence has, as already stated above, 
 no opposite. As it embraces all thoughts it can only 
 disappear with thought itself, that is, with conscious- 
 ness. But on the other side, what we call real has its 
 opposite in the unreal.
 
 80 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 From this point of view the vexed question of the 
 reality of sensations presents no difficulty. We have no 
 conception or idea of reality before we have that expe- 
 rience that is, those perceptions from which we, by a 
 process of abstraction, form the idea of reality ; and 
 these perceptions are, according to our view, what we 
 term external things and persons, including our own 
 outer existence. There is therefore no meaning in the 
 question whether the content or aggregate of these per- 
 ceptions is real or not, for they are just what gives us 
 the idea of reality. And this applies to the secondary 
 as well as the primary qualities of Locke. 
 
 But it is just as meaningless to ask for something 
 additional, some hidden kernel of reality, which holds 
 these qualities together, and is, as it were, the bearer of 
 them. For the same argument obtains here which we 
 used in dealing with the whole of our inner experience, 
 which is simply the totality of our conscious flow of 
 thought or firmament of inner sight. 
 
 To sum up, neither in the shape of external matter, 
 nor of a substantial mind, has the idea of substance 
 any meaning or justification. 
 
 And yet the question returns, why are we always 
 searching for these illegitimate objects as something 
 peculiar, why are we unable to get rid of such things as 
 matter and mind, the thing in itself, or the unknowable ? 
 To the answer to this question we must now direct our 
 attention.
 
 81 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 
 I. 
 
 WE must now proceed to describe, as far as possible, the 
 new conceptions or ideas which enter the mind when 
 dominated by the contrast between subject and object. 
 This contrast emerges as a clear conception at the 
 moment when a certain number of vivid sensations 
 detach themselves from the running stream of thought, 
 or to use our other simile, when the constellations on 
 the firmament of consciousness stand out, disappear, 
 and return in defined order. We then become 
 accustomed to think of these as something having 
 independent existence, though they exist for us only as 
 sensations among many other sensations, either with 
 the vividness of present existence, or as the less vivid 
 reproductions of memory. But this vividness and 
 definiteness of an independent existence could never 
 arise in the solitary mind of an individual. It is more 
 than any other mental feature the result of what Ward 
 terms "inter-subjective communication." For we learn 
 by the very process through which external things are 
 presented to us, that they stand in the same relation to 
 other persons as they do to our own body. It is only 
 through other persons that we are first made aware of 
 
 F
 
 82 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 them, that they are connected with definite sounds, in 
 the form of words and names, which latter we learn to 
 use in the same way as they are used by others. 
 
 Imperceptibly and unconsciously we come to look 
 upon them as a common possession, which we share 
 with our fellow-men, and this gives them a special 
 attribute of reality which we term " externality," to 
 distinguish it from our own personal thoughts, which 
 we term "internal." 
 
 It is also well to note that unless we are somehow 
 assured that other persons see, hear, and feel the same 
 things as we do that is, have or had the same sen- 
 sations at the same moment we at once and involun- 
 tarily remove such sensations from the field of outer 
 things relegating them to the internal or subjective 
 series of experiences. 
 
 Some examples may illustrate this : 
 
 As stated above, 1 the mouches volantes fall back into 
 the region of purely subjective experience when we find 
 that we alone have had the sensation. And on the 
 other hand, the idea of a new planet wanders from the 
 region of thought or from the chart of the astronomer 
 into real Space when actually seen through the telescope. 
 The celebrated announcement of Leverrier and Adams 
 that they had discovered by calculation the existence of 
 a new planet would not have satisfied the popular mind 
 if Galle at Berlin had not seen the star, and if others 
 had not confirmed this. The discovery, if not thus 
 supported, would have fallen back into the doubtful 
 position of an individual idea, or possibly an error. 
 
 No scientific discovery is accepted as such except it 
 
 1 Page 61.
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 83 
 
 be verified by many independent observers. If thus 
 confirmed, it wanders, as it were, out of the inner world 
 of the discoverer into the outer world of facts that is, 
 it becomes a possession of other minds. 
 
 The most important instance of externalising a purely 
 personal experience is that we, in the course of our 
 practical life, more and more connect or even identify 
 our inner self, that is, the totality of our present 
 and remembered experience, with our physical body, 
 with that cluster of sensations which is visible to our 
 fellow-men. 
 
 Though the cluster of sensations which in our field 
 of consciousness constitutes our outer self, is only a 
 very small portion of our stream of thought, it never- 
 theless, being always there and recurring in familiar 
 sensations, becomes, as it were, the unifying centre of 
 our whole existence ; and this view is strengthened by 
 the fact that we, treating other persons on a parity with 
 ourselves, feel convinced that their physical existence 
 which is the only thing we know of them is similarly 
 the concentrated expression of their inner selves. This 
 conviction, without which no communication with others 
 would be possible, leads us to look for some definite 
 point or points among their physical appearances which 
 shall reveal to us the existence of that inner world 
 which we conceive to be similar to our own. 
 
 That this search is fruitless may be seen by the 
 following consideration.
 
 84 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 II. 
 
 If we adopt the view explained in the foregoing and 
 discard the notion of substance, both so far as our own 
 inner self is concerned, and also when we think of 
 outer things, it is clear that the problem of the relation 
 of mind and body cannot arise as it is ordinarily stated. 
 For all we know of the former is that it is constituted 
 as a stream of thought, and all we know of the latter is 
 that it forms a definite recurrent cluster of sensations 
 embedded in that stream of thought. 
 
 From this point of view the relation of mind and 
 body is accordingly that of a changing whole or a 
 totality to a small but recurrent feature within it, 
 forming a part of it. The first is accordingly the larger, 
 and the second the smaller aggregate. As seen, felt, 
 and known by us, the body is embedded and surrounded 
 by the whole inner world of thought, of which it forms 
 a very small portion. 
 
 It is neither more independent than other sensations 
 which may have the same vividness, nor is it connected 
 with the totality of our stream of thought, or our 
 firmament of consciousness, in any other way than, for 
 instance, the centre of a rounded plane is connected 
 with the other part. It is simply a centre of reference 
 for our thoughts, which through its ever recurrent 
 presence and seeming stability holds them together. 
 
 To say that the body contains the mind would be 
 just as correct or incorrect as to say that the centre 
 holds together the circle. It would be more correct to 
 say that our consciousness, that is, our mind, contains
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 85 
 
 its body as a special image or centre of reference. Nor 
 is it possible to say anything more about this special 
 connection of the two than we are able to say about the 
 connection of a part with the whole. 
 
 And yet we must answer the question, How does it 
 come about that we are continually tempted, popularly, 
 to look upon the flow of thought, the whole world of 
 inner sensations, as contained within the body or a 
 special part of it? 
 
 The explanation of this will be found in the fact 
 that wherever any special object, that is, any definite 
 sensation or cluster of sensations, belongs to that region 
 of thought which possesses those attributes of clearness 
 and definition which we term spatial, we are involun- 
 tarily driven to attach to it a higher degree of reality 
 than to other experiences which are not thus connected. 
 Thus, our body impresses us as being more real than 
 the general flow of our thoughts and feelings. 
 
 And this impression is very much strengthened by 
 the fact that, comparing ourselves with other persons, 
 we can only deal with appearances in space. 
 
 Of other persons, we observe and know clearly only 
 what their bodies show : although we are firmly con- 
 vinced that these bodies represent or reveal an inner 
 life, a flow of thought, similar to our own, we know 
 of this only through inference from and analogy with 
 our own inner experience. 
 
 And it is well known how extremely precarious and 
 uncertain this process of judging by inference and 
 analogy is, how it gives us only a very general view 
 of the mind of others, and breaks down absolutely as 
 soon as we attempt any minute description or analysis.
 
 86 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Being thus almost entirely limited in our thought 
 and knowledge of others to that spatial minimum 
 which their true personality exhibits, and nevertheless 
 treating them as equal to ourselves, we become accus- 
 tomed to look upon ourselves likewise as something 
 outside of our inner firmament of thought. In fact, we 
 learn to regard ourselves, as it were, with the eye and 
 from the situation of other persons. 
 
 Now, those sensations or aggregates of sensations 
 which have the property of presenting themselves as 
 situated in space, permitting us to see them together 
 although they are separate from each other, form the 
 distinctive elements of the outer world. And as we can 
 in many instances point to them, so that they become 
 features also in the minds of other persons, and as in 
 fact it is only through other persons pointing them out 
 to us that we originally became aware of them, this 
 world of sensations, these constellations in our inner 
 firmament stand out, forming a special class by them- 
 selves detached from the background of the whole 
 region of consciousness in which they are embedded. 
 
 They possess more permanency than other features 
 within that firmament, recur again and again with similar 
 distinctness and similar features ; they become familiar 
 to us, are easily remembered, and can be pictured in 
 thought or imagined if described to us by others. In 
 fact it is mostly through what other persons tell us that 
 this world of spatial images is constructed. Without 
 the help of other persons, what we know of this outer 
 world would be a very small and incomplete thing, 
 containing many features of which we could not be 
 certain whether they are objective or subjective.
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 87 
 
 It is entirely through intersubjective communication 
 that the outer firmament within the more comprehensive 
 inner firmament gradually rises into prominence, occu- 
 pying the first place in our attention and interest, and 
 forming also the main, if not the only, subject of our 
 communication with others. Through this intercourse 
 with other persons the plane of the outer world 
 becomes for us gradually filled up and completely 
 covered with sensations which are, to a large extent, 
 never experienced as such, but only imagined by us 
 individually. 
 
 III. 
 
 In the way just described, the complex of sensations 
 which appear located in space gradually joins together 
 and forms a new totality. This totality, which includes 
 not only things fixed and defined in a distinct order, 
 but also other persons, and our own bodies, and with 
 them, as it seems to us, all the inner world of thought 
 possessed by them, appears, in the practical and popular 
 view of the world and life, to contain everything we 
 call it the Universe. 
 
 Before our physical or our inner eye, it appears as 
 a great surface, which we learn has also the dimension 
 of depth. The more we look at it, either directly with 
 our physical eye, or inwardly in the memory pictures 
 which we carry about with us, the more it seems to be 
 continuous, with no gaps or empty spaces. Experience 
 accumulated through ages, and adopted by us, has 
 taught us that wherever an apparent empty space exists
 
 88 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 it is nevertheless, on closer examination, found to be 
 filled with things of a similar order to those which we 
 clearly see or experience through our senses. And a 
 remarkable property of this spatial expanse is revealed 
 to us in the fact that, through artificial methods of 
 enlargement or reduction, we can reach in imagination 
 what otherwise would be inaccessible to us because 
 of its immensity or minuteness. 
 
 In this way the astronomer traces on paper in a 
 small compass the whole of the physical firmament, and 
 the naturalist, by similar means, the minutest invisible 
 constituent elements of visible things. The telescope 
 and the microscope come here to our aid, and not only 
 are we able through drawings and models to picture 
 to ourselves and study the vast regions of the starry 
 heavens, but likewise the infinitesimal structures of 
 living and lifeless things. 
 
 Yet, in spite of all the ingenious methods and devices 
 which permit us to see and touch what is invisible or out 
 of our reach, this supposed totality of things, this all- 
 comprising universe, finds no place for that much larger 
 expanse of the inner firmament of thought and feelings 
 which contains the whole of the outer Universe in 
 the form of passing but ever-recurrent features. 
 
 Faced with this dilemma of not being able to find in 
 the outer world or universe any room, or even any 
 location, for the inner world, we fancy that behind this 
 outer universe there lies hidden a spiritual, as distin- 
 guished from a physical entity, a reality of quite a 
 different order : we divine this in the outer world only 
 through the irregular movements of living things which 
 cannot be brought into coherence with the regular,
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 89 
 
 uniform, and mechanical order of by far the larger 
 portion of external phenomena. 
 
 And here a further difficulty arises. 
 
 This inner world manifests itself externally to us 
 only in an extremely small portion of the whole universe. 
 And on the other hand, the instances of its manifesta- 
 tions are so innumerable, though so minute in their 
 aggregate, that we are forced to assume that this inner 
 spiritual or subjective world exists many times over in 
 many examples. 
 
 Certainly in as many examples as we know of 
 personal beings, and possibly also in those other living 
 things which exhibit some attributes of personality. 
 
 The circumstance that we are popularly convinced 
 that other persons contain within, or connected with 
 their physical frame, an inner world similar to our own, 
 leads to another dilemma. 
 
 Through intercommunication with other persons we 
 learn that they see and feel and hear the same outer 
 things as we do. As these outer things which we 
 consider to be outside of our own bodily self, cannot in 
 reality be within the body of other persons any more 
 than they are within our own, we come inevitably to the 
 conclusion that these things exist in duplicates. Plac- 
 ing, for instance, a definite object in front of another 
 person, it is evident to us that the two things, the 
 object and the person who sees it, are quite separate. 
 Nevertheless, the person is able to describe the body 
 to us approximately in the same way as we see it 
 ourselves. 
 
 We therefore inevitably consider that the person 
 or subject has within itself, as it were, a mirror which
 
 90 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 contains the reflection of the body. In this way, we 
 reverse the actual order of things and suppose that the 
 object is the first, and the reflected image the second 
 fact or event, and transferring this relation to our self, 
 we assume that the external object and the whole 
 external world must be there before we can see or 
 experience it ; whereas, in the order of events, un- 
 doubtedly the whole outer world was at one time in 
 our lives merely a flow of sensations, which we have, 
 through processes partly described above, gradually 
 learnt to project outside : this means not only to see 
 and feel, but to see and feel definite things. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In our description so far we have made much use of 
 the term "inter-subjective" communication with other 
 persons, and we have seen that without this the de- 
 velopment of our field of consciousness, the gradual 
 clearance of the firmament of our soul, could never have 
 taken place, for this begins, as we have seen, with the 
 earliest nursing and fondling of the infant by its 
 mother or nurse. 
 
 It will now be necessary to look somewhat more 
 closely at this intercourse between one person and 
 another. 
 
 For it is only through this means that the original, 
 purely personal stream of thought has been broken up 
 into many features, that our attention has been concen- 
 trated on some of these features more than on others, 
 that we have learnt the distinction of object and subject,
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 91 
 
 of self and not-self ; that we have formed unconsciously 
 the conception of reality and appearance, of being and 
 nothingness, of present and remembered sensations, and 
 that whole array of abstract notions with which we 
 operate in practical life. 
 
 The question arises how this intercourse is possible. 
 As has been pointed out by the eminent French psy- 
 chologist, Gabriel Tarde, the beginning of this active in- 
 tercourse on our part, that is, on the part of the infant, 
 seems to reduce itself to imitation. This imitation is 
 most effectively carried on by sounds. These sounds or 
 words connected with definite sensations of sight or 
 touch, or both, become associated in the infant's mind 
 with what it learns to look upon as outer things. 
 They form the beginning of speech and language. 
 
 Whether it is possible to think without words is a 
 question which has been frequently discussed, variously 
 answered, and never satisfactorily decided. The study 
 of the deaf, the dumb, and the blind has been resorted 
 to in order to throw some light on the subject. How- 
 ever this may be, there is no doubt that the most of us 
 do not gain full possession of our mental ability 
 without the aid of the speech of others as well as of 
 our own. 
 
 It is through what others tell us that the greater 
 part of our knowledge of things external is acquired, 
 and as stated above, it is very unlikely that we should 
 ever gain a clear view of the world and our outer 
 selves without observing and communicating with 
 other persons that is, with beings who present the 
 appearance of sameness or similarity in fact, of parity 
 with our own self.
 
 92 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 The popular view, adopted also by Science, is that 
 the intercourse between persons is limited to their physi- 
 cal or external existence ; that we see, hear, touch and 
 feel each other merely through our bodily selves. We 
 have, however, shown in the foregoing that this limita- 
 tion of personality to our bodily selves is quite gratu- 
 itous, and so far as each of us is individually concerned, 
 quite incorrect. Our body, that is, the complex of 
 sensations constituted within the firmament of our 
 inner experience, forms only a very small part of the 
 total expanse of our changing thought within the 
 stream of consciousness. Assuming, as we must do, 
 that other persons are possessed of a similar expanse 
 of inner experience, it is quite gratuitous to suppose 
 that their existence or reality is limited to the small 
 speck they appear to be on the outer firmament ; or 
 that we have any right to place their inner self some- 
 where inside or behind their bodies. 
 
 From our point of view the body is only, and at 
 best, a point or region of reference, where, in some way 
 which we cannot picture to ourselves, the two worlds 
 meet : a point of transition through which the inner 
 self communicates with the outer, and vice versa. All 
 analogies taken either from the inner firmament to 
 explain the outer, or from the outer world to explain 
 the inner, are palpably totally useless. 
 
 The popular and conventional supposition that all 
 thought and inner life is located somewhere within the 
 physical body, or in some definite portions of it, must 
 be given up as quite gratuitous. 
 
 Even so far as the outer world alone with its phys- 
 ical manifestations is concerned, modern inventions
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 93 
 
 have shown us that in speaking to and with another 
 person, addressing to him and receiving from him 
 intellectual information, it might be quite unnecessary 
 that this person himself should do more than com- 
 municate without our knowledge, at the very moment 
 of our intercourse with him, with a distant thinking 
 person ; himself acting only as a point of trans- 
 ference of thought and intelligence which he may not 
 understand. 
 
 The fact that when observing other persons the 
 infant learns to imitate is a phenomenon quite unique. 
 It cannot be analysed into any simpler elements, but 
 must be taken as a fundamental property upon which 
 intercourse with others is, to a very large extent, 
 founded, and which in return promotes this intercourse. 
 And even in after life we are all more or less prone to 
 adopt, unconsciously, the manners and ways of those 
 who surround us. And yet, even if we accept this 
 fundamental fact as an essential property of personality, 
 it goes only a little way in explaining the growth of 
 our mind in the course of our earlier life. A still more 
 peculiar phenomenon is the fact that, by repeating 
 gestures, words, and sentences, there are created within 
 our mind abstract notions similar to those possessed 
 and used by other persons, and on this marvellous 
 property depends the whole of our intelligent inter- 
 course with others, and the whole of our behaviour 
 throughout our whole life. We seem to possess, in 
 common, certain general ideas, and to form them almost 
 entirely, and unconsciously, through the influence of 
 others. 
 
 The contemplation of this marvellous phenomenon,
 
 94 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 the growth of our inner world through the influence 
 of others with whom we stand seemingly merely in 
 physical contact and communication, forces upon us 
 almost necessarily the conviction that there is a direct 
 intercourse between the inner worlds, or streams of 
 thought, as there is between the portions of the outer 
 world, that is, its physical bodies. 
 
 Such an intercourse seems to most of us unthinkable, 
 just as it seemed unthinkable to Newton and Faraday 
 that physical bodies should attract or repel each other 
 at a distance, without an intervening medium of com- 
 munication. But this truly intersubjective, or spiritual, 
 communion becomes more plausible if we, as stated 
 above, abandon as unlikely the idea that the minds of 
 individual persons are located and confined within their 
 bodily framework, and are limited to communications 
 through it.
 
 95 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 
 I. 
 
 WE must now proceed further in our exploration of 
 the field of consciousness, and recall some distinctions 
 which were made in an earlier chapter. Of these the 
 most important is the differentiation within this field 
 that is included in the total expanse of our experience, 
 of those features or sensations which we term real, 
 as distinguished from others which equally exist, but 
 are relegated to the region of purely subjective 
 happenings. 
 
 The latter have an equal share with the former in 
 the property of existence ; that is to say, in the stream 
 of thought, or in the firmament of our soul, they form 
 events just as much as the more definite impressions of 
 our physical senses. They alternate, or exchange places 
 with the others, compelling them to disappear, as they 
 are on their part frequently driven away by the gener- 
 ally more vivid sensations connected with our physical 
 self. 
 
 Of many of the latter, that is, of physical sensations, 
 we only gradually learn that they are located in our 
 bodies. It is very unlikely that the bodily sensations
 
 96 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 of hunger and thirst, of cold and heat, of pain and dis- 
 comfort, are in the early days, or even months of our 
 life, located by us in definite portions of our body ; they 
 are probably quite indefinite in this respect, as many 
 even violent sensations in after life cannot be precisely 
 located. But this does not prevent them from being 
 quite as intense, forming quite as real events or facts 
 in our inner life as the impressions of the outer world. 
 
 A violent pain, which we are at a loss to locate, may 
 absorb for a moment our entire attention, covering as 
 it were the whole field of our consciousness and driving 
 away every other feature within it. 
 
 But not only bodily pain or enjoyment may absorb 
 us in this way, but even mental anguish may be so 
 acute that we entirely forget our physical surroundings. 
 A keen lover of nature and natural scenery may for a 
 moment be entirely oblivious of surroundings which he 
 otherwise passionately enjoys, when his mind is full of 
 some distressing thought : 
 
 " In the wild woodlands, in the wild woodlands 
 
 I hear not the song near by, 
 For beyond the waving tree-tops 
 The great world heaves a sigh." 
 
 In such moments the self or ego is as it were con- 
 tracted into a single sensation, be this external or 
 spiritual. For we can, in the same way, in listening 
 to the complicated world of sound of an orchestra, or 
 watching the scenes of a play, become entirely oblivious 
 of everything else around or within us ; and we are at 
 such moments completely unconscious of ourselves and 
 the larger world. Fortunately such states last only 
 for a moment, and we are soon awakened again to
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 97 
 
 the reality of other things and the existence of our 
 own self. 
 
 According to our view, the difference between reality 
 and existence flashes upon the infant's mind when it 
 recognises another person, and proceeds gradually to 
 distinguish between such persons and its own bodily 
 self. The differentiation between object and subject is 
 then fastened upon the mind, never to be lost again. 
 
 It is not a process of analysis and synthesis, but a 
 synoptic experience : and it is only by further search 
 in the objective world that is, in that portion of our 
 personal experience which is both objective and sub- 
 jective that we learn the meaning and use of the word 
 Reality. 
 
 All the attributes of reality are contained in this 
 first experience, and by analysis of this we may gain 
 some more precise definition of the sense of the term. 
 
 To begin with, as it arises through personal influence, 
 we can never thoroughly divest Reality of Person- 
 ality. And yet this is exactly what we have to do 
 in the course of our early mental development, and 
 still more, if we proceed in later life to take up the 
 scientific aspect. Children and primitive men do not 
 clearly distinguish between persons and things, as is 
 shown in the play of children and in the animism pre- 
 valent among primitive races. The distinction between 
 the two forms of reality seems to go hand in hand with 
 the slowly growing observation of the uniformity and 
 regularity of by far the greater portion of external 
 phenomena, as compared with the irregularity and 
 seeming waywardness of some beings which we slowly 
 learn to call living. But the distinction between the 
 
 G
 
 98 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 two is not clearly marked, and we are sometimes at a 
 loss to decide where and at what moment the attitude 
 of life appears or disappears. The clearer definition of 
 this distinction is a problem which even Science is 
 hardly yet able to solve. 
 
 As just stated, by far the larger portion of the 
 objective or outer world appears, on investigation, to be 
 devoid of life, and in consequence we are apt to neglect 
 or entirely forget the living things among the over- 
 whelming multitude of lifeless objects with which most 
 of us are mainly occupied in the business of life. 
 
 In fact, being unable to give a clear definition of life 
 itself, and seeing that most, if not all the attributes of 
 living things, taken singly, are no other than those 
 of lifeless things, a school of thought has arisen which 
 is termed materialist, and which explains, or tries to 
 explain away as merely apparent, the mysterious pro- 
 perty of life. It is only in a special arrangement or 
 order of the same elements that living things are dis- 
 tinguished from their lifeless surroundings. 
 
 The most searching analysis does not discover any 
 difference in the constituent elements, nor in the modes 
 of motion, and it is only when we try to put these 
 elements together that we realise the impossibility of 
 restoring that peculiar order or arrangement which 
 living things originally presented to us. This peculiar 
 property is termed organisation, and seems to be the 
 sine qua non of life and a fortiori of personality.
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 
 
 II. 
 
 A very important character of all those sensations, 
 impressions, or experiences which we call objective is 
 this, that they present themselves to us in space. As 
 spatial, they appear at the same moment both together 
 and apart. 
 
 This enables us to distinguish them one from the 
 other, and at the same time also to view them in con- 
 junction. Out of this fundamental property of objective 
 things, which cannot be further explained, there grows 
 the abstract notion of individuality, if we take things 
 singly ; and of number and position, if we take them 
 together. Without these spatial properties, definite 
 thought would probably be quite impossible. 
 
 The term individuality has in modern parlance lost, 
 to a great extent, the meaning indicated by its deriva- 
 tion ; for an individual thing need not be indivisible, 
 but is only for the moment considered to be a unique 
 whole which might lose its specific character if divided. 
 Yet it is true that what we term the higher classes 
 of individuals possess to a large extent this character 
 of indivisibility. 
 
 But the character that attaches to all things or beings 
 is more exactly that of separateness. They can be 
 either physically or mentally detached from their sur- 
 roundings, and viewed and examined by themselves. 
 
 And here we may mention the principal distinction 
 between definite objects that is, clusters of sensations 
 in our field of consciousness, which we remember, and 
 the same objects if merely imagined. A remembered
 
 100 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 object has always a definite location or environment, 
 whereas the same thing, if imagined, presents itself as 
 it were in the void. This may be proved by the fact 
 that we can never be quite sure that we have seen and 
 not only imagined an occurrence, unless we can locate 
 it in time or space, or both, and in its position towards 
 other things and ourselves. 
 
 It is, however, quite possible to receive such a detailed 
 and lifelike description of various events or situations 
 that we firmly believe that we have experienced them 
 ourselves. And a great part of the interest of fiction 
 depends upon the ability of the writer to create this 
 illusion in the minds of his readers. 
 
 It has been mentioned above that in the course of 
 our education, and in after life, we have to abstract from 
 some of the peculiar characteristics of personality in 
 dealing with practical things. And this is eminently 
 the case in scientific observation and reasoning. A 
 similar fate seems to attach to the characteristic of 
 individuality. It was a marked step in advance 
 when Natural Science learnt to consider things lifeless 
 and living, not in their detachment from each other, 
 but in that special "together" which they present in 
 nature. 
 
 The property of detachment or separateness is made 
 conspicuous to us not merely by different location, 
 which leads to the notions of distance and arrange- 
 ment ; it would very likely never have become 
 known to us were the separate objects not different 
 also through other properties, that is, sensations and 
 impressions. The two main sources of the variety 
 which things present to us are differences of light and
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 101 
 
 colour, and of touch ; the latter generates the notions 
 of hardness, solidity, and volume, and further of tem- 
 perature. Without this variety given through sight 
 and touch, the outer world or firmament would pro- 
 bably never detach itself as a separate existence, just 
 as we should probably never speak of the sky were it 
 not filled with sun, moon, and stars, with cloud and 
 other atmospheric objects. These differences which 
 create the enormous variety of external aspects are 
 nevertheless of such a nature that, in the scientific treat- 
 ment of things, they are almost entirely obliterated. 
 
 They are what we term qualitative differences, as 
 distinguished from those that are quantitative. The 
 latter are capable of exact measurement, that is to say, 
 they can be distinctly and accurately divided into parts, 
 and compounded out of these parts, whereas the proper- 
 ties of light and colour, of hardness, solidity, tempera- 
 ture, cannot be easily subdivided and compounded again 
 although they come under the category of more and 
 less, or of degree. 
 
 Language distinguishes the properties of more and 
 less in the two cases by the terms intensity and large- 
 ness or size. 
 
 As all scientific or exact reasoning depends upon def- 
 initeness and measurement, that science which deals 
 with measurable distances in space is the oldest science ; 
 whereas the phenomena of colour and heat were only 
 much later made the objects of exact sciences, and 
 then only by the discovery that certain spatial, that 
 is, measurable relations correspond to these phenomena. 
 This is usually expressed by saying that Science reduces 
 qualitative to quantitative differences, which can be 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 102 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 either directly observed or inferred by rigorous geomet- 
 rical analysis and measurement. And here we may 
 note that some of these measurable geometrical relations 
 would probably never have been discovered, had it not 
 been that in the actual world of observation they pre- 
 sent themselves as specific qualities through our senses. 
 This may be illustrated by the fact that only within 
 very recent times have such phenomena as electro-mag- 
 netic waves been observed and studied, though they 
 are quite as real as the tremors and molecular motions 
 which are revealed to us through the special senses of 
 sight and touch in the phenomena of colour and heat. 
 
 The scientific study of the external world is thus de- 
 pendent on, and leads to the conception of sameness. 
 And if we fully realise how far this sameness is carried 
 in all those branches of research where geometrical 
 methods are applied, it must become evident to us that 
 without the qualitative differences revealed by sight and 
 touch, we should probably never have arrived at the 
 notion of individual or separate things at all. 
 
 III. 
 
 Applying the fundamental principle most clearly 
 stated by Hume, that we have no ideas which are not 
 ultimately derived from impressions ; but also taking 
 this principle in a wider sense than that in which Hume 
 seems to have conceived it, we may now proceed to a 
 second class of ideas. 
 
 These ideas are derived not from distinct sensations 
 or impressions, but from the manner in which these
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 103 
 
 single experiences appear joined together in the stream 
 of thought or the firmament of our soul. Neglecting 
 altogether the different appearance of different sensa- 
 tions, we may fix our attention only upon what we call 
 their relations to each other. The principal relations 
 are those presented in space and time. And in the 
 same way as we form for ourselves by abstraction a 
 whole world of the different properties or qualities of 
 individual things, so we may also form, through 
 abstraction, a whole world of relations, that is of the 
 special ways in which individual things may be joined 
 together or kept separate. 
 
 The fundamental relations upon which the whole 
 science of relations is founded seem to be those of 
 space. And it also appears that relations of time are 
 only distinctly measurable through being reduced to 
 distances in space. At least it is only in this way that 
 the phenomena of motion can be subjected to the same 
 accurate measurement as the different quantities which 
 present themselves in space, such as distance, position, 
 and number. In this way we have not only an exact 
 science of space, that is Geometry, and of numbers, that is 
 Arithmetic, but also an equally exact science of Motion, 
 that is Kinetics. There is indeed one remarkable 
 exception. A distinct world of sound exists which, 
 through the sense of hearing alone, is built up without a 
 direct connection with spatial relations. This is the 
 world of musical sound die Tonwelt which, dealing 
 with musical sounds of different pitch, seems to have an 
 independent existence. It is capable of very intricate, 
 exact, and delicate composition. It forms as it were a 
 world and a science by itself, in which the properties of
 
 104 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 melody and harmony form as definite a language and 
 means of communication as visible signs and the words 
 of ordinary speech are able to do. 
 
 It is true that this independent world of musical 
 sound with its peculiar language is not serviceable for 
 the same purposes as common speech is. But the ele- 
 mentary experiences or sensations which form its 
 structure are just as real as those other sensations which 
 are distributed in space. The latter we call things, and 
 the former feelings and emotions. 
 
 Music forms a direct and independent means of 
 communicating them to our fellow - creatures, as 
 language forms the means of communication about its 
 external occurrences. And in both cases the means 
 of communication, that is, the respective languages, 
 were not fully developed before they were represented 
 by visual signs or symbols, that is, in the form of 
 writing. 
 
 Now there is one attribute common to all those 
 experiences which we desire and are able to com- 
 municate to others, be they properties of external 
 things, or relations, or musical sounds. This attribute 
 is what we may term a certain amount of permanency 
 or stability. The primordial sensations or experiences 
 which constitute them must repeat themselves in the 
 stream of thought, leaving their traces behind them 
 in the form of memory, and repeating themselves in 
 the same or similar sensations. 
 
 The recognition of this important attribute obliges 
 us to discard as inadequate the analogy of a stream, in 
 which no individual wave, eddy, or whirl repeats itself, 
 or is possessed of more than momentary existence.
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 105 
 
 Were the field of consciousness constituted in this 
 way, we should be situated as already stated like 
 travellers in a railway train, who gaze through a 
 mist at the landscape with its objects galloping past 
 them. We should not be able to retain in our memory 
 definite images, nor to strengthen them by recurrent 
 appearances. 
 
 I therefore prefer the analogy of the starry firmament, 
 which combines with a certain amount of stability 
 and permanency both the change and recurrence of 
 its special features. 
 
 It is quite evident that a knowledge of things and 
 their properties, or of musical sounds and their com- 
 binations, would be quite impossible without this 
 permanency united with change. 
 
 And this attribute is equally important when we 
 deal with relations as such, that is with order and 
 arrangement. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But before proceeding further with our Analysis, we 
 must have recourse to that process with which the 
 great philosophers in antiquity started. They had 
 found that their early forerunners had, through using 
 the words of language indiscriminately, entangled 
 themselves and their pupils in a maze of confusion. 
 
 In order to get out of this, they resorted, as I stated 
 in the beginning of this Dissertation, to the dialectical 
 process of fixing the meaning of the words and terms 
 of language.
 
 106 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 In our case the terms with which we have been 
 latterly occupied require in a similar way to be sub- 
 jected to a critical examination. 
 
 For our present purposes it is, for instance, of great 
 importance to dwell at some length on what was said 
 in chapter iii. as to the difference between Existence 
 and Eeality. 
 
 Common speech does not closely define the meaning 
 of these terms. And this attempt to define clearly 
 and separately terms which common speech uses indis- 
 criminately and negligently may seem to some of my 
 readers to be pedantic. They may maintain that such 
 minute distinction, such hair-splitting, is unnecessary. 
 
 Against this we may hold that though not con- 
 sciously carried out, such a process produces uncon- 
 sciously in good writers to a large extent that 
 indefinable excellence of style which we so often 
 admire and are so rarely able to imitate. 
 
 In dealing, moreover, with mental images and ideas 
 which are difficult to fix, and only communicable in 
 words and terms of language, such a process of definition 
 is indispensable. 
 
 For our object is not to write with elegance, but 
 to induce our readers to form, in their own minds, 
 those ideas and conceptions which we are talking about. 
 It will, therefore, be necessary to recall the difference 
 between such terms as Existence and Reality. The 
 fact that we have two words which appear to a large 
 extent synonymous, indicates that there is an under- 
 lying difference of meaning pointing to different ideas ; 
 and these different ideas must have resulted from 
 different experiences, sensations, or perceptions.
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 107 
 
 To a great extent the definitions we adopt are con- 
 ventional, but nevertheless they are indispensable. 
 
 To begin with, then, we must have a word which 
 applies to everything we can think of, to every part, 
 parcel, or complex within the circumference of the 
 firmament of our consciousness. We have seen that 
 the best word is probably Experience, and the property 
 of Experience is Existence. 
 
 For we have learnt that everything that exists for us 
 must have in some form or other a place in the chang- 
 ing flow of our mental experience. 
 
 To exist therefore is the largest conception, and that 
 which attaches as it were to everything, and not only 
 to external things, or purely internal sensations and 
 thoughts, but also to imaginations, dreams, delusions, 
 errors, and falsehoods. All these very various experi- 
 ences have this one character, that they exist within the 
 circumference of our thoughts and sensations. Nor can 
 we correctly say that any of them do not exist, for at 
 the very moment when we assert their non-existence we 
 are thinking of the very thing the existence of which we 
 are denying i.e., it has for a moment a location in our 
 stream of thought. 
 
 But as we have learnt already, certain among our 
 sensations or thoughts appear to us to have as it were 
 more existence than others, and these we term Real as 
 distinguished from others which we term Unreal. 
 
 We call the Sun and Moon, the persons and things 
 around us Real, whereas we call dreams, fancies, and 
 errors Unreal. 
 
 Thus, as stated above, the word Real has a narrower 
 and more specific sense and meaning than the word
 
 108 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Existence, and this is shown by the fact that we may 
 very well think of things that are Unreal, whereas 
 we cannot possibly think of those that don't exist, 
 because the latter, if we think of them, attain through 
 this very act a form of existence namely, they enter 
 into the stream of our thoughts. 
 
 Now it is very difficult to draw the line exactly be- 
 yond which the attribute of Reality becomes inappli- 
 cable. On the one side, we have already learnt that 
 the most real thing of which we have any conception or 
 immediate experience is a person. Other living things 
 are certainly real, and yet they seem to lack the 
 fullest Reality which we can think of, and even among 
 persons we make a distinction between greater and 
 smaller personalities. 
 
 We are also forced to admit that even the greatest 
 personality seems to lack the fuller or fullest personal- 
 ity which we can imagine, and this thought induces us 
 to believe in the existence of higher personalities and 
 finally in a supreme Personality. This is imaged by us 
 in using the term reality sensu superiori. And simi- 
 larly, we may use the term reality sensu inferiori. But 
 these degrees of reality cannot be arranged as it were in 
 a straight line. We cannot simply take away from the 
 fuller reality certain properties and in this way gradu- 
 ally arrive at lower phases of reality. Thus, though the 
 things which seem to have full reality are generally sup- 
 posed to have individuality that is, they have an ex- 
 istence apart from other things we can detach them, 
 regard them alone, abstracting them as it were from 
 their surroundings ; yet, on the other side, there are 
 sensations which cannot be detached, and nevertheless
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. .109 
 
 strike us as being very real indeed. Thus the term 
 Reality, even in a high degree, is not limited to defi- 
 nite things, nor even to such experiences as have some 
 permanence. 
 
 As already stated, no one would deny that an intense 
 pain, even though lasting only a moment and not recur- 
 ring, is a very real thing indeed ; but its reality seems 
 not to be merely different in degree, but of a different 
 order, so that it cannot be ranged in the series of things 
 which we ordinarily call real. 
 
 V. 
 
 We thus arrive at the conclusion that Reality not 
 only has different degrees but is also of different 
 classes or orders. 
 
 For our purposes it is not necessary to enter into de- 
 tail, or to attempt any completeness in describing the 
 scale of degree or the difference of order among real 
 things. 
 
 It would be a very useful enterprise for students, 
 of philosophy to interrogate themselves as to which 
 things or thoughts they would call real, and as to 
 the different kinds of reality which they can think of. 
 It is not likely that a general agreement on these 
 matters could be attained, but investigation would 
 reveal many individual differences, and in this way 
 constitute a fruitful method in individual psychology. 
 
 Notably purely subjective feelings, emotions, or 
 thoughts may be considered by some psychologists as 
 unreal if compared with physical facts and events. Thus 
 one school of psychology goes the length of considering
 
 110 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 all mental life as a mere epiphenomenon that is, as 
 something which merely accompanies the physical and 
 physiological structure and changes in the same way 
 as a shadow may accompany actual things, though it 
 would not be considered equally real. 
 
 Further, such things as truth, beauty, and holi- 
 ness are regarded by some thinkers as simply Ideals, 
 creations of human imagination, whereas others consider 
 them to be by far the highest reality which exists. 
 
 And at different times and under different circum- 
 stances during our lifetime, we may attach very differ- 
 ent importance to the same things, some losing and 
 others gaining in reality as we advance in years. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The distinctions which we have drawn in the last 
 paragraph have been arrived at by considering the 
 words of language and their meanings. It is in 
 the process of learning to speak that we originally 
 form, unconsciously, the conception or the image in 
 our mind of definite things. As this process of learning 
 to speak is entirely dependent on our intercourse with 
 others and on a process of imitation, we recognise in it 
 the second great indebtedness to other persons. The 
 first great indebtedness in the early stages of our 
 existence was our dependence on and our gradual 
 recognition of a definite something which we call a 
 person. The impress of this first overwhelming ex- 
 perience accompanies us through life, and forms as it 
 were the highest category of thought which we possess.
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. Ill 
 
 The second great indebtedness, the acquiring of 
 speech, is not in general limited in the same way to the 
 intercourse with one or two persons, but forms a 
 link between ourselves and numerous not-selves, and 
 is the most powerful means of communication, open- 
 ing out to us a larger view of the world and our 
 surroundings. 
 
 In a similar way this second great experience, this 
 further development of our mental life, leaves an 
 indelible impress on our thoughts and governs them 
 throughout our life. 
 
 We may condense the main effect of this second 
 revelation on our mental development by saying that 
 it introduces us to a process of selection. Through 
 it we are forced to exercise attention, to fix our inner 
 eye upon definite sensations which can be isolated, 
 abstracted out of the confused flow of our inner 
 experience. 
 
 In the later stages of our mental development this 
 process of selection and definition, originally acquired 
 through language, is carried much further, and when it 
 proceeds by conscious methods, and not unconsciously 
 by simple imitation of others, we enter upon the 
 scientific stage of thought, and we term the process 
 Analysis. On review, we may thus call the two 
 processes in our early experience the two great revela- 
 tions through which our mental life has been awakened. 
 The recognition of a person has revealed to us Reality, 
 and the acquisition of language has taught us to make 
 distinctions within this reality. The earlier revelation 
 opens to us the Synoptic view of something that is an 
 independent whole within the circumference of our
 
 112 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 changing firmament of thought, the later revelation 
 teaches us to distinguish and separate ; it opens to us 
 the Analytic or distinguishing view. All our thoughts 
 in our further life consist in an alternation between 
 one of these processes and the other ; the return from 
 the Analytic to the Synoptic view being partially 
 effected through what we term the synthetic process 
 of thought. 
 
 But we never succeed, by synthesis of the elements 
 and fragments which analysis has detached, in restor- 
 ing the original totality or the Together which the 
 synoptic view revealed to us. 
 
 Before dealing with this subject more fully, and 
 especially before sketching in outline the different 
 classes of Reality which emerge unconsciously or con- 
 sciously out of the all-embracing field of our personal 
 experience, it will, however, be advisable to dwell more 
 in detail on the important part which other persons 
 play in our early mental development. 
 
 Psychologists so far seem to have dwelt almost 
 without exception on the mental equipment and 
 activity of the adult human being, and here usually 
 only with phenomena and events which could be 
 accepted as common to all fully developed minds. 
 In doing so, they disregard the personal history of 
 the individual, and in consequence the genesis of order 
 within the original chaos which must have been the 
 condition of the infant mind. In addition to this, the 
 habit of unquestionably taking the adult mind as the 
 object of their study, they have forgotten or obscured 
 the fact that a complete adult individual mind has, in 
 the course of its personal history, only slowly emerged
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 113 
 
 from a state of dependence on other minds with which 
 it formed, as it were, a connected existence. 
 
 It is one of the great merits of James Ward's Psy- 
 chology that it has emphasised the fact and importance 
 of intersubjective communion. 
 
 To this subject we must now give special attention. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The fact that we share with others certain of our 
 personal experiences may be held to furnish us with 
 the first and most important criterion of Reality. 
 Through this circumstance, a personal experience be 
 it a perception or any other form of sensation 
 acquires as it were a double existence ; the purely 
 personal becomes twofold, and this we term objective 
 and subjective. 
 
 This may be illustrated in many ways. Not only 
 does a seemingly objective experience like the mouches 
 volantes mentioned above lapse into a purely sub- 
 jective sensation when we find out that it only affected 
 our own person, but on the other side what appear to 
 be purely personal experiences may attain to more or 
 less distinct objective reality if we find that other 
 persons share them with us. 
 
 It is in this way that such sensations as the beautiful, 
 the good, and the spiritual, which seem originally purely 
 personal, acquire more or less of objective reality as 
 we find that others share them with us. 
 
 This opens out a very large subject, which we 
 cannot deal with in this connection. But the in-
 
 114 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 stances are numberless, especially in our emotional 
 life, where we experience how certain interests start 
 from apparently small or passing beginnings, and 
 through intercourse with others grow in importance, 
 and in the end stand forth as definite objects of our 
 contemplation or desire. And on the other side, 
 interests and things which, at one time of our life, 
 commanded our full attention and governed our 
 thoughts and actions, retire into the background 
 through want of encouragement by others, and ulti- 
 mately sink into insignificance and unreality. It is 
 one of the principal characteristics of great works of 
 fiction or of poetry that they deal with these rising and 
 decaying mental interests in the characters which they 
 place before us in the story or the drama. Those great 
 psychological analyses which we find in such abundance 
 in the French novelists, and in philosophical poets 
 like Shakespeare, Goethe, and Wordsworth, constitute 
 a chapter in the philosophy of Mind which few, if any, 
 expert psychologists have attempted to write. 
 
 And here I will give only two instances : the 
 slumbering or well nigh extinguished sparks of re- 
 ligious life have not infrequently been fanned into a 
 bright flame through the casual entry into some place 
 of worship, where either the ritual or the pictorial 
 surroundings, or even only the assembly of silent 
 worshippers, points to some far-off object which they 
 symbolically represent or spiritually contemplate. 
 
 And this is the reason why religious worship in 
 communion with others so often surpasses the efficacy 
 of solitary devotion. 
 
 Again, we may note that persons who visit foreign
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 115 
 
 countries very rarely arrive at an understanding of 
 the peculiar mental atmosphere which there surrounds 
 them ; it takes a long time and a distinct desire on their 
 part if they are ever to feel themselves thoroughly 
 at home, and share with the people they visit those 
 deeper interests which form for them the background 
 of their mental and spiritual life. Most foreigners, 
 e.g., who have been domiciled in this country, even 
 for many years, taking an active part in the practical 
 work and external life which surrounds them, remain 
 strangers to the emotional and spiritual interests of the 
 nation ; thus, even if they do not live isolated from 
 their surroundings, they return to their own country 
 with a very imperfect understanding of the inner life 
 of the people among whom they have passed the 
 greater part of their lives. 
 
 What has here been said will suffice to impress 
 upon the reader how various are the meanings of the 
 word " Reality " : how it comes that this word has no 
 adequate and exhaustive definition, but is applied to 
 very different sensations and experiences. 
 
 Whilst it is quite possible to give a strict definition 
 of Existence in the sense in which we are using the 
 term, it is not possible to give an equally clear definition 
 of what we term Reality. 
 
 To exist belongs to everything which enters as a 
 feature into the stream of our thoughts taking the 
 word in the widest sense ; and vice versa, existence 
 cannot be predicated of anything that does not enter 
 into this stream, or that does not form a feature on 
 the firmament and within the horizon of our con- 
 sciousness.
 
 116 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 For a thing to be real i.e., to acquire a twofold 
 existence, not only within our consciousness, but also 
 apparently outside of it very different and varying 
 conditions must exist ; and the question whether any 
 sensation or thought has reality is, as we shall 
 presently see, difficult to answer. 
 
 It will also have become evident, from the foregoing 
 remarks and illustrations, that those among our per- 
 sonal experiences which in our infancy we share most 
 distinctly with others who surround us, acquire for 
 all time the impress of reality in a much more forcible 
 and lasting manner than all the subsequent experiences 
 of our life. And this is one of the principal causes why 
 that which we term the outer world will always be 
 clothed in our estimation, in a certain sense, with a 
 greater amount of reality than all the other realities 
 we may encounter as we advance through childhood 
 and adolescence to the full possession of our mental 
 powers. 
 
 To mention only one circumstance : all these latter 
 more hidden realities form an object of common 
 possession with other persons only through indirect 
 means of communication through language or some 
 other form of expression whereas the things that we 
 call outer are presented to us and forced upon our 
 notice directly by those persons who surround us, 
 and attain a hold and location in the stream of our 
 thoughts long before those indirect methods of speech, 
 image, and symbol are accessible to us.
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 117 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Though what we term the outer world is that form 
 of Reality for the recognition of which we are most 
 indebted to the co-operation of our fellow-men, it is by 
 no means through this circumstance alone that it has 
 gained in our estimation the foremost place, becoming 
 the groundwork of all our later mental achievements. 
 There is another important attribute which belongs to 
 this form of reality more fully than to any other. This 
 is the attribute of definition and distinctness. 
 
 The outer or physical world is presented to us as 
 broken up into separate things, each of which, in larger 
 or smaller degree, seems to have an independent exist- 
 ence, so much so that we can contemplate them, or 
 even handle them, by themselves, detaching them from 
 their surroundings. The first consciousness of separa- 
 tion is, according to the view set out in this treatise, 
 the recognition of a person or persons, and it takes a 
 considerable time before inanimate or lifeless objects 
 appear to us as differing from animated beings. 
 
 It is interesting to note that our language contains 
 no word which adequately marks off the property of 
 singleness, separateness, which physical things acquire 
 in our estimation ; the word by which this property is 
 usually defined and expressed is individuality, but the 
 etymology of the word indicates rather the property, 
 that any definite thing must be regarded and can be 
 understood only as an undivided complex, than that it 
 is singled out and detached from its surroundings.
 
 118 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 It may be noted in passing that the German trans- 
 lation of the Latin term Individuum is " Einzelwesen," 
 denoting much more directly the property we have in 
 view. This property, that some of our physical sen- 
 sations may be regarded singly and detached, or in 
 connection and together with others, which, as it were, 
 surround them, constitutes a peculiar scheme or order 
 of arrangement in what we term space. 
 
 As much as to this unique property of spatial 
 existence, we are indebted to the separation and 
 connection of sensations of all kinds in Time. These 
 two attributes of Space and Time, of which the 
 former applies only to some of the Sensations which 
 we learn to be connected with our bodies, whilst the 
 other refers to all sensations or experiences alike, are 
 primordial, and cannot be further analysed. All defi- 
 nitions which have been attempted, and still more, the 
 so-called " transcendental deductions," are impossible ; 
 just as impossible as a definition or deduction of colour 
 would be to a person devoid of sight. 
 
 We can, of course, investigate minutely the pro- 
 perties of Space, just as we can investigate those of 
 colour and sound* but we cannot get as it were behind 
 the spatial properties of things; whilst on the other 
 side we are always tempted to express other relations 
 of things, and even those of time, in spatial terms. 
 Thus we speak of distance in time, &c., &c. 
 
 Whether the special properties which Space and Time 
 introduce into our experience are independent the one 
 of the other, is a question which we need not discuss 
 here, though it is extremely important. It is, for 
 instance, highly improbable that without Memory
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 119 
 
 which is the sense of Time, we could form distinct 
 spatial notions. 
 
 It seems, however, quite clear that the progress of 
 Thought in the narrowest and most abstract form, with 
 all its intricacies, started originally from relations in 
 space. Pure mathematics, for instance, were preceded 
 by geometry and this by mensuration, and though 
 arithmetic is apparently independent of geometry, 
 I do not believe that even numbers were originally 
 invented and learnt without reference to location in 
 Space. 
 
 Some persons, as has been shown by Sir Francis 
 Galton, retain all through their life a definite figure in 
 which the numbers appear to them, and it is likely that 
 what he terms "visualising of abstract conceptions," 
 is more common than generally supposed. It would 
 be an interesting research that would show us the 
 enormous number of words and terms which in the 
 vocabulary of civilised nations can be traced to the 
 relations and properties of Space. These must have 
 been invented and transmitted through hundreds if not 
 thousands of years, and the number of them is still on 
 the increase. But so far as the individual mind of 
 infants and children at the present time is concerned, 
 there is no doubt that the different relations of Space 
 are taught and learned by the combined senses of sight 
 and touch, joined to the words of language with which 
 we signify them. 
 
 It is impossible here to enter into detail. We need 
 mention only the leading conceptions of number, size, 
 figure, of distance, of position, order and arrangement, 
 of regularity and irregularity, of the simple and the
 
 120 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 complex, which are but a few of those familiar relations 
 that we learn by regarding things in Space. 
 
 This process of developing or learning a vocabulary 
 upon the ground of spatial and geometrical relations 
 would, however, not be possible without the sense of 
 Time, that is of Memory, for very few of the notions 
 referred to could be formed without the help of Change, 
 that is, if applied to the Space of Motion. 
 
 Postponing for a moment this attribute of change 
 which belongs to all external things, we may note a 
 fourth property, which as it exists to a larger or smaller 
 degree imparts to single or complex physical sensations 
 the character of Reality. To begin with, it is clear that 
 except physical sensations had in our earliest experience 
 presented themselves in clusters, or coalesced into com- 
 plexes which were more or less permanent, and disap- 
 peared and reappeared again in the same order, we could 
 never have formed the conception of definite beings or 
 things. Thus, next to definition and distinctness, an 
 easily recognised and remembered order of sensations 
 forms the condition of our knowledge of the outer world. 
 This recognition of order remains with most persons 
 incomplete and fragmentary, and must have been so in 
 the earlier ages even of advanced Thought. But as 
 exact or scientific thinking grew up, the fragments 
 of order which surround us coalesced into larger 
 complexes, and these we call Systems. Thus every 
 science begins even at the present day with what is 
 termed a systematic treatment of its subject, wherein the 
 region of fact, or field of experience with which it deals, 
 is placed before the learner in some kind of orderly 
 arrangement. Gradually within the last few hundred
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 121 
 
 years, this process of systematisation has advanced so 
 far that we now conceive of the physical Universe as 
 One Whole in which everything that exists has a 
 definite place, standing in closer or more distant relation 
 to everything else. This property gives to such things 
 the impress of greater reality, and stigmatises all those 
 other sensations and perceptions which cannot be located 
 in this universal system, as unreal or possessed of a 
 smaller degree of reality. 
 
 IX. 
 
 In the foregoing we have learned some of the charac- 
 teristics of those things to which we attach the attribute 
 of Reality i.e., of a double Existence, popularly de- 
 fined as being both inside and outside of our Mind. In 
 using the words Things and Mind, it must be noted 
 that in this treatise we mean by Things simply sen- 
 sations, or clusters of sensations, and by Mind simply 
 the flow of thought, or the firmament of experiences 
 peculiar to each one of us individually. 
 
 We have distinguished between Existence and Reality 
 in this way. Existence belongs to everything that 
 enters into our stream of thought; Reality belongs only 
 to those among our experiences which have, as it were, 
 a double existence, not only as features in our indi- 
 vidual experience, but also as supposed to have an 
 existence outside of this. 
 
 What we may term the fullest Reality, we, according 
 to the foregoing, attribute only to other persons, and 
 next to them to the things of the outer world. As the
 
 122 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 latter comprise by far the greater number of those 
 things which we call Real, including also persons, they 
 form very early in our mental development a kind of 
 standard of Reality which we carry about with us, 
 which always obtrudes itself in our reflection, and is 
 extremely difficult to get rid of. Looking at these outer 
 things, we may gather up their characteristics under the 
 following four properties : 
 
 1. They must exist not only for each of us individu- 
 
 ally, but for other persons. 
 
 2. They must be definite, so that they can be singled 
 
 out and detached in our observation or reflec- 
 tion i.e., they must have individuality. 
 
 3. They must stand in certain relations to each 
 
 other, these relations being those of space. 
 
 4. They must present a certain order of arrangement, 
 
 forming all together a system or Universe. 
 Although these four properties belong to the most 
 common and unobtrusive Reality that we know of, they 
 need not be always united as they are in what we term 
 the outer world ; and the presence or absence of one or 
 more of these properties in a class of sensations and 
 experiences may characterise other orders of Reality, 
 of which we may now give some examples. 
 
 X. 
 
 Quite another order of Reality is formed by the 
 relations which exist between the separate things in the 
 outer world. These relations can be stated independ- 
 ently, and form quite a different order of ideas from that 
 which the things themselves constitute, which as we
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 123 
 
 say stand in these relations to each other. One of the 
 simplest classes of relation is that of number. If we 
 abstract from all the properties which single things in 
 an aggregate possess, there still remain certain pro- 
 perties which they possess as an aggregate. These we 
 call relations. The relations are threefold Distance, 
 Order, and Number. Of these three classes of Rela- 
 tions, Number remains if we disregard distance and 
 position. We can always count things even if we 
 cannot measure their distances from each other or 
 assign to them a definite order. Numbers form in 
 this way a Reality by themselves. They possess the 
 first property mentioned above ; they are the common 
 possession of different persons. They have also the 
 second property : each number is distinct and definite ; 
 and they have also the fourth property, they form a 
 series or system. 
 
 To what extent they have the third property, that of 
 being located in space, is uncertain. As already stated, 
 some persons have a definite spatial arrangement in 
 their mind in which numbers appear to them, and if 
 such an arrangement or diagram of numbers is not very 
 common, there is, nevertheless, no doubt that children 
 learn the numbers by counting things which are in 
 space. Another example of a Reality which is quite 
 independent of that outer world which we know by 
 sight and touch is the world of sound. 
 
 The reality of this world is accentuated through the 
 fact that sound can be reduced or analysed into definite 
 notes, which we term musical notes. These have the 
 first property mentioned above, they are a common 
 existence for many persons to a larger or smaller
 
 124 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 degree ; they have also the second property of being 
 definite ; we can speak of and produce individual notes ; 
 and they have the fourth property of forming a system 
 with more than one dimension ; they may be loud or 
 soft, high or low in pitch, and they may have what is 
 termed a different timbre (texture or colour). But 
 musical notes have no location in space : they form 
 a world for themselves. 
 
 But sounds are capable of forming yet another order 
 or system, quite independent of their musical properties. 
 This Reality we term rhythm or metre, and this forms 
 a very important attribute in poetry which may be 
 quite independent of the essentially musical proper- 
 ties of harmony and melody. The region, if we may so 
 call it, in which rhythm, metre, musical notes, and their 
 combinations exist, is that of Time, and it has nothing 
 to do with Space, though to communicate to others 
 Realities of this order we very largely make use of 
 spatial symbols. 
 
 Another example may be given of an Order of Reality 
 which stands quite by itself. This is no other than 
 Space itself which presents certain properties that 
 are quite independent of the things that are located 
 in or fill space. This order of Reality comprises 
 geometrical figures with their metrical properties of 
 distance and their purely geometrical properties of 
 position. In this way we come to have two distinct 
 forms of geometry metrical Geometry and positional 
 Geometry. 
 
 It is possible to enumerate other orders of Reality 
 which form Systems with individual elements which 
 enter into daily use and are the common property of
 
 OF REALITY IN GENERAL. 125 
 
 human beings. A complete list is difficult to draw up 
 and need not engage us here. 
 
 It is more important to deal with certain orders of 
 Reality which take us to a large extent out of the 
 physical world with which the Realities just mentioned, 
 namely, those of number, sound, position in space, and 
 others, are intimately connected. 
 
 But before entering on this new inquiry which will 
 lead us into an entirely different region of Reality, it 
 is well to note one property which belongs to what we 
 term external things, and which does not belong to any 
 of the other orders of Reality which we have just re- 
 ferred to, such as musical notes, numbers, geometrical 
 figures, &c. This is the property of external things 
 which arises out of our sense of touch and feeling of 
 resistance or pressure. 
 
 Through the sense of touch and muscular feeling we 
 are led not only to a contemplative or passive recep- 
 tion of the varied experiences of Sensation, Perception, 
 and Thought ; but we are also affected in an entirely 
 different way, the habitual restlessness which seems a 
 characteristic connected with the earliest signs of life 
 is checked or directed in a manner which reveals at 
 the same moment both a subjective feeling and some- 
 thing that is felt. 
 
 This double experience which is peculiar to the sense 
 of touch and resistance (and to a smaller degree to the 
 senses of taste and smell), is quite absent in the higher 
 senses of sight and hearing which, as it were, take us 
 entirely out of ourselves, pushing into the background 
 the distinct or shadowy surroundings which we call 
 our Ego or Self, and this to such an extent that they
 
 126 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 may make us entirely forget ourselves. The more 
 vivid a sensation of sight or of hearing is, the less do 
 we think of ourselves that is, of the firmament or 
 surroundings in which these sights and sounds are 
 embedded. On the other hand, the more distinct the 
 impressions of touch or of resistance are, the more we 
 are aware of a double sensation which probably does 
 more to produce the idea of self and not-self, of subject 
 and object, than any other form of sensation. In touch 
 and muscular resistance we are simultaneously made 
 aware of something definite and of our selves. 
 
 It is quite true that the experiences connected with 
 the bodily feelings of touch and resistance or pressure 
 become of much less direct importance as the narrow 
 field of an infant's consciousness grows wider, embrac- 
 ing more distant things. Most of the latter are in- 
 accessible to this sense, but nevertheless it is through 
 it that we probably gain the earliest and liveliest 
 impressions of an outer world, and in it primarily of 
 the person or persons with whom we come into close 
 contact. 
 
 We may therefore state, in general, that the senses 
 of sight and hearing take us, under normal conditions, 
 most effectively out of ourselves towards the recogni- 
 tion of a not-self, and that the sense of touch and 
 resistance brings us back again most effectively to a 
 sense of our subjective self as a separate thing opposed 
 to and among other things.
 
 127 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF THE INNER WORLD. 
 I. 
 
 IN dealing with the problem of Reality, and of the 
 different orders and degrees of Reality, we must not 
 forget that we are making a purely artificial or con- 
 ventional selection among the enormous multitude and 
 variety of experiences which make up the stream of 
 thought or which fill the firmament of the soul. The 
 impressions or clusters of impressions or thoughts which 
 we thus select by habit, and for the sake of convenience, 
 have no more actual existence than the multitude of 
 other impressions which we, as it were, leave behind 
 and to a large extent neglect. Nor is it possible to 
 entirely detach the selected series or clusters of impres- 
 sions and abstract thoughts from what we may call the 
 matrix in which they present themselves to us primarily. 
 This difficulty is usually expressed by saying that we 
 cannot get rid of the subjective factor. 
 
 It is accordingly quite legitimate and even necessary 
 not only to view the Realities with which we have 
 been dealing in their nakedness, but also to view them 
 in their clothing with subjective accompaniments, and 
 to consider these accompaniments themselves.
 
 128 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 We mentioned at the end of the last chapter 
 that certain of our most definite sensations and ex- 
 periences, those communicated to us by the senses 
 of touch and resistance, cannot be detached from the 
 personal background or the firmament of conscious- 
 ness in the same way as the sensations of sight and 
 hearing, and such other Realities as number and 
 geometrical figures, &c., which seem to lie entirely 
 out of ourselves. 
 
 Yet even these detached Realities hardly ever 
 present themselves to us without the accompaniment 
 of purely subjective experiences which we may term 
 feelings in the wider sense of the word, comprising 
 not only those bodily feelings which are connected 
 with the sense of touch, but also the more general 
 sensations which we term pleasure and pain, and 
 further, desires, emotions, and volitions. As already 
 stated, the supreme rule of scientific thought is to get 
 rid of the subjective element. This is attainable only 
 in a few of the sciences, and there only by a very small 
 number of highly trained intellects. There we have 
 quite the opposite of that aspect of things through which 
 we are in our infancy and childhood introduced into the 
 living world ; and this aspect is also quite different from 
 the common - sense view with which we regard and 
 judge things in the course of our life. The infant and 
 child are not brought face to face with definite things 
 simply as such, but these are clothed with words such 
 as pretty, beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant, 
 good or bad, and with many gestures and actions ex- 
 pressive of such properties, so that the feelings of liking 
 and disliking, of desire and aversion, are continually
 
 OF THE INNER WORLD. 129 
 
 aroused arid mingled with the purely objective appear- 
 ances which they accompany. 
 
 It would lead us too far, and is not necessary for 
 our present purpose, to describe in detail the character- 
 istic differences between those sensations which we 
 externalise, attributing to them a double existence, 
 and those others which remain to us always purely 
 personal or subjective. But it is important to remind 
 the reader that in the stream of thought or in the 
 firmament of consciousness, they occupy just as real a 
 place as do those sensations and thoughts which we 
 believe also to exist elsewhere outside of our individual 
 consciousness. 
 
 What interests us at present is the question, To what 
 extent we are justified in attributing to them, or to 
 some of them, Keality? 
 
 To begin with, we are struck by the fleeting and 
 undefined character of what we may now call our inner 
 sensations or feelings. We have difficulty in fixing 
 them, and even if we succeed in doing so, they are 
 nevertheless mostly of a changing nature ; and if they 
 recur, they rarely do so exactly the same. But this 
 would not be a sufficient reason to deny them Reality 
 in the sense in which we use the word ; for many 
 sensations which we term external are likewise fleeting, 
 difficult to fix, and never recur exactly the same. 
 Thus clouds are proverbially fleeting, changing, and 
 never come back again in the same way ; nevertheless 
 we do not deny them the attribute of Reality, and we 
 may even call them things. One of the principal 
 differences between physical and emotional sensations 
 is this : we may feel sure that the former exist also 
 
 T
 
 130 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 for other persons, whereas the latter in general are 
 confined in their existence to our own field of 
 consciousness. 
 
 It is quite true that in our infancy and childhood, 
 as just stated, we are led to believe that other persons 
 share many of our emotional sensations, such as likings 
 and joys, or the reverse, such as dislikings and sorrows ; 
 but on this point we can never feel so sure as we do 
 that other persons feel, hear, or touch the same outer 
 things as we do. Also, the process by which com- 
 munion with other persons in matter of inner sensation 
 is established, is far more complicated and obscure 
 than the apparently simple means by which external 
 sensations become a common property to us and 
 others. 
 
 A second difference between the two classes of 
 sensations is this, that physical sensations correspond- 
 ing to real things exist in space and time, whereas 
 inner sensations appear only in time and have no 
 spatial location. Nevertheless we have seen that a 
 certain class of physical sensations such as sound are 
 externalised, although they have no location in space, 
 but only fixation in time. And this is the reason why 
 they are qualified to form the language of emotion ; 
 in relation to which it may be noted that it is not 
 through their properties of definition and individuality 
 that they approach so closely to the region of feelings 
 and emotions, but in virtue of the indefinable properties 
 of harmony and melody.
 
 OF THE INNER WORLD. 131 
 
 II. 
 
 One of the principal differences that exist between 
 what we may call the outer and inner sensations is 
 this ; that the latter do not admit of any systematic 
 arrangement. We cannot place them in any spatial 
 or other order such as external things, numbers, 
 musical notes and geometrical and logical conceptions 
 admit of. They do not enter into any environment 
 other than that of our stream of thought, and hence 
 they do not acquire an independent existence, they 
 seem to cling more closely to their original habitat in 
 the depth of our innermost personal life and existence. 
 We are also fully aware through intercourse with other 
 persons, that these have an inner life different from 
 our own though we may guess at it in a very general 
 and tentative way. Through this quality of extreme 
 diversity, these inner sensations of feeling, desire, and 
 willing, form by far the most important characteristics 
 of different persons, conferring upon every person an 
 individuality of a much higher order than other 
 things, beings, or even the members of an abstract 
 series possess. Whilst we can fully describe and 
 identify things in the outer world, or members in the 
 series of numbers, tones, and figures, it is impossible 
 to describe adequately and identify any living person. 
 A single glance or interview does infinitely more than 
 the description of the most skilful portrait painter, or 
 the characterisation of a biographer or novelist. 
 
 We may indeed say that if our innermost sensations, 
 feelings, and emotions did not remain concealed from the
 
 132 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 view of our fellow-men, the most important characteristic 
 of individuality would disappear, for the mystery which 
 clings to the thoughts and feelings of others is to a 
 large extent the source of the interest which we take 
 in them. 
 
 Thus, although we may speak of individual things, 
 singling them out among a crowd of similars, the deeper 
 meaning of individuality belongs only to the more 
 or less concealed side of personal life. For practical 
 purposes of common life persons may be recognised by 
 their external appearance, but in all more important 
 respects, the Self of every person is identical with that 
 portion of his flow of thought and stream of sensations 
 which is hidden from the outer gaze and peculiar to 
 himself. 
 
 Thus it comes about that in the course of our life we 
 more and more identify our own Self with that portion 
 of our stream of thought or of the firmament of our 
 consciousness which is thrown into the background and 
 little attended to during those years of our life when 
 we are fully engaged in outer pursuits and engrossed in 
 the business of the world. And yet it covers by far the 
 larger portion of our field of consciousness ; as also 
 the illimitable background of the physical horizon 
 is much more than all the suns, stars, and constella- 
 tions which we can count. And to pursue the parable 
 a little further, we may say that this illimitable and 
 mysterious region forms, in both cases, the sustaining 
 background in which the clearly visible things have 
 their setting. 
 
 Nevertheless we do not feel satisfied to leave all this 
 region of our inner life in that condition of mystery and
 
 OF THE INNER WORLD. 133 
 
 twilight which is its principal characteristic. Within 
 this region there are a few luminous points or portions, 
 just as the background of the heavens contains its 
 "milky way" and its suggestive nebulae. 
 
 To these suggestive indications within the mental 
 horizon, we are inclined to attribute Reality of a special 
 order. To establish this more firmly has been the 
 principal work and supreme effort of all the great 
 teachers of mankind be they philosophers, lawgivers, 
 artists, poets, or founders of religions. The names of 
 these Realities are : Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and 
 Holiness. 
 
 We must now direct our special attention to these 
 supreme conceptions, these highest ideals of which the 
 human mind is capable. They have, in different 
 expressions, been termed Reality, Verity, or Value. 
 
 A twofold task lies before us. We may inquire 
 into the meaning which is attached to these words. 
 And we may further pursue the line of investigation 
 which we have so far followed in this treatise. We 
 may try to find out how the individual mind comes 
 into possession of these ideals : how they are revealed 
 to us in the course of our childhood and later mental 
 development. 
 
 The latter problem is specifically our own ; the 
 former is answered in many ways in the dialectical and 
 metaphysical philosophy of ancient and modern times. 
 
 We cannot deal with it adequately in this connection, 
 and yet we cannot entirely dispense with the help 
 which we may derive from a purely verbal consideration.
 
 134 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 III. 
 
 The reason why the dialectical method is peculiarly 
 applicable to such conceptions as Truth, Beauty, and 
 Goodness is this, that we become familiar with these 
 terms at a much later stage in our childish experi- 
 ence than we do with things and their relations. 
 Our becoming acquainted and familiar with things in 
 the outer world reaches back into the earliest period of 
 our conscious life, so much so that the recollection of 
 how we learnt of them is almost entirely absent ; still 
 more important is the circumstance that the names of 
 things become known to us after the things themselves 
 and their relations have been seen and handled by us. 
 On the other side, abstract notions, and notably such as 
 are designated by the words " True," " Beautiful," and 
 "Good," only enter our minds by a mysterious process 
 after the words themselves have been many times used 
 and have become familiar to us. In the one case, the 
 thing named precedes its name in our experience ; in the 
 other case the name or word precedes its meaning, which 
 we have very frequently great difficulty in drafting. 
 In fact most persons have very indefinite conceptions 
 not only of these highest abstract terms, but also of 
 many others which they nevertheless continually make 
 use of in conversation or writing : thus, for instance, 
 mind, matter, substance, development and evolution 
 are used continually, but it would be very difficult to 
 give definitions which would satisfy most of those who 
 use them. The consequence of this is that many mean- 
 ings attach to abstract terms, and the more in proportion
 
 OF THE INNER WORLD. 135 
 
 to their abstractness. Limiting ourselves, however, to 
 the three terms mentioned which designate the highest 
 Ideals which the human mind is capable of, we may 
 dwell with profit on some of the characteristics which 
 they exhibit. 
 
 We may note, inter alia, the following : Words 
 like True, Beautiful, and Good are used not only as 
 adjectives marking the properties of things ; they are 
 also used as nouns when we speak of the true, the 
 beautiful, and the good. Thus, truth, beauty, and 
 goodness are not only adjectives and attributes, but 
 are conceived by us as Reality, having a supreme 
 existence, and we attach to them through this quality 
 a highest value. 
 
 Then, again, these terms refer distinctly to two very 
 different kinds of property or quality : they may refer, 
 as it were, without any emotional colouring merely to 
 external objects and their relations. Thus we say a 
 ruler or a line is not true, meaning by this that it 
 is not straight. We say of a mathematical formula 
 that it is beautiful, or of a solution of a problem that 
 it is pretty, and we use the term " good " to designate 
 all kinds of properties which have no moral significance ; 
 notably in this way goodness is frequently used instead 
 of usefulness. 
 
 At all times there have been serious attempts to 
 reduce the meaning of these terms to what we may 
 call prosaic or matter-of-fact relations between things 
 and persons. Thus in philosophy, Truth has not in- 
 frequently been limited to mere " consistency of 
 thought " ; beauty has been reduced to utility, as when 
 Hume headed one of his essays with the words "Why
 
 136 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 utility pleases " ; and there is, of course, a widely 
 known school of Ethics termed Utilitarianism. But all 
 attempts to limit the meaning of the words to the 
 lower level of clearly-defined relations have failed, and 
 the human mind has always reverted to the conviction 
 that these abstract terms point to something higher 
 and deeper than the things and events of the outer 
 world and common life. Hardly more successful has 
 been the effort of metaphysicians to arrive at a general 
 agreement by dialectical and critical methods of trial 
 and error, of which we have a most brilliant example 
 in Plato's ' Dialogues,' and in modern times, in Lotze's 
 ' Metaphysics ' and Bradley 's ' Appearance and Reality.' 
 It may then be of use to try the method followed 
 by Hume with regard to such abstract terms as 
 " Substance " and " Causality," and by us with regard to 
 the terms Personality and Reality. This is equivalent 
 to asking the question : What special experiences 
 within the stream of our thoughts lead us to form or 
 adopt the terms, True, Beautiful, and Good? 
 
 IV. 
 
 In searching within our consciousness for the simplest 
 experiences which we designate by the words in ques- 
 tion, it can hardly be doubted that these experiences 
 may all be reduced to certain sensations or feelings 
 of personal satisfaction. This sensation or emotion 
 may range from the lowest stage of mere comfort to 
 the highest expressed by the words joy, enthusiasm, 
 and rapture. And the opposite sensations, ranging from
 
 OF THE INNER WORLD. 137 
 
 mere discomfort or uneasiness to the acutest sensation 
 of aversion and mental suffering, are correspondingly 
 described in terms such as falsehood, ugliness, and 
 evil. 
 
 It seems that we cannot get down to any deeper 
 ground or foundation for these various terms than that 
 of the difference between what we, in a lower or higher 
 sense, like or dislike. Perhaps we may say that these 
 likes and dislikes which are inborn in our nature and 
 occupy a large expanse in our flow of sensations arise 
 from feelings of harmony or disagreement between our 
 sensations. 
 
 Thus even the most prosaic want of consistency in 
 matters of fact may create in us an unpleasant feeling 
 of jar, whilst the term harmony is intelligibly used to 
 denote the higher properties of what we call Beautiful 
 or Good. 
 
 And if we look a little further into the matter we 
 not only reduce the sensations or feelings in question 
 to a common subjective denominator, namely, that of 
 "like and dislike," but we also discover a common 
 objective denominator; we are able to find a word 
 which embraces in a certain way every one of the three 
 ideas with which we are dealing. This word seems to 
 be no other than the first of the three terms, namely, 
 Truth. Truth has a narrower and a wider sense. In 
 the narrower sense it refers to matters of fact ; in the 
 wider sense it applies also to creations of the imagina- 
 tion and to moral ideas. 
 
 In this way, through its connection with the creations 
 of art and with the precepts of morality, Truth attains 
 in a certain way supremacy in the emotional world.
 
 138 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Instinctively also we seem to attach to Truth in the 
 highest sense a greater reality or degree of independent 
 existence than we attach to any other abstract notion. 
 Many extracts from profane and sacred writings, 
 from scientific, philosophical, and poetical deliverances, 
 might be collected to show that Truth occupies a 
 prominent if not the foremost place in our spiritual 
 vocabulary. All three ideas acquire what we have 
 termed a double existence, that is, they are not only 
 expressive of subjective experiences, but have an inde- 
 pendent existence through the fact that we have 
 individually learnt them and use them in our com- 
 munion with other persons ; that we have been able 
 to attain to a certain degree of unanimity on these 
 matters with our fellow-men. This agreement is cer- 
 tainly not complete, except perhaps temporarily in 
 the region of matters of fact ; but it is sufficient 
 to take us out of our self into the larger world which 
 we inhabit in common with other persons. Through 
 this property of a common possession and use, these 
 conceptions satisfy the first condition which we found 
 to belong to Eeality. 
 
 The second condition, namely, that of clear definition 
 and individual existence, does not seem to belong to 
 special kinds of beauty or goodness ; and to truth it 
 belongs only in the lower sense of matter of fact. Still 
 less can we arrange these different values in a clear 
 order of higher and lower : all attempts at classification 
 of different kinds of beauty or of duty and virtue 
 have so far failed to gain general acceptance. But 
 when we come to the fourth condition which we found 
 to belong to real things, we instinctively feel that it
 
 OF THE INNER WORLD. 139 
 
 is certainly fulfilled in the case of the three ideas we 
 are dealing with. It has been a conviction running 
 through all the deeper thought of ancient and modern 
 times, be it religious, philosophical, or poetical, that 
 truth, beauty, and goodness cannot be separated from 
 each other, that they belong together, forming a system 
 or hierarchy of their own, a world for itself which 
 in various forms of expression is elevated beyond 
 and contrasted with the world of common life. The 
 grandest example, towering above every other deliver- 
 ance in the profane literature of the ages, is the 
 Platonic world of ideas, which like the heavenly vault 
 spans over our earthly existence. 
 
 A closer and more detailed expression of this spiritual 
 system seems indeed impossible, but the unity which 
 we attribute to the triad of Truth, Beauty, and Good- 
 ness, expressed in the word Holiness, has its counter- 
 part in what we have just stated, that in the subjective 
 sphere of our emotional life the idea of truth seems to 
 link together all the highest sensations of which we 
 are capable. 
 
 V. 
 
 As the logical definition of the three terms we are 
 dealing with seems impossible, we are driven back to 
 an examination of the subjective or personal way in 
 which we have individually arrived at an understand- 
 ing of them. And here we must admit that a simple 
 answer is hardly possible. The cause of this, as we 
 have already said, lies in the circumstance that these 
 terms are used in the speech addressed to us in our
 
 140 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 earliest years, long before we are able to form definite 
 abstract notions, and that we also learn to use them 
 long before we realise their meaning. Also this mean- 
 ing attains to very different degrees of clearness with 
 different persons. It seems pretty certain that there 
 are persons who have a very slight, if any, notion of 
 beauty or goodness ; it is difficult to impart to some 
 children notions belonging to these two regions of 
 thought and feeling; whereas there are others whose 
 sensation of the beautiful and the good is so strong 
 that it seems almost inborn. The whole of this subject 
 therefore opens out a large view of individual psycho- 
 logical differences and peculiarities, and forms a wide 
 field for psychological observation. 
 
 We will therefore in the first instance limit our- 
 selves to the one question, How does the idea of 
 Truth enter the child's mind ? It certainly seems 
 easier to convince others of what is true or untrue 
 in any individual case than to attain agreement 
 with them as to beauty, goodness, or the opposite. 
 This is borne out by the fact that there exists no 
 human tribunal which decides as to what is beautiful 
 or good in the higher sense, whereas the courts of 
 justice are mainly occupied in ascertaining truth 
 in matters of fact, and generally arrive at practical 
 agreement : on the other side, the verdict of beautiful 
 is proverbially considered to be a matter of individual 
 taste ; and the question of moral goodness is one which 
 every person must, as we say, settle with his own 
 conscience which is his highest tribunal.
 
 141 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF TRUTH. 
 I. 
 
 THERE are many ways in which the child's mind may 
 become familiar with the conception of Truth, yet there 
 is one way which seems to be marked out as more gener- 
 ally trodden than any other. This is embodied in the 
 term Veracity, or Truthfulness in speech and action. In 
 endless instances, in stories both true and imaginative, 
 the lesson is taught that to speak the truth is almost 
 our first duty, and that the reverse, falsehood, is 
 detestable. Nor is it difficult to find the reason why 
 such paramount importance is attached to this quality 
 of veracity. The common saying that one untruth or 
 lie destroys all the faith and trust that others attach to 
 your word and action indicates this reason. 
 
 We need not repeat what we have so frequently dwelt 
 on, that our whole early mental life is built up on the 
 communion with other minds, which are known to us 
 not directly like external things, but indirectly only 
 through speech, gesture, and personal contact. 
 
 And similarly, only a small portion of our own inner 
 life in the shape of physical sensations is our common 
 property with others. As all mental progress de-
 
 142 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 pends on mutual understanding in the region of our 
 hidden thoughts and feelings, it is of paramount im- 
 portance in fact a sine qua non that our means of 
 communication with others should as nearly as possible 
 agree with, and be an expression of what we and others 
 secretly think and feel : the hidden portion of our 
 stream of thought should be revealed simply and clearly 
 in our speech and intercourse. Unless this is made the 
 cardinal principle in speech and action, subjective 
 interchange with others becomes impossible. The 
 person who is devoid of veracity figures or tries to 
 figure in the world as a different being from what he 
 really is. 
 
 Society in the narrowest and widest relations is built 
 upon the bed-rock of veracity and trust. 
 
 Assuming then that we are introduced to the deeper 
 and wider meaning of the term " Truth " through the 
 quality of veracity, we may look upon the moment 
 when the importance of this mental property dawns 
 upon the child's mind as the introduction to a new 
 world. And in a sense similar to that in which we 
 conceive the appearance of a person within the field of 
 a child's consciousness to mark its entry into the world 
 of external Reality, we may now look upon the idea 
 of Veracity as affording an entry into the world of inner 
 or higher Reality. From this point an ever extending 
 and enlarging view of these Realities is gained in the 
 course of our life, in the same way as from famili- 
 arity with one or a few persons and things the child 
 acquires the notions of human beings, things, and its 
 own personal existence. In both cases, the process of 
 mental development is twofold, leading us both outside
 
 OF TRUTH. 143 
 
 of and back into ourselves. In the case of Truth 
 we learn gradually to distinguish between formal 
 and real Truth, between Truth as a matter of fact, 
 as a relation, and Truth in the form of Beauty and 
 Goodness. Speaking generally, we learn to distinguish 
 between Material and Spiritual Truth. 
 
 And secondly, the developing soul learns to apply the 
 term Truth to its inner life, to that portion of its 
 stream of thought which remains for ever hidden from 
 the gaze of other persons. With this second aspect of 
 the process of the growth of Truth in the human mind, 
 we shall have to deal later on ; for the moment let us 
 consider the two commonly distinguished aspects of 
 Truth Formal and Eeal. 
 
 II. 
 
 There seem to prevail in philosophical writings two 
 distinct definitions of the word Truth, and following 
 therefrom two distinct theories. They may be most 
 conveniently described as the "Consistency" theory 
 and the " Correspondence " theory. 
 
 According to the first theory, Truth is essentially 
 consistency of thought and knowledge. Our speech 
 and thought must not contain contradictions. This is 
 a purely formal or logical requisite, the recognition of 
 which is continually forced upon us entering into 
 theory and practice, the affairs of daily life, and 
 the higher regions of abstract thought. In fact, a 
 very widely accepted definition of philosophy main- 
 tains that the object of philosophical thought is to
 
 144 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 bring agreement, consistency, and harmony into the 
 scattered trains of ordinary thought. But very fre- 
 quently a further condition is attached as the character 
 of all deeper, wider, and higher knowledge. This 
 further requisite is usually defined by saying that 
 Truth consists in the agreement of our thoughts with 
 the things or objects we are thinking about. Accord- 
 ing to this view, the two kinds of Truth may be 
 described as formal Truth and real Truth. 
 
 Now it is of some importance to remark that from 
 the point of view which we have established and followed 
 out in this treatise, there can be ultimately no essential 
 difference between the two kinds of Truth. 
 
 For according to our view, things do not, for us 
 human beings, exist separately from or outside of the 
 whole course of our stream of thought or our mental 
 firmament. 
 
 The difference between things and sensations or 
 thoughts consists for us merely in this, that some 
 clusters of sensations, or of abstract thoughts, have 
 become so clear that they detach themselves from 
 their surroundings in our field of consciousness, and 
 that in many though not in all instances they are 
 possessed also by other persons with whom we can 
 carry on fruitful communication and intercourse re- 
 garding them ; they form in this way a world by 
 themselves which seems to be, but is not in reality, 
 outside of our personal or subjective region of sensa- 
 tions and thoughts. 
 
 To this statement two objections may be urged. 
 First, it may be said that outside things contain a great 
 many qualities which have never come under our per-
 
 OF TRUTH. 145 
 
 sonal observation, and can therefore not be described 
 as belonging to our personal experiences, sensations, or 
 thoughts, but which nevertheless must be taken into 
 account if our ideas about them are to be correct or 
 truthful. In fact only a very small portion of what 
 constitutes for any one of us the outside world is 
 derived from our personal experience. By far the 
 larger portion is supplied to us from our infancy onward 
 by other persons, in one form or another. In conse- 
 quence of this, if we speak about things, including 
 persons and relations, we really speak of an accumulated 
 mass of observations and experiences by a large number 
 of persons, with whom we have come into direct or 
 indirect communication. This large mass of detail is 
 arranged in the mind of each one of us in a certain 
 order possessing a certain consistency and stability, 
 resulting in a more or less comprehensive image form- 
 ing a whole, of which, however, the small amount of 
 purely personal experience, sensation, or thought which 
 it contains, is, as it were, only the nucleus or crystallising 
 centre. If we think of outside things, we do not think 
 of them only as possessing what our very meagre 
 personal acquaintance has furnished : we think of 
 them as the integrated images which exist in the minds 
 of our fellow-men. And even so far as our own experi- 
 ences are concerned, we are in the habit of repeating the 
 same many times before we are prepared to attribute 
 to them external reality, and place them in the outer 
 world. A single sensation or experience may indeed 
 be so vivid and impressive, that without repetition 
 and without the confirmation of other persons we 
 may consider it to be real, that is, objective and not 
 
 K
 
 146 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 merely subjective ; but we could never in such a case 
 convince others of this Reality, and we should experi- 
 ence some difficulty in silencing all doubt on the point 
 even within our own mind. 
 
 Truth then is the agreement of definite thoughts or 
 images within our mind with the accumulated and 
 integrated experiences of a large number of persons, 
 both living and departed. 
 
 But a second difficulty may be urged. Statements 
 which we individually make concerning matters of 
 fact may refer to things or events which have never 
 formed part of the experience of anybody, and may 
 perhaps never do so. Things and events of this kind 
 are, inter alia, physical facts which are quite removed 
 from the horizon of any man's observation, and events 
 which took place in past times of which we have no 
 record either direct or indirect. Such things as have 
 never entered into the actual experience of any one, 
 nevertheless exist as certainly as others which enter 
 into the accumulated and integrated observations of 
 living or departed persons. For instance, the interior 
 of our globe presents, no doubt, certain features which 
 science may attempt to describe in terms which have 
 been arrived at by logical deduction from known and 
 observed data, and we may then put the question 
 whether such description is true or not. It has to do 
 with a thing which nobody has ever seen or will see. 
 And again, historians may make conjectures as to events 
 of which there is no memory, interpolating between 
 authenticated facts others of which we have no direct 
 or indirect record. In all such cases Truth would consist 
 in the agreement of our thoughts and sensations with
 
 OF TRUTH. 147 
 
 something that has never entered, and possibly will 
 never enter, into the field of consciousness of anybody. 
 
 The answer to this difficulty is the following : The 
 things in the outer world which we profess to know 
 by our own or the accumulated and integrated experi- 
 ence of our fellow-men, present and past, cannot be 
 isolated from the connections in which they stand to 
 other things which surround them in time or space. 
 
 Thus, in the physical world, a definite thing cannot 
 be completely described or understood by making ever so 
 minute and complete a description of its physical pro- 
 perties. Already in Chemistry we have to go beyond 
 the physical qualities of any definite piece of matter 
 which we wish to describe ; for we have to deal with 
 the actions and reactions of such a definite fragment in 
 the whole of its surroundings ; and even in the purely 
 physical world a distant invisible star may give evidence 
 of real existence through its disturbing influence on 
 other stars which are visible. Everything in the outer 
 world exists therefore not only in what we may, for the 
 sake of convenience, call its individuality, but just as 
 much in the totality of the relations in which it stands 
 to other things. 
 
 We thus come to the conclusion that Truth consists 
 in an agreement or harmony between inner experi- 
 ences which we may either possess or have possessed 
 ourselves, or may have adopted and assimilated in 
 and through communion with other persons. And the 
 totality of all this experience which we can only im- 
 agine, but never actually realise, presents itself to us 
 not only as true, but as the Truth, the word Truth 
 being elevated from a mere adjective or relation be-
 
 148 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 tween things to the position of a substantive, appearing 
 thus as the highest Reality of which we can form any 
 conception Truth and Reality becoming synonyms. 
 
 But used in this highest sense, we instinctively feel 
 that Truth is more than the mere fact ; it becomes one 
 of those Realities which we cannot contemplate without 
 emotion, and in this way reveals to us its connection 
 with the other highest Realities of which we have 
 discoursed in former sections. 
 
 To develop this side more clearly, we must extend 
 our analysis beyond the limit within which it has been 
 so far contained. 
 
 III. 
 
 It was through the idea of Truth that we were able 
 to enter into the region of those higher verities or 
 realities which include the Beautiful, the Good, and 
 the Holy. 
 
 Truth appeared to us to be a portal opening the 
 way into what Plato termed " the World of Ideas." 
 
 We also indicated the way in which the great quest 
 for this may possibly enter a child's mind, namely, in 
 the narrower and simpler conception of veracity. 
 
 It may, however, be observed that not only the 
 question of truthfulness, but also the entire problem of 
 the intellectual equipment of the human mind was 
 treated in the foregoing from a purely contemplative 
 point of view. Such a view, it may be maintained, is 
 one-sided, as there can be no doubt that neither the 
 adult's nor the child's mind is ever, for any length of 
 time, purely observant and receptive.
 
 OF TRUTH. 149 
 
 Experience in both cases consists in an alternation 
 of perceiving and acting. 
 
 Indeed, we may lay it down as a fact that not 
 rest but restlessness is one of the primordial attri- 
 butes of experience, and that it constitutes one of 
 the principal tasks of education to regulate and 
 control the primordial restlessness of the developing 
 human mind. 
 
 It is likely that the physical restlessness so character- 
 istic in the early period of infancy is quite automatic, 
 and arises unconsciously. Here also we may suggest 
 that it is not through its own aimless movements that 
 the child becomes aware of motion and change, but that 
 these are also attributes of that first image of Reality 
 which emerges out of the twilight of consciousness in 
 the form of the person or persons who are the first 
 companions of its earliest existence. 
 
 We may here make use of the symbol which we 
 have repeatedly employed in picturing to ourselves 
 the state of our earliest, as of our developing mental 
 life. The physical firmament contains not only the 
 fixed stars and their fixed constellations, but it contains 
 also wandering stars, including among them the great 
 luminaries, the Sun and Moon. 
 
 A chart of the heavens showing the different constel- 
 lations does not contain the most important of the 
 heavenly bodies which surround us. These latter, 
 through their wandering habits in their proper motion, 
 cannot be located on a map or on a globe. They form 
 an assemblage by themselves ; choosing, as it must 
 have appeared to the first observers, their inde- 
 pendent course, the rule and order of which have
 
 150 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 only been fixed after long - continued observation and 
 calculation. 
 
 In a similar manner the person or persons who sur- 
 round the infant mind must early appear as differing 
 from other external, though equally vivid and definite, 
 clusters of sensations. Their proper movement distin- 
 guishes them from the stationary or more regular 
 moving background and environment of lifeless things. 
 The latter can, however, enter into this proper move- 
 ment if connected with the movements of persons. 
 
 The mind of the child will, next to this, observe a 
 similar independence or freedom of motion attached 
 to one special cluster of external sensations which it 
 learns to regard as its own body, and it soon finds out 
 that many of its own movements are accompanied by 
 feelings pleasant or unpleasant, giving rise to desires 
 or aversions, to likes or dislikes, to joy or pain. It is 
 thus introduced into the world of action. 
 
 At this stage of mental development a remarkable 
 property of infant life becomes manifest, at first 
 unconsciously and then consciously to the infant itself. 
 This is the property of imitation. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Imitation constitutes such an important factor both 
 in the life of the infant and of the adult, that it has 
 rightly been considered to be one of the principal 
 vehicles of mental growth and development. For our 
 purpose it is important to point out how different the
 
 OF TRUTH. 151 
 
 phenomenon of imitation appears to be under the older 
 aspect which most psychologists, following the common- 
 sense view, have been impressed by, and under that 
 which we have adopted in this treatise. 
 
 According to the former view, imitation is the repeti- 
 tion within the stream of thought of something that 
 has happened outside this stream of thought. This 
 view locates the event which is imitated outside the 
 imitating consciousness. Now, according to our view, 
 everything that happens, be it a single sensation, a 
 cluster of sensations, or a change of sensations, is simply 
 one of the many experiences which constitute the flow 
 of our conscious life ; it occupies a definite place inside 
 the firmament of thought. Imitation is simply the 
 repetition of what has been experienced, accompanied 
 indeed by some indefinable conscious or unconscious 
 feeling which we call effort. 
 
 If this view is correct, imitation reduces itself to 
 repetition which is a more general trait in mental life ; 
 and, we may add, the more general and frequent the 
 further we go back in the mystery of the individual 
 mind. 
 
 It is well known that children are very fond of 
 repeating or having repeated to them actions or stories 
 which have impressed them in a lively way. It is 
 also well known that scenes, sounds, and melodies 
 which have impressed us dwell with us and recur again 
 and again, causing us increased enjoyment, or it may 
 be haunting us in a distressing manner. Infants arid 
 children are taught not only to act but also to speak 
 by repeating or imitating for themselves what they
 
 152 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 have seen or heard : it is their own experiences which 
 they choose or are asked to reproduce, and the more 
 lively the first event has been, the more fitted will it 
 be to draw after it a spontaneous repetition. 
 
 But we can go a step further back in our analysis of 
 experiences, and say that certain of these experiences, 
 be they sensations, perceptions, images of memory, or 
 fancies of imagination, called forth, whether at rest 
 or in motion, other experiences similar to them. We 
 may term this phenomenon that of Association of 
 single or complex experiences. And this large class 
 of mental phenomena includes what in conventional 
 psychology is termed " the Association of Ideas." 
 Thus it includes not only those forms of Association 
 which Hume pointed out, but also the many ways in 
 which repetition and habit produce sensations and 
 ideas, and distinctly also the many cases of imitation 
 just alluded to. Certain conscious or unconscious 
 movements are associated with definite sensations or 
 perceptions which may be suddenly introduced into 
 the field and flow of consciousness ; or which may 
 be called up by memory or created by imagination. 
 But whatever these experiences may be which in some 
 unexplained manner call forth other experiences, they 
 are, all of them, located within the flow of our 
 thoughts, having a place within the confines of the 
 firmament of the soul. There is according to our 
 view no essential difference between what we con- 
 veniently term "outside" and "inside"; for all ex- 
 periences be they the sudden impressions which come 
 upon us without our knowing or acting, or those 
 others which may follow them are equally situated
 
 OF TRUTH. 153 
 
 on the same moving plane of our inward field of 
 vision. 
 
 Thus the doctrine of the "Association of Ideas" 
 must be revised and re- written from a wider point of 
 view. Keverting now to the phenomenon of imitation, 
 we may say that imitation is probably unconscious on 
 its first appearance, but it soon becomes conscious and 
 is associated with the intellectual interest which the 
 child's mind increasingly takes in in the happenings 
 which surround it. And connected with this interest, 
 which marks a selecting process, is the feeling of 
 effort accompanying such movements as are of special 
 interest. 
 
 The feeling of interest is probably the first sign of 
 what, in the developing consciousness, presents itself 
 as value : interested movements or interesting things 
 acquire in the acting and observing consciousness a 
 new property which, though entirely subjective, soon 
 becomes projected outside as an attribute of things 
 and events in the objective world. 
 
 But it is well to remark here that the attributes of 
 interest and value never attain that objective reality 
 which attaches to definite sensations or clusters of 
 sensations. 
 
 The attribute of interest or of value hovers, as it 
 were, between the object and the perceiving or acting 
 subject. We are not able to share the feeling of 
 interest or appreciation so completely with other 
 persons as we share, or think we share, certain definite 
 sensations. These feelings of interest and value 
 change also very markedly in our own experience. 
 Things we admire, or occupations we delight in, very
 
 154 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 rarely retain their hold on our mind for very long or 
 in the same degree, and these changes of interest and 
 taste are more rapid the further we go back in the 
 conscious life of the soul, whilst in old age these 
 feelings become mostly less vivid and not infrequently 
 die away altogether.
 
 155 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF ACTIVITY. 
 I. 
 
 THE fact that the conscious or unconscious movements 
 in our earliest days are checked either by persons 
 surrounding us, or by lifeless things which we en- 
 counter, is one of the most important causes through 
 which our practical or social sense becomes circum- 
 scribed, defined, and fixed in our own consciousness. 
 And the further fact that this small sphere which 
 becomes marked out within the large field of conscious- 
 ness contains by far the larger proportion of feelings of 
 pain or pleasure and of active or restricted changes, 
 contributes more than anything else to give importance 
 and prominence to this our practical or social self; 
 throwing into the background most of those experiences 
 which are not immediately connected with our moving 
 and active personality. 
 
 Such are, inter alia, the wide and increasing regions of 
 memory or of creative imagination and dreams of fancy. 
 
 We early become aware that this check to our 
 conscious or unconscious movements is mostly due to 
 the action of other persons in the physical or outer 
 world.
 
 156 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 But it is not only by the physical restraint and re- 
 sistances we meet with that we form a new experience ; 
 there is, in addition, a vague and undefined feeling 
 connected with the presence of other persons, especially 
 of those who are our daily companions. 
 
 As the intellectual intercourse between mother and 
 child is not limited to experience of the physical senses, 
 but consists to a great extent in an undefinable purely 
 mental or emotional communion, so also the checks we 
 receive, or the liberties we are allowed, are not by any 
 means all physical ; they consist in an undefinable 
 sense of discouragement, or encouragement, accom- 
 panied by feelings of discomfort and dismay, or their 
 reverse : ease of mind, happiness, and exultation. 
 
 The general result of this repression or encourage- 
 ment of our physical and mental movements is the 
 division of these movements into two classes, those 
 which meet with success and create satisfaction, and 
 those others which fail and are accompanied by 
 disappointment, which may be more or less acute and 
 painful. To shun or avoid the latter, and to repeat 
 the former, is the inevitable consequence of this 
 division. 
 
 We stated above that the primordial data within 
 the range of consciousness which lead to this active 
 life seem to be the inborn restlessness, both physical 
 and mental, the ever - changing stream of sensations 
 and actions, physical and mental, on the one side ; 
 and on the other side the regulative influence of 
 conscious or unconscious imitation of the action of 
 persons who surround us. Imitation is not limited 
 to casual observation and intercourse, though this is
 
 OF ACTIVITY. 157 
 
 most important in the earlier stages of our mental 
 development. 
 
 Memory and imagination enlarge enormously the 
 field of our sensations, and some remembered or 
 imagined events become so vivid and distinct that 
 they react on us with a force equal to that possessed 
 by actual experience during our intercourse with 
 other persons. We involuntarily imitate or give actual 
 reality to the imagined movements which we contem- 
 plate with our inward eye : they form the directive 
 ideas which control the never - ceasing movement of 
 our sensations and thoughts. 
 
 In this way they form a self-created purpose in our 
 mental life. Our actions have become purposeful, 
 having an aim and an end. 
 
 We now see that the picture we drew of the original 
 state of our awakening consciousness was too meagre 
 in its outline. In its chaotic state it not only 
 contains the dim tracings of persons and things, but 
 also the confused medley of our physical and mental 
 strivings. These two classes of our experience are 
 intermingled. What we term the external features of 
 persons become distinct and lively to us only in con- 
 nection with the changes which they present ; and in 
 the same way when we gradually arrive at a conscious- 
 ness of our own physical and mental self, the features of 
 this are not stationary but intermingled with continued 
 action. There is thus a continued but changing con- 
 nection between things we see and actions accompany- 
 ing them ; either of which rise into distinctness with the 
 decline of the other. Too much restlessness prevents us 
 from seeing things clearly, taking the word seeing in the
 
 158 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 widest sense as meaning mental awareness. And vice 
 versa, close attention to physical or mental sensations as 
 well as intense emotion may check automatically the 
 habitual restlessness of our inner self. 
 
 This unvarying connection between sensation and 
 action taking these terms in the widest sense should 
 have been included in the doctrine of the Association of 
 Ideas, for it forms the most fruitful cause of the gradual 
 development of our purposeful action, and of the achieve- 
 ment of self-control, self-direction, and self-government. 
 
 II. 
 
 The various encounters which happen to us in early 
 life, both with lifeless and living things, tend, as we have 
 stated, to draw more closely and narrowly the sphere of 
 those sensations and actions which we gradually learn 
 to call our own. In this way our social self or per- 
 sonality becomes more and more circumscribed and 
 defined. 
 
 But as already stated, our encounters with lifeless 
 things have a very different effect upon us from those 
 which living things and especially other persons have. 
 The checks which we receive from lifeless things contri- 
 bute to our information about them as well as to the 
 knowledge of our own powers. Were they the only ex- 
 periences of this kind, they might teach us prudence and 
 foresight, or they might fill us with joy or with the con- 
 trary, that is, with fear. Such an education is, however, 
 quite unthinkable, for we have seen that the conscious 
 intercourse with persons precedes that with lifeless
 
 OF ACTIVITY. 159 
 
 things. The intercourse with persons leads us not only 
 to knowledge, calls forth not only pleasure and pain, 
 but produces also a reaction in us which is the first 
 appearance and the earliest form of that affection which 
 we term Love. Wherever this affection makes itself 
 felt and enters into our sensations, or active strivings, 
 we seem, as it were, to enter a different and special 
 region of experience which is the beginning of what we 
 call the moral world. 
 
 Thus we are again impressed by the fact that it is 
 only through communion with other persons that we 
 gradually pass from the simpler stages of personal 
 and subjective life to the higher, the more important 
 and interesting. 
 
 It is probably also through intercourse with persons 
 that the child first becomes aware of what we term the 
 freedom of its will. 
 
 The freedom of Will, in whatever way it may be de- 
 fined, explained, or explained away, is not a problem for 
 introspective psychology, for there is no fact of the inner 
 life better and earlier known to the child or even the 
 infant than that it has freedom of action. No words in 
 the early speech of a child are more familiar than "will" 
 and " won't." This experience is one of the earliest and 
 most essential in any rational being. 
 
 The doubts concerning Free Will which have arisen 
 among philosophers and divines are not shared either 
 by children or by the majority of grown-up persons. 
 
 How they have arisen is a problem that will occupy 
 us at a later stage of our analysis. 
 
 The child also very soon learns to distinguish between 
 such of its actions as are limited by lifeless objects, and
 
 160 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 those others which are only partially limited through 
 the influence of other persons and the expression of 
 their will. It distinguishes between the checks and 
 impediments of its external surroundings and the com- 
 mands of persons. Whereas the former give rise to the 
 notions of possible and impossible, the latter give rise 
 to the different distinction between right and wrong. 
 
 It is likely that the idea of wrongness does not enter 
 a child's mind before it has disobeyed the commands 
 or wishes of those with whom it habitually communes. 
 Transgression comes before the notion of guilt; and 
 without some feeling of guilt it does not seem that the 
 distinction of right and wrong could enter the human 
 mind. And it seems equally necessary that the wrong 
 course of action should be followed by some unpleasant 
 sensation or experience such as to mark it out as some- 
 thing to be avoided. 
 
 The word in which these relations between the child's 
 soul and those who surround it are gathered up is 
 obedience. Through the word obedience, the child 
 learns its earliest duties and obligations, or we may 
 say, obedience is the child's first form of morality. 
 
 We stated above that veracity is the first stage of 
 morality i.e., the first notion through which the idea 
 or precepts of morality are introduced. But this is 
 preceded by the notion of obedience through which the 
 form of morality is introduced. 
 
 This call for obedience is gradually further developed 
 into the more complicated notion of duty and obliga- 
 tion. The purely personal relation of obedience is 
 deepened and widened, and the place of single definite 
 persons is taken by the wider notion of society, of
 
 OF ACTIVITY. 161 
 
 dependence on our surroundings, both physical and 
 mental ; and both these extensions give rise to a feeling 
 which we may term absolute dependence. 
 
 We vaguely or clearly become conscious that we live 
 under what we may call the pressure of our sur- 
 roundings, be they physical, social, or spiritual. This 
 experience forms the beginning of the religious senti- 
 ment. It leads us to ask two definite questions viz., 
 What is the nature of this feeling of pressure or obliga- 
 tion, and whence does it come to us ? 
 
 Whoever recognises the fact of this dependence, not 
 only in the physical but also in the social and spiritual 
 world, has the religious sentiment in its widest sense. 
 Whoever, in addition, possesses or seeks a definite 
 answer to the second question, Whence this feeling of 
 dependence comes to us, has not only the religious 
 sentiment, but has, or desires to have, a definite religion 
 or religious creed. 
 
 From this point of view we may say that a person 
 may be truly religious without having a definite re- 
 ligious creed. This religion consists in a feeling of 
 obligation or dependence, whilst he may intellectually 
 find it impossible to formulate a definite creed. 
 
 III. 
 
 The habit of obedience, which should be one of the 
 first results of early education, introduces the human 
 soul to the recognition of Authority. 
 
 Authority is at first limited to the command of one or 
 a few persons, who, if necessary, can enforce their will 
 
 L
 
 162 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 against our own desires or actions. Gradually this 
 narrow conception of Authority becomes wider, and 
 when we see that others also, and notably our parents, 
 masters, or friends, recognise equally some form of con- 
 straint and exercise self-control similar to that which 
 they expect from us, the centre or seat of Authority 
 moves away in our conception to a greater distance, 
 describing, as it were, a larger sphere and defining 
 a more general power. 
 
 The feeling of obligation grows or should grow into a 
 general habit of responsibility for our actions : these 
 actions are dictated and judged not only by their im- 
 mediate result, but also by bringing in the question 
 whether they satisfy or offend that feeling of responsi- 
 bility which we call conscience, producing, besides the 
 feeling of success or the reverse, also a feeling of self- 
 approval and satisfaction, or its opposite, self-reproach, 
 regret, and remorse. 
 
 It must not be supposed that this analysis of the 
 origin, nature, and growth of the moral feeling of obli- 
 gation is, in general, clearly experienced by the devel- 
 oping mind. Most children in the present day probably 
 grow up with very indefinite notions as to the nature 
 and location of that Authority which they more or less 
 recognise when once they leave the stricter control 
 of their younger days. Without some ever so vague 
 conception of the existence of a higher command it is 
 impossible to see how members of human society could 
 live and act together; for self-control and self-limita- 
 tion are the first conditions not only of peaceful 
 intercourse with others, but even of such intercourse 
 in any manner.
 
 OF ACTIVITY. 163 
 
 Various theories have been advanced as to the form 
 which this feeling of responsibility actually takes, and 
 it is probable that these different theories are all more 
 or less correct if we consider the enormous varieties 
 in human nature and character. 
 
 We need mention here only a few of the different 
 views which have been taken of the nature of moral 
 responsibility. The simplest and probably the oldest is 
 the conception of a higher Power, which is conceived by 
 analogy with our earliest experiences as that of more 
 exalted persons, or as that of a single and Highest 
 Person, the Deity. This is probably also, even at the 
 present day, and in spite of much criticism, still the 
 most popular and widespread view as to the supreme 
 seat of Authority. 
 
 Various doubts, raised both on the ground of intel- 
 lectual and moral difficulties and dilemmas, have ever 
 since the beginning of philosophy tended to loosen the 
 belief in this first, simplest, and most natural theory of 
 the World and Life ; replacing the theistic doctrine by a 
 variety of different theories such as fatalism, Pantheism, 
 or a universal cosmic order ; and these different theories 
 may be either spiritualistic or materialistic. Compara- 
 tively recent is what has been termed "Agnosticism," 
 a theory which denies all possibility of explaining 
 in any way the origin and nature of the ultimate 
 order of things, and a fortiori, also of the moral 
 sentiment. 
 
 It is, however, interesting and significant to note that 
 some of the most staunch upholders of the Agnostic 
 position are quite as firm in maintaining the ex- 
 istence of a moral law or order, which they consider
 
 164 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 strong enough to hold its own without any doctrinal 
 support. 
 
 Of this position, Huxley may be considered, at least 
 at one period of his philosophical career, to be the 
 clearest exponent. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the foregoing we have attempted to trace the 
 different abstract conceptions with which we operate in 
 adult life, to their beginnings in the soul of the child or 
 even of the infant. 
 
 We have not attempted to define more closely the 
 succession in which these different ideas arise or develop. 
 It is probable that they mutually assist each other to 
 emerge out of the primordial chaos of sensations, 
 emotions, and feelings ; also that in different persons, 
 the order of appearance is very different. In some, 
 what we term the moral nature may show itself earlier 
 than the affections or the intellect ; in others, the 
 feeling of moral responsibility may come much later 
 than intellectual alertness. 
 
 But in whatever order these ideas rise to greater or 
 lesser clearness, or in whatsoever way they may interact, 
 it seems almost certain that the recognition of a person 
 is the first important step in the clearance of the child's 
 mind and the brightening of its outlook. For, in the 
 image of such a personal appearance, there are not only 
 seen the multitude of physical features, but closely 
 connected with them likewise a multitude of sensations, 
 a-ffections, and feelings which give what we may term 
 life and vividness.
 
 OF ACTIVITY. 165 
 
 Although this genesis or succession of intellectual and 
 moral ideas cannot be distinctly traced, we have in the 
 foregoing tried to put our finger on the exact points 
 in the developing field of consciousness, where there 
 first arise the ideas of Reality, Truth, Beauty, Goodness, 
 and Duty. These different points are, to sum up : (1) 
 the image of a person or persons, opening out the 
 world of external and internal Reality ; (2) language 
 revealing the inner life of others, requiring a corre- 
 spondence between thought and speech, that is, Truth- 
 fulness or Veracity ; (3) the experience of pleasure in 
 the agreement and its opposite in the disagreement, 
 between our sensations or our feelings, leading to 
 the higher and more abstract idea of Harmony ; (4) 
 probably much earlier, the experience of Free Will, and 
 of its enforced or self-imposed control ; and last, the 
 recognition of Authority, demanding obedience, which 
 is not only purely moral, but may assume the spiritual 
 form of trust and religious veneration. 
 
 We must now proceed to trace in each of these 
 directions of development the more detailed features 
 as they arise and make the mental life more complicated 
 and intricate, but also more definite and purposeful. 
 We have already dwelt at some length on the analysis 
 of the purely intellectual process. This predilection for 
 the intellectual side of our inner life is natural, for it 
 seems probable that it is mainly through this that the 
 human being has risen beyond the rest of the higher 
 species of the animated world. 
 
 Even the emotional and moral endowments seem to 
 rise into greater distinctness through their association 
 with developing intellectual life. The cause of this
 
 166 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 seems to lie in the fact that of all living beings, the 
 human being is the only one which requires a long 
 period of close association with parents and companions 
 before it is able to live independently and freely. And 
 during this period, consciously or unconsciously, the 
 most time and care is given to the gradual drawing out 
 of the child's intellectual faculties. 
 
 Only in the region of these does it seem that a toler- 
 ably general agreement has been arrived at ; and so 
 this line of development has been specially marked out 
 in the general process of education as that which can 
 be almost universally applied. This is the department 
 of Instruction i.e., of teaching and learning which is 
 vastly more denned, and in general more successful than 
 the remaining region of education in the more specific 
 sense, which comprises the guidance of the Will, the 
 refinement of the feelings and emotions, and, in general, 
 the formation of the character. 
 
 So much is this the case, that in recent times a 
 distinct division has been proposed between instruction 
 and education ; it being held that, for instance, instruc- 
 tion can be entrusted to an impersonal authority, say 
 the State, and carried out on definite lines, and a rigid 
 system, to which every young person can be asked 
 to submit to its own advantage ; whereas the higher 
 and deeper tasks of education should be left to the 
 special care of the personal surroundings in which 
 every child is born and placed i.e., to the home and 
 family. 
 
 This proposal, though theoretically sound, is prac- 
 tically impossible, as by far the majority of human 
 beings are born into surroundings little suited for this
 
 OF ACTIVITY. 167 
 
 important task of education in the deeper meaning of 
 the word. 
 
 Already in the time of Plato and Aristotle, this 
 want of adaptation had become evident, the authority 
 of the family and of local associations having broken 
 down ; and so they made their authority the Ideal 
 State. At the dissolution of the Roman Empire, St 
 Augustine opposed to the city of this world the " City 
 of God " ; and for Christendom the authority over 
 education has been the Church in one form or another. 
 Since the French Revolution, the scheme of State- 
 directed instruction, from which religion is excluded as 
 sectional, has come forward, especially on the Continent. 
 Its weakness is that the family and the other associa- 
 tions to which the secular system would leave the 
 training of the will and the affections, have again lost 
 their old authority. The most serious attempts at 
 reconstruction have been made by two French thinkers, 
 Cotnte and Renouvier. Comte, while he rejected all 
 theology, followed the Catholic tradition in making 
 his supreme educational authority the " Church of 
 Humanity," and not the secular State. Renouvier, on 
 the other hand, while he was in philosophy a Theist, 
 was opposed to every derivative of theocracy, and 
 inspired a movement for the laic teaching in schools 
 of an ethics of right and duty. As this, however, was 
 thought out in relation to his own philosophy, we 
 seem to be brought back always to a doctrine Theist 
 or Humanist as the case may be for ultimate 
 direction.
 
 168 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 
 
 WE have already learnt that the development of the 
 intellectual powers of the human mind depends upon a 
 selection of that class of sensations which we term 
 physical. This selection is not due only to the greater 
 clearness and permanence of certain of these sensations, 
 but quite as much, if not more, to the fact that we 
 very early learn that we have them in common with 
 other persons who surround us. 
 
 The great multitude of these sensations, all clearly 
 marked off and located in their spatial arrange- 
 ment, is not only largely increased by their being 
 retained and reproduced through memory, but quite 
 as much through the further circumstance that we 
 learn from other persons a great deal which we could 
 not possibly gain by ourselves alone. We are apt to 
 forget that the picture of what we term the outer 
 world, that is, the totality of physical sensations, is 
 neither a result of our own experience alone, nor a 
 possession proper to any one of us independently. 
 The image of the outer world as presented to the 
 synoptic view is really a collective result of the
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 169 
 
 conscious or unconscious labour and experience of 
 innumerable minds. This is the reason why we are 
 justified in speaking of a general consciousness and of 
 common-sense. By such terms we express the con- 
 viction that the outer world is in a certain sense the 
 same for every one of us, though if we look deeper into 
 the matter, it is just as correct to say that each 
 individual person's view is different from that of all 
 other persons. 
 
 Recognition of this difference leads us to a still 
 stricter selection in matters of external experience. It 
 is the first step in the scientific refinement of the 
 Knowledge contained within the region of common- 
 sense. It is the beginning of a lengthy process of 
 delicate analysis which on its way discards a vast 
 amount of the experience gained unconsciously in the 
 course of our life. Only after long periods of random 
 search, carried on in very different ways, did the selec- 
 tion and the refined analysis just referred to arrive at 
 that stage of simplicity and definiteness from which a 
 systematic foundation and method of progress could 
 be laid down and firmly established. 
 
 The result gained by this comparatively recent 
 method of Analysis and research is equally remark- 
 able in two directions. In the first place, what is 
 termed exact knowledge has been enormously increased, 
 and still greater is the field of application of such 
 knowledge, through which all conditions of life in 
 civilised countries have been radically transformed ; a 
 vast number of artificial conditions have been created ; 
 and the whole of life and society has been rendered 
 so complicated that we can hardly even imagine the
 
 170 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 surroundings in which civilised people in not very 
 far distant ages carried on the business and work of 
 life. 
 
 But in the opposite direction it has become strik- 
 ingly evident that all this accumulated knowledge, all 
 this exact science with its multifarious applications, has 
 proved quite incapable of dealing with those deeper 
 and higher interests which spring from our inner 
 emotions and desires. 
 
 Thus the distance between the highest and most 
 refined scientific theories of the fundamental order of 
 things and the practical questions which every now 
 and then present themselves in our individual as well 
 as our social life, seems greater than ever. So much 
 is this the case that some of the foremost abstract 
 thinkers have professedly admitted that Agnosticism 
 is the only attitude possible from a purely scien- 
 tific point of view. This opinion has again reacted 
 on the common-sense view of things, and strengthened 
 the conviction, which has never been totally absent, 
 that there must be some other form of knowledge, and 
 some other avenue that leads to Truth, than the other- 
 wise rightly glorified method of exact science. 
 
 The view which we have attempted to explain in 
 this treatise supports this conviction, and, as we shall 
 try to show in the sequel, explains how the scientific 
 point of view inevitably narrows the field of the vision 
 to which we are limited if we desire successful prac- 
 tical application ; but it also suggests the existence 
 of other rudiments of thought within the area of our 
 primordial consciousness. The latter may be con- 
 sidered as containing a fund of undeveloped ideas
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 171 
 
 which can be drawn on, and of which, for the immediate 
 purposes of life and practice, the aggregate of physical 
 sensations is of the first, but by no means of sole or 
 even of the highest, importance. 
 
 This will become clearer as we proceed in our more 
 detailed exploration of the purely intellectual region 
 of the field of consciousness. 
 
 II. 
 
 The development in the course of our life of the 
 purely intellectual process begins much later than the 
 acquisition of bodily and mental habits. These, having 
 as it were the first entry, retain their hold and also 
 influence very largely, though frequently unconsciously, 
 the process of clear reasoning which forms such an 
 important attainment in later life. 
 
 Neither the primitive man nor the child of to-day 
 is introduced into conscious existence by those pro- 
 cesses which we now consider to be the fundamental 
 elements of knowledge. 
 
 But the difference in the educational process to-day 
 from that which must have been practised by primitive 
 man is very marked. 
 
 Comparatively early in life the child is now intro- 
 duced to artificial devices which have taken long 
 ages to bring into the form in which they are now 
 
 o o J 
 
 presented to its mind. These devices are, inter alia, 
 
 pictures, models in the shape of toys, letters of the 
 
 alphabet, numerals, geometrical figures, maps, &c., &c. 
 
 It will be seen from this incomplete list that the
 
 172 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 means of instruction as they advance become more 
 and more mechanical and diverted from that surround- 
 ing of emotional and imaginative life which, at the 
 earliest stages, make them attractive. This is increas- 
 ingly the case in our present system of education, and 
 the more so where instruction and education are 
 rigidly separated. 
 
 The introduction also of technical knowledge and 
 handicraft, in the place of the older customs, tends in 
 this direction. 
 
 As the human mind can at any one time only bring 
 into consciousness a small portion of its manifold 
 experiences stored up in memory, the great stress 
 which is now laid upon exact, as opposed to scholarly 
 attainments, has the effect of repressing the emotional 
 and imaginative elements which are always more or less 
 brought out in the teaching of languages, in spite of 
 the dryness of etymology and syntax. 
 
 Looking into the future, we may safely say that in- 
 struction is tending to become more mathematical and 
 less scholarly ; accurate information, useful in practical 
 life, taking the place of the more diversified knowledge 
 gained by reading and by the less systematic observa- 
 tion of natural things. 
 
 Yet in the fuller development of mental and moral life, 
 this tendency to extol mathematical and mechanical ex- 
 actness and accuracy is not without a harmful influence. 
 The mathematical treatment of any subject, especially 
 that of complex subjects, is based upon some of the most 
 refined thought and speculations which the human mind 
 is capable of. At the same time these fundamental 
 thoughts or principles can be put into such simple form
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 173 
 
 that their intricacy and beauty disappear in the rule or 
 formula which is handed to the practical worker who, 
 in general, handles this refined instrument without any 
 knowledge or appreciation of the abstract principles 
 which underlie its construction. 
 
 Whilst the number of practical applications and 
 mechanical labourers enormously increases, the intellects 
 which discover and understand the fundamental prin- 
 ciples remain extremely rare. Knowledge consequently 
 in this region becomes more and more mechanical and 
 superficial. 
 
 It is a notable fact that the grasp of mathematical 
 principles is far more rare than aptness and profici- 
 ency in scholarly attainments. It follows therefore 
 that the result of modern schooling for the majority of 
 minds must mean a far larger proportion of purely 
 mechanical achievements and a smaller amount of 
 individual and subjective thought. 
 
 One of the principal features in the world which 
 presents itself to the child's mind in the course of its 
 advancing years, is that of order, regularity, and uni- 
 formity, and it is upon this feature that most attention 
 is directed. We are not only taught to see order and 
 uniformity everywhere around us, but we are also 
 induced to regulate our behaviour on these lines. 
 
 This tendency to find and to practise order and regu- 
 larity everywhere has been enormously increased through 
 the progress of science and mechanical invention, so that 
 the great principle of the uniformity of nature has 
 become latterly a sort of gospel for the student, not only 
 of the Physical, but also of the Social World. It is a 
 common occurrence in the history, not only of the natural
 
 174 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 sciences, but also of those concerned with human life, 
 both in society and in individuals, to emphasise and 
 exaggerate any and every new relation which has been 
 discovered and found to obtain in restricted regions, 
 facts, or events. And this is especially the case where 
 such relations are simple and mathematically definable. 
 When the law of gravitation was established by obser- 
 vation and calculation of cosmic phenomena, a tendency 
 at once arose to generalise these simple relations and 
 to find in a comprehensive formula of Attraction 
 the key which would unlock the secret of the physical 
 world. 
 
 Similar generalisations have since been propounded 
 as the simple relations contained in vibratory motion, 
 or in the fixed proportions of chemical combinations, 
 have become established. In more recent times, statis- 
 tical regularity, vortex motion, and biological formulae, 
 such as that of natural selection and that of crowding 
 out, have ruled supreme in various branches of physical 
 and social science. All these, and many other discov- 
 eries of arithmetical or geometrical regularity, have been 
 at one time or another extolled as fundamental prin- 
 ciples and their general usefulness vastly exaggerated. 
 They have nearly all proved to be one-sided, frequently 
 incorrect, and in consequence misleading. For a time 
 indeed they were all extremely fruitful in extending 
 natural knowledge ; but like a fertilising river if spread 
 over too large an area, they have dried up and ceased 
 to be vitalising principles.
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 175 
 
 III. 
 
 When we realise that the whole region of physical sen- 
 sations which constitute the outer world, forms within 
 our consciousness only a very small portion of its total 
 content ; when we further reflect that this region has at- 
 tained its apparent continuity and completeness through 
 the co-operation of thousands of observers who have 
 perpetuated their findings by symbols and images, so 
 that any individual mind really takes the larger pro- 
 portion of its knowledge of the outer world on trust, 
 we come to the conclusion that whatever uniformity 
 there may be in this region applies only to a very small 
 fragment of the stream of thought which forms each 
 person's individual possession. 
 
 But this individual possession is really the only know- 
 ledge which we have of any and everything, and in it 
 every sensation or occurrence is for each of us equally 
 real : it exists with the same right as any other, 
 though, for reasons stated before, we do not call every 
 one of its features equally real. 
 
 We are thus led to the inevitable conclusion that the 
 notion of uniformity refers only to an extremely small 
 fraction of our actual individual experience, and that we 
 have no right to force this canon or rule of thought upon 
 that much larger area of personal experience which con- 
 tains our feelings, desires, volitions, memory pictures, 
 creations of the imagination, and fancies of all kinds. 
 Most of these show no regularity and uniformity, but a 
 succession of changes, sudden and unexpected, making it 
 almost impossible to retain, even for the shortest time,
 
 176 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 any aspect of our inner life steadily before our inward 
 eye. The reason why nevertheless this dogma of uni- 
 formity has become so popular is owing to two main 
 causes. 
 
 Ever since science succeeded in establishing a few 
 simple mathematical relations, governing large classes 
 of physical phenomena, it progressed with such rapidity 
 in many directions, that the idea of uniformity then 
 started became overpowering. Not only have new 
 facts been discovered through the assistance which 
 mathematical reasoning has afforded to simple obser- 
 vation, but the earliest examples of uniformity viz., 
 Kepler's laws and the fall of bodies were derived 
 mathematically from the observation of the largest and 
 most frequent external facts and events, namely, the 
 motions in the physical heavens and on the surface of 
 the earth. Thus these first steps in modern science 
 seemed to embrace at once the whole of the physical 
 world ; and the method of their discovery became a 
 model for all future research. 
 
 The other circumstance which helped to impress the 
 canon of uniformity on the scientific and the popular 
 mind is to be found in the comparative insignificance 
 of the aggregate of all human minds and their labours 
 within the confines of the physical world or of nature. 
 
 Looked at from the point of view of purely natural 
 knowledge, that is, of things located in space, the 
 human mind occupies an infinitesimally small situation, 
 and as such seems to the naturalist to be quite over- 
 ruled by the laws which obtain throughout the Cosmos, 
 or on the surface of the earth, whether mechanical or 
 biological.
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 177 
 
 But we have already shown that to locate the 
 whole of the inner world in some physical organ is a 
 gratuitous assumption. All that we are entitled to 
 say is that, through our bodies, or through some 
 special organ within them, a communication exists 
 between what we term the outer and the inner worlds. 
 These two worlds, of which the latter is by far the 
 larger and more complicated, touch, as it were, in one 
 point from which lines of infinite length can be 
 traced separately in both worlds. It follows from 
 this that we have no right to judge of the magnitude 
 of either of these two regions by regarding it from 
 a standpoint contained in the other. And in con- 
 sequence of this necessary admission of our incapacity 
 to judge the whole of existence from one point of 
 view, the properties which are found to belong to 
 either of these two infinities cannot be, except 
 symbolically, transferred to the other. Each of these 
 regions has its own nature, which must be studied 
 and can only successfully be studied from a point of 
 observation situated within its own area. 
 
 This rule for our guidance in natural as in spiritual 
 phenomena, is not invalidated by the fact that a 
 very small portion of our inner sensations is more 
 intimately connected at once with the whole cluster 
 of physical sensations on the one side, and with the 
 larger region of purely subjective feelings and emotions 
 on the other. This is no other than our physical 
 body, but the very contraction of this point of com- 
 munication tempts us continually to mingle in a 
 methodical survey within either region, excursions into 
 the other, from which we return with notions of a 
 
 M
 
 178 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 foreign character which are inapplicable to the subject 
 we are dealing with, and in consequence disturb the 
 result we have arrived at. 
 
 A few examples will illustrate this. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Methodical investigation of the outer as of the 
 inner world started very late in the history of 
 human civilisation. 
 
 Also research at the present day is carried on by 
 individual persons at an age when the common-sense 
 view of the world has been fully established in their 
 minds. Thus the primordial relation between the two 
 worlds has in both cases long disappeared from view. 
 Instead of dwelling on the fundamental fact that for 
 every individual mind, what are termed outer and 
 inner sensations are continually intermingled, we 
 usually disregard this fact, and the two worlds are 
 considered to be quite separate and opposed to each 
 other. 
 
 No doubt practical reasons urge this later view 
 forcibly upon us. 
 
 It is likely that in the history of mankind the closer 
 study of any subject was prompted by practical needs 
 and considerations, and to - day also, the progress of 
 the pure sciences is extremely slow, if compared with 
 those other sciences which are stimulated by practical 
 requirements. 
 
 Thus Astronomy and Geometry probably had their 
 origin in the practical needs of travel and navigation
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 179 
 
 in the one case, and of mensuration and architecture 
 in the other. 
 
 The impossibility of arriving at exact data whilst 
 retaining the comprehensive or synoptic view, makes 
 it necessary to resort to the process of simplification. 
 This is based on selection, analysis, and abstraction. 
 
 But though the process of abstraction or specialisa- 
 tion has long been recognised as the only fruitful one, 
 it is extremely difficult to carry out in its purity. 
 
 It has long been seen that matter and motion 
 constitute the fundamental principles in all physical 
 occurrences, but the definition of these two terms has 
 only been clearly and unambiguously given within 
 the last few generations, and popular as well as 
 philosophical writings, even within the last fifteen 
 years, still labour not infrequently under a great 
 confusion of thought. 
 
 Foremost natural philosophers like Galileo, Kepler, 
 and Newton disengaged themselves to a great extent 
 from the trammels which subjective experiences cast 
 around the simple mathematically measurable data of 
 motion and mass. Yet even Newton still retained the 
 notion of force in stating his Laws of Motion. The 
 term Force was meant no doubt originally to denote 
 the effort which we have to put forth in creating 
 motion, or the resistance that checks our voluntary 
 or involuntary movements. It is still popularly con- 
 sidered to be something of quite a different order from 
 the motion it produces or arrests. Only quite recently 
 have the text -books of mechanics been thoroughly 
 purged of this remnant of a purely internal principle. 
 It is now seen to be sufficient to look for the
 
 180 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 cause of any motion in other motions which have 
 preceded it, and to calculate its quantity and direction 
 from the quantity and direction of the preceding 
 motions and the masses implicated. The term Force 
 has been at once defined and supplanted by a definite 
 quantitative relation of mass and velocity, and it 
 has even been suggested that the word itself, which 
 implies a spiritual agency, should be discarded from 
 the vocabulary of mechanics. 
 
 Unfortunately, in effecting this clearance of ideas, a 
 new term had to be introduced to denote the quantity 
 of motion in any special case. This term, Energy, 
 introduced another non-physical notion, taken from 
 our mental experience, and this suggested the con- 
 fusion of mental and physical energy. Whilst Herbert 
 Spencer still laboured under a confused notion of Force 
 in stating his well-known principle of the "Persistence 
 of Force," Ostwald, on the other side, has been misled 
 by the term Energy into treating psychical or mental 
 energy in the same way as we deal with physical energy. 
 
 Another example of the transference of notions appli- 
 cable only to mental phenomena is to be found in the 
 expression, the Laws of Nature. We are told that the 
 Laws of Nature cannot be broken, that they are inexor- 
 able. These expressions are taken from human life, 
 individual and social. 
 
 The behaviour of individual persons as well as of 
 a society of persons is something different from the 
 command which should regulate the former, or the 
 enactments of Law which should govern the latter. In 
 both cases an Authority exists outside of the acting 
 person or persons.
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 181 
 
 But such is not the case with the formulae which we 
 call the Laws of Nature. These are merely an ex- 
 pression of the behaviour of things natural. They do 
 not exist anywhere in the outer world separately or 
 apart from the things and occurrences themselves to 
 which they refer. They may indeed be stated in the 
 abstract as so many relations which are to be found 
 uniformly between things or events, but their indepen- 
 dent existence is merely one of thought, and in their 
 complexity and totality they constitute one of the 
 realities which the human mind projects as it were out 
 of itself, mainly because they are recognised by all 
 persons competent to understand them. 
 
 So far as they can be stated precisely they form a 
 department of applied mathematics. 
 
 It is therefore more correct to speak of the uni- 
 formity of nature, or of the nature of things, than of 
 the Laws of Nature. 
 
 It must also be noted that these so-called Laws of 
 Nature, or more correctly speaking, these uniform 
 relations or rules of the behaviour of things, are not 
 really known. 
 
 Being abstractions which the human mind makes in 
 observing and contemplating things and events, they 
 come to our knowledge after the behaviour of things 
 has been observed and studied, whereas the command 
 of a personal authority, or the enactment of written 
 laws, must be known before the behaviour of indi- 
 viduals or of societies can be regulated.
 
 182 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 V. 
 
 Another important feature in the picture of the 
 outer world presented to the developing mind of 
 any individual person is the fact that space which 
 contains everything belonging to the outer world, 
 becomes gradually filled up. 
 
 This has, in the history of thought, a twofold sig- 
 nificance. The popular and early conception of space 
 as a void filled with discrete matter or phenomena has, 
 to the scientific view, given way to the conception that 
 space is a plenum, filled with an imperceptible some- 
 thing which has as much reality as the comparatively 
 few things and events which are known to us directly 
 through our sensations : this leads to the doctrine of 
 the continuity of that substance which is supposed to 
 fill space. 
 
 The effect of this view of the constitution of the 
 outer world on the things and events of the inner 
 world is still more important. Whereas the primordial 
 aspect of the world of Thought or the firmament of 
 consciousness is that of a continual change and alter- 
 nation of physical or outer sensations, and of inner 
 feelings and manifold experiences, the scientific view 
 which is merely an extension and completion of 
 the common - sense view has gradually crowded out 
 the purely internal experiences, and left in the 
 physical firmament no room for those things and events 
 which are of personal interest to each one of us, but 
 differ with different persons. The firmament of Con- 
 sciousness has been replaced during by far the greater
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 183 
 
 portion of our waking moments by the firmament of 
 outer space. 
 
 It has thus come about that the further we advance 
 in our knowledge and study of the external world, 
 the more difficult does it become to free ourselves 
 sufficiently from external impressions to be able to 
 realise the independent existence of an inner world. 
 There seems also no doubt that even when we, to use 
 a figurative expression, completely shut our eyes to 
 things around us and retire into the depths of pure 
 thought and meditation, the objects of our memory, 
 imagination, or fancy, present themselves in spatial 
 order and with spatial features. 
 
 It is not only external things, that is, aggregates of 
 physical sensations, that return to us in memory with 
 their spatial location and in their spatial environment ; 
 but even purely internal experiences, such as desires, 
 volitions, and feelings, are usually, if not always and 
 with all persons, accompanied by spatial attributes, 
 when recalled by memory or pictured in imagination. 
 
 In the foregoing I have referred already to the 
 visualising of numbers, and the fact that this is very 
 variously exercised by different persons, shows that 
 great individual differences between minds exist and 
 are well worth careful study. 
 
 To take an individual case, the writer of this frag- 
 ment finds it impossible to think, for instance, of any 
 individual person of his acquaintance without seeing 
 with the mind's eye this person in a definite situation 
 with definite surroundings and in a definite position. 
 And he finds the same to be the case, whenever he 
 tries to fix in his thoughts definite abstract notions,
 
 184 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 or indefinite and vague feelings. Can any one vividly 
 experience love of those dearest to him without seeing, 
 in his mind's eye, these loved persons more or less 
 vividly before him ? Is it possible to feel a distinct 
 desire, or to frame a definite course of action, without 
 filling the firmament of thought with definite things, 
 persons, and events ? The artist who conceives some 
 great creation, cannot be satisfied or proceed to its 
 execution before he has in his mind visualised and 
 externalised his fancy. He must see his work before 
 him ere he is able to put it on canvas, hew it in 
 marble, or raise it as a monument in stone. 
 
 Even in the most ethereal of arts, surely the musical 
 composer must hear the harmonies and melodies of 
 his symphony or song before he can write it down or 
 produce it on an instrument or through an orchestra. 
 Thus space obtrudes itself everywhere, not only on 
 our outer, but also on our inner view, and is directly, 
 or collaterally, the all-embracing receptacle of the 
 whole of our experience. 
 
 And yet we feel that though space and spatial 
 features obtrude themselves everywhere, they do not 
 give us that which is most important and interesting 
 to us. This is only revealed through a comprehensive 
 glance which gathers up all the single features and 
 all the many instances which form the substance 
 of manifold and often - repeated experiences into a 
 collective view which in some indescribable manner 
 conveys to us something deeper and more responsive 
 than any or all the single features added together. It 
 is again an instance of the synoptic as contrasted with 
 the purely synthetic aspect of thought. In this way,
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 185 
 
 for instance, the minute study of any work of art may, 
 all of a sudden, brighten into a real understanding 
 of it, and admiration rise to rapture and enthusiasm ; 
 so also the acquaintance with a fellow-being may after 
 frequent intercourse ripen into friendship, and the 
 pleasure of repeated meeting and conversation burst 
 into love. We feel instinctively that the refined 
 and spiritual experiences do not belong to objects or 
 persons in their purely spatial existence, but form a 
 world for themselves in the same way as in the purely 
 intellectual region numbers, mathematical formulae, 
 and logical conceptions, form realities by themselves. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The fact that the world of science is supposed to 
 exhibit a continuum both in time and space, and that 
 it can be subjected to methodical treatment and 
 mathematical calculation only so far as this continuity 
 can be traced, struck natural philosophers long before 
 all physical agencies had been reduced to modes of 
 motion, and before it became possible to imagine 
 cosmical, molar, molecular, atomic, and corpuscular 
 motions simply as gradations which merge into each 
 other and are qualitatively of the same order. 
 
 The idea of continuity of matter and motion has 
 found expression in two well-known phrases mentioned 
 already in an earlier chapter. Natura non facit saltum 
 and the Horror vacui express the conviction of con- 
 tinuous development in time and continuity of motion in 
 space on the one side and of the impossibility of a void
 
 186 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 on the other. This indicates that there are two forms 
 of continuity, which we may in common parlance 
 describe as the absence of breaks in time and of 
 gaps in space. 
 
 It is well, however, to note that both kinds of con- 
 tinuity exist only in the ideally constructed universe 
 of Thought, not in those small portions of the world 
 which any one of us personally observes or knows, and 
 which is for him the only existence. This ideal world 
 has been created in any individual mind by two 
 distinct processes : first and foremost, by adding to 
 his individual experience the experience communicated 
 by others ; and secondly, by discarding for a time at 
 least all purely personal experiences, be they sensations 
 or feelings, which would interfere with this ideal picture 
 and disturb its uniformity. In doing so the mind has 
 not only to get rid of all purely subjective features 
 which it experiences alone, but also of those physical 
 sensations which it has more or less in common with 
 other minds. Thus colour, sound, light, and heat, and 
 all the various sensations of touch and resistance, have 
 been discarded in order to be replaced by motions, 
 vibrations, and tremors of some perceptible or it 
 may be imperceptible substance. 
 
 As stated above, the purely scientific or exact treat- 
 ment of natural phenomena is fully possible only 
 where these conditions exist. Kant laid it down that 
 real scientific knowledge existed only so far as mathe- 
 matics went. 
 
 This dictum is borne out by the fact that even in the 
 physical world, within the continuity of time and space, 
 there still exist regions which are inaccessible to exact
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 187 
 
 treatment ; border lines which break up the desired 
 continuity. Such are, for instance, the line that 
 divides the inorganic from the organic world, and 
 within the latter the line that divides the animated 
 from the inanimate creation. And still more flagrant 
 are the enormous changes in historical evolution which 
 are brought about by the sudden appearance of great 
 personalities. These breaks in continuity which baffle 
 the attempt to subject the phenomena of life and 
 of mind to the sort of exact analysis that has been 
 successfully applied to phenomena of the purely 
 physical world, have suggested to many natural philo- 
 sophers the existence of some indescribable agency 
 which cannot be subjected to exact definition or 
 measurement. But on the other side, the fact that 
 these breaks occur only in an infinitesimally minute 
 corner of the physical world, has induced others to look 
 upon them as negligible quantities in the vast and 
 comprehensive order of things : mere freaks or sports 
 in an orderly universe. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to indicate that from the 
 point of view occupied in our present discussion, this 
 subject of continuity assumes quite a different, almost 
 an opposite character. 
 
 For us the great universe of space, with all its 
 multifarious phenomena, has arisen in the human mind 
 by a progressive and increasingly severe selection of 
 certain sensations within the stream of thought. i^These 
 sensations are embedded for every individual mind 
 within the vast field of consciousness, like islands in 
 an ocean, or stars in the firmament. They originally 
 lack all continuity, they are scattered about in an
 
 188 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 irregular manner, rising and sinking within a bound- 
 less background with equal suddenness, and presenting 
 the very opposite of continuous location or change. 
 In fact the properties of continuity belong only to a 
 selected and abstract cluster of sensations, artificially 
 put together by the co-operation of many minds, and 
 by methods of extreme ingenuity and refinement. 
 To look upon this mechanical texture which is enwoven 
 in the aspect of existence as it presents itself to 
 any individual mind, as the only real thing, would 
 be just as if a biologist in viewing the human 
 frame should propose to limit its reality to the 
 skeleton which can be mechanically explained and 
 construed, leaving out of consideration the surrounding 
 drapery formed by flesh and blood, nerves and tissue, 
 upon which life entirely depends, and which converts 
 the ghastly appearance of a skeleton or a skull into 
 an object of supreme beauty. Thus we must conclude 
 that the mechanical continuum hidden in the physical 
 world, and discovered by refined scientific analysis, is 
 as little the essence of things real, as the skeleton is 
 the essence of a living creature. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Having then discarded continuity, whether as 
 absence of break or of gap, as inapplicable in a descrip- 
 tion of the inner world that is, of that totality of 
 experience which forms our primary and ultimate 
 knowledge we now come to a further property which
 
 OF THE PRINCIPLES OF EXACT SCIENCE. 189 
 
 the scientific exploration of the outer world has above 
 all forced upon natural philosophers. 
 
 In the course of the last hundred years a term has 
 been introduced into the physical description of external 
 phenomena, which has allowed many, if not all of them, 
 to be reduced to a common denominator. This is the 
 term Energy. It has taken the place, in text-books, of 
 the ambiguous term Force, which was used in at least 
 two different meanings, sometimes denoting merely the 
 unknown cause of movement, and again identified with 
 power to do work. 
 
 The quantity called Energy is supposed to consist of 
 two factors, defined as the Intensity Factor and the 
 Capacity Factor ; and the difference of phenomena 
 depends not only on the amount of energy, but also 
 on the relative proportion of the two factors. The 
 clear definition in mathematical language of these 
 quantities and their combination marks out a large 
 field for calculation, wherein the statement of the 
 changes in the quantity and the composition of energy 
 leads to remarkable results, to a control of the various 
 forms in which energy presents itself, and the trans- 
 formation of one form into another. 
 
 Long before the introduction and definition of this 
 new term had placed the exact sciences on a sure 
 footing, it had been noted that the two funda- 
 mental quantities, namely, Mass and Motion, were 
 indestructible. 
 
 Notably the development of the science of Chemistry 
 has depended upon the axiom that Mass is an inde- 
 structible quantity ; and this principle became of 
 eminent practical use when Mass was identified with
 
 190 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 weight and measured with the balance. The correct 
 valuation of Motion came later, through the intro- 
 duction of the term Energy. 
 
 Thus the principle of the Conservation of Energy 
 became the fundamental notion in Mechanics, Physics, 
 and Chemistry. 
 
 It must, however, be noted that this principle has 
 only been verified in finite regions of physical pheno- 
 mena, and that the extension of the principle of Con- 
 servation of Energy to the universe as a whole remains 
 a pure assumption, which is of no practical value. 
 Since, however, all practical applications move only in 
 limited and restricted areas, the assertion of the 
 principle for finite quantities is amply sufficient, and 
 has proved to be an invaluable regulative canon of 
 research.
 
 191 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OF VALUE. 
 I. 
 
 THE attempt has been made to extend the principle 
 of the conservation of energy to mental phenomena. 
 This attempt has, however, signally failed for various 
 reasons, of which the following are the most obvious. 
 
 First, Energy if applied to mental phenomena de- 
 notes something unique and incomparable with Energy 
 in the physical world. The latter is denned in the 
 measurable quantities of time, space, and mass ; but 
 space and mass do not apply to mental energy, and 
 to treat the two quantities as of the same order is 
 inadmissible. Further, no method exists for measur- 
 ing mental energy except when and where it results in 
 physical motion. This can, of course, be co-ordinated 
 with other motions, as the three factors just stated are 
 always involved. But a great deal of mental energy 
 is spent in experiences or achievements which make no 
 outer show, but are nevertheless important features in 
 the stream of thought and feeling. 
 
 The most striking difference between physical and 
 mental energy lies just in that property of the former
 
 192 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 which is its most characteristic feature, but which is 
 entirely absent in the sphere of mental energy. 
 
 It has been pointed out by Lotze and emphasised 
 forcibly by Wundt that the characteristic of mental 
 energy is its continued increase. This principle of the 
 continual growth of mental energy does not seem to 
 have been sufficiently noted by philosophers.-"^ The 
 reason of this may be that there is no generally 
 accepted method of measuring mental energy. It 
 suffices, however, to take a broad view of the mental 
 or inner life of man and mankind to recognise that 
 its growth and development is truly the only thing in 
 the world in which we are interested, and which dis- 
 tinguishes the life of the human species from that 
 of all other things, be they inanimate or animated. 
 The outward signs of this increase are everywhere 
 where civilised society exists. The great architectural 
 structures to be found in ancient and modern countries, 
 the collections of books, the galleries of painting and 
 sculpture, the academies of learning, the houses of 
 worship, the songs of the people, and the sublime 
 creations of musical composers, testify to the existence 
 of a world which is quite distinct from the actual 
 amount of material or physical energy which has been 
 used and expended in its creation. 
 
 How infinitely small is the amount of marble con- 
 tained in a Venus of Milo compared with the value 
 we attach to this work of art : how small also the 
 physical labours of the artist compared with the sub- 
 lime intuition which guided his hand! how negligible 
 the amount of pigment and canvas and of the labour 
 bestowed on both if we compare it with the world of
 
 OF VALUE. 193 
 
 thought revealed in a Madonna di san Sisto ! how little 
 value and substance is to be found in the score of one 
 of the divine creations of a Palestrina, a Bach, or a 
 Beethoven ! And yet this small amount of matter and 
 physical energy has permitted the artist to perpetuate 
 for all time the creations of his imagination, revealing 
 a truth higher than that contained in the merely 
 practical skill which was at his command. 
 
 II. 
 
 Summing up what has been said in the last two 
 sections, we may say that the principal characteristic 
 features of the outer world, as presented in the scientific 
 aspect, are absent in the world of consciousness or the 
 inner world. Instead of continuity, we find there its 
 opposite, namely, discontinuity, and instead of the 
 conservation of energy, we find there the continual 
 growth of a principle or a something which is very 
 misleadingly designated by the same word. 
 
 We may now try to find a term which comprises 
 both the attributes, indicating at once the increase 
 and the suddenness and incalculability of this increase 
 in the stream of thought or the firmament of the soul. 
 
 This word is Creation. 
 
 Applying this term Creation to the two worlds, that 
 is, to the outer as well as the inner, to that small por- 
 tion of sensation which we can measure and calculate, 
 as well as to the whole surrounding region of other 
 and of all mental experience, we may say that the outer 
 world can be looked upon as created once for all, 
 
 N
 
 194 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 whereas for the totality of the inner world, we must 
 maintain that it is continually being created. The 
 counterpart of this statement is the popular view that 
 the external world, or the cosmos, is eternal and inde- 
 structible ; whereas the inner world, as it has grown 
 in the course of the life of humanity, and in every 
 individual instance, might also disappear without, as 
 it seems, altering the fixed course of events in the 
 physical universe. 
 
 We are obliged to use terms which have been 
 invented under the predominating influence of external 
 conditions and necessities in order to commune with 
 our fellow-men, not only with regard to outer things, 
 events, changes, but also when we describe the inner 
 world of thought, sensation, and feeling. In doing so, 
 we involuntarily import into our hidden meaning also 
 some of the characteristics which attach only to the 
 outer world. Thus the symbolical use of words is 
 continually accompanied by the danger of carrying 
 over attributes which are not really applicable to the 
 things we are dealing with. 
 
 A singular transfer of the opposite kind is witnessed 
 in the use of the two words mentioned in the fore- 
 going : Force and Energy. Originally coined to de- 
 note purely subjective experiences, such as the effort 
 we put forward in voluntary action, or the power 
 latent in our inner selves, these two terms were in 
 the development of science transferred to purely 
 physical facts and events. There they misled students 
 of nature into serious errors. 
 
 Force was used to denote an occult agency behind 
 or beneath visible phenomena.
 
 OF VALUE. 195 
 
 And Energy, or, in the older expression, vis viva, 
 or living force, no doubt suggested a hidden principle 
 such as, under the designation of vital force, condemned 
 biologists to follow alluring bye-paths into barren 
 fields of research. Science has, within the last hundred 
 years, efficiently cleaned out this Augean stable, and 
 confined the terms, by a reference to visible and 
 measurable quantities, to the actual world of physical 
 phenomena. 
 
 The damage done in former centuries by applying 
 purely mental attributes to the description of the 
 physical world has been, in recent times, more than 
 balanced in the opposite direction ; for naturalists, on 
 their part, have attempted to clarify the science of 
 the mind by reimporting into this study the terms 
 originally borrowed, but now stripped of the emotional 
 colouring through which alone they were fitted to 
 describe some primary experience of the reflecting 
 and introspective soul. 
 
 The statements about continuity and the conserva- 
 tion of energy in the outer world which were made 
 above in discussing physical science, require to be 
 taken with caution when considered from a philo- 
 sophical point of view. 
 
 Both notions are what we may call limiting ideas 
 or abstractions. Prima facie, their applicability is 
 not evident even in the physical universe, where the 
 common-sense view is continually confronted both with 
 discontinuities and with apparent losses and gains. It 
 is only in an ideal reconstruction of the physical world, 
 such as science aims at, that these two canons of thought 
 have established themselves after thousands of years of
 
 196 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 research as regulative principles which the student of 
 nature must always keep before him. It is, for instance, 
 quite evident that to a common-sense view the physical 
 world itself presents endless breaks and chasms. This 
 leads to an aspect which is the main foundation of 
 a special description of nature which deals with just 
 those irregularities that science discards in principle. 
 This aspect is that presented to the artist. 
 
 We shall revert to this point of view in the sequel. 
 
 Even the student of pure science has always to turn 
 again from his rigid calculation and measurement to 
 the broad view of actual life ; he has to take in at a 
 glance the world as it is before he dissects it ; he has 
 to recognise that no analysis and subsequent synthesis 
 exhausts the nature of any visible or tangible thing, 
 that the ensemble is more than the sum of its parts. 
 
 For its real progress science is ultimately always 
 indebted to observation : though the astronomer may 
 turn his back on the starry firmament in order to 
 carry out his refined calculations in his study, he 
 must always revert to observation in order to verify 
 them. Though colours and melodies figure in the 
 mathematician's language as measurable tremors or 
 vibrations, the most delicate colour-tests are used in 
 chemical research, and the tuning-fork in the science 
 of acoustics. Without the Solar Spectrum and the 
 discontinuity of the Lines of Fraunhofer, Spectral 
 Analysis would be unthinkable and physical astronomy 
 could not claim that important part in the exploration 
 of the heavens which it now does. It was in the 
 course of extensive travel over different regions that 
 Darwin and Wallace were led to those speculations
 
 OF VALUE. 197 
 
 which have transformed Biology. On the other side, 
 it is true that only through precise definition, measure- 
 ment, and calculation, can the most brilliant observa- 
 tions be put into a form in which they become of 
 practical use. Of this, the most splendid example is 
 to be found in Clerk Maxwell's achievement of putting 
 Faraday's inspirations into mathematical language, thus 
 revolutionising the whole science of applied electricity. 
 
 III. 
 
 Eeverting now to the exploration of the inner world, 
 we have no need to dwell at any length on the breaks 
 and chasms which it presents in the course of its 
 continuous flow. Not only do we, in the hours of our 
 waking life, become painfully aware of states of our 
 consciousness which are little more than empty regions 
 of thought out of which we can recall nothing definite 
 or valuable. The absolute lapse of consciousness dur- 
 ing sleep might well lead us to doubt as to our own 
 identity, were it not for the continuity of external 
 experiences, which we recognise through memory, and 
 of which we originally became aware only through 
 the assistance of others who helped us in the earliest 
 days of our earthly existence. 
 
 As to continuity in our mental life, we know well 
 how difficult it is to attend steadfastly to any given 
 line of thought, or even of observation through the 
 senses, without being continually disturbed by intrud- 
 ing ideas or sensations ; further, how a prolonged 
 attention to anything becomes monotonous and
 
 198 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 fatiguing, leading to mental exhaustion and the loss of 
 mental activity. 
 
 In fact, it is only by continuous changes and sur- 
 prises that we are kept awake and alive. The facility 
 with which we realise these surprises and enjoy them, 
 marks the degree of mental vitality, which is pro- 
 bably at its highest point in infant life, whilst on the 
 other hand it decreases and dies away into indifference 
 in old age. 
 
 These features of mental life are well known, but 
 an application of the doctrine of the growth of mental 
 energy may here be pointed out which has not been 
 sufficiently noted, as it seems to me, in current 
 psychology. 
 
 This idea may be expressed by saying that where 
 creation is there is freedom. 
 
 And the result of this way of stating an undeniable 
 fact points to an aspect from which the problem of 
 free will appears in a new light. 
 
 As just stated, the implications of the doctrine of 
 the growth of mental energy are many, and have not 
 yet been followed out in detail. Nor is it likely that 
 we are at present in a position to follow them out 
 in any completeness. 
 
 If we consider that the implications of Descartes' 
 original and leading idea have occupied thinkers ever 
 since, each one of his nearer or remoter followers, such 
 as Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Hume, having taken 
 a step forward without exhausting the outflow from 
 the original source, it will not seem likely that we shall 
 at once be able to draw all the inferences suggested by 
 the fruitful ideas referred to.
 
 OF VALUE. 199 
 
 The speculations which we are engaged in, and which 
 have occupied thinkers notably of the British School, 
 whom we must count as our predecessors and masters, 
 are not of a nature to permit of a closed system of 
 thought. They form rather a succession in which each 
 member is a torch-bearer, carrying a little further 
 what his forerunner has done, and leaving much 
 to be done by followers. The principle of such a 
 succession is different from that which underlies the 
 great idealistic or realistic systems of the Continent, 
 to which we must add that of Herbert Spencer in this 
 country. Each of these systems is self-contained and 
 complete in design, though perhaps not in execution. 
 
 Compared with the more or less exclusive character 
 of these celebrated systems, the progress on the lines 
 of thought which we are now following resembles 
 much more that of the natural sciences, which grow by 
 the addition of knowledge, and in which every honest 
 labourer has some chance of adding his contribution, 
 however small it may be. The history of these sciences 
 warns us against premature generalisation : in it the 
 accumulation of fragments of knowledge stands out 
 very clearly from the many attempts to establish 
 all-comprising principles and comprehensive systems. 
 The latter, however brilliant and imposing for a time, 
 fade away in the progress of the ages, whereas the 
 former are stored up for the benefit of coming thinkers. 
 
 Thus the discoveries of Newton in the region of 
 physical astronomy and of optics form corner-stones 
 in the edifice of time ; whilst the attempts made by 
 Boscovich and Laplace to elaborate a " system of the 
 world" embracing both the cosmical and the minutest
 
 200 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 molecular phenomena have lost their value, and Newton's 
 emanation theory of light has been superseded by other 
 theories which may, in their turn, likewise have to be 
 discarded. The theorems of Helmholtz on vortex motion 
 hold their place in mathematical physics, though the 
 ingenious attempt to develop a general theory of vortex 
 motions was discarded by its own illustrious inventor 
 as not likely to lead to fruitful results. The discoveries 
 of Darwin and Wallace in the region of natural selection 
 will stand for all time, though the attempt to construct 
 a world-theory out of Darwinism and Evolution has 
 fallen to the ground. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In order to make a beginning in the exploration of 
 the inner world in its completeness as containing also 
 all those sensations and experiences which, under the 
 name of the outer world, we select from the totality of 
 experience, we may take the principle of the growth 
 of mental energy as a foremost and striking feature. 
 
 But to avoid the confusion of ideas which may arise 
 out of the use of the term energy, it will be well to 
 repeat what has been said above, that this word, as 
 now used in scientific literature, denotes something 
 quite different from what we term energy as applied 
 to inner states of mind. 
 
 In physical science, energy means a definite thing 
 which can be measured, transformed, lost and gained 
 by well-known processes. Though it cannot be seen 
 as such, it can be perceived by a special sense which 
 we possess the sense of muscular resistance, or effort ;
 
 OF VALUE. 201 
 
 and in this form the personal energy we put forward is 
 a portion of the total stock of energy contained in the 
 outer world, and has been measured by well-known 
 methods. 
 
 But energy in the wider sense, as originally intro- 
 duced to denote a mental quality, is something quite 
 different, and lies, as it were, behind the various events 
 of our inner life. These events may be connected with 
 very different degrees of mental energy, and may yet be 
 all very prominent and absorbing so much so that we 
 may even fancy that they come and go without the 
 help of any effort on our part ; we may experience 
 sensations which are so overwhelming that we in 
 popular parlance say that they absolutely overcome 
 or annihilate any conscious action on our part. This 
 is indeed a doubtful point, and it may be argued that 
 even where all action on our part seems repressed, 
 there still exists the mental attitude of attention. 
 And that this requires an effort is well known to every 
 one who recollects the difficulty he experienced in 
 childhood in giving attention to his lessons or to the 
 word of his instructor. But even where such effort is 
 not required, as, e.g., when listening to an impressive 
 musical composition or watching an absorbing stage 
 performance, we are bound to admit that those purely 
 contemplative moments of our inner life form a very 
 large arid important feature in the stream of thought. 
 
 We shall therefore discard the use of the term 
 Energy as a definition of the whole of that world which 
 we experience inwardly and which is always increasing. 
 
 Other attempts have been made in recent philosophical 
 literature to describe and define this growth of the
 
 202 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 firmament of consciousness. I will only mention one 
 of these. Alfred Fouillee has put forward his doctrine 
 of the ' Idees-Forces/ which maintains that ideas spring- 
 ing up in our mind act as forces generating new trains 
 of thought, thus enriching our inner life. 
 
 Instead of adopting any of these valuable and sug- 
 gestive terms, it will be simpler and more useful if we 
 start from the undisputed fact that in the history of 
 individual life, and still more, in that of the collective 
 life of humanity, an enormous increase of purely mental 
 interest is observable. 
 
 And here we must at once remark that this increase 
 which is so striking is a collective achievement of the 
 human race, compared with which the progress in 
 any individual lifetime is, on the average, exceedingly 
 small. Only in very rare instances, which we designate 
 by the term genius, is an individual lifetime marked 
 by a conspicuous advance on the lines of thought or 
 by the creation of some supreme work of art. And 
 even these brilliant exceptions owe the fruition of 
 their original ideas to many outside influences both of 
 persons and environment. Nor can we estimate the 
 loss of many a brilliant achievement through the want 
 of these fortunate surrounding conditions. The need 
 of this combination proves once again that the true life 
 of the mind is not that of an individual but a result 
 and product of intersubjective communion. 
 
 Physically, individuals grow and decay, but their 
 mental achievements, if of any importance, do not 
 decay or disappear, but are added to a general stock or 
 fund which constitutes the unique possession and the 
 highest characteristic of the human species.
 
 OF VALUE. 203 
 
 It will now be our task to trace, if possible, some 
 of the steps through which this great possession of 
 humanity has grown during historic times. 
 
 In doing so we have to go outside of purely indi- 
 vidual development, but we may be able to trace a 
 parallelism between the growth of an individual mind 
 and that of civilised society at large.
 
 204 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF ARRANGEMENT AND ORDER. 
 
 IT will hardly be doubted that the first mental instruc- 
 tion which a child receives is to observe definite things, 
 which in the shape of toys or other articles are 
 brought to his view by repeated movements, so as 
 to attract his attention. This period of mere play is 
 succeeded by other forms of instruction, among which 
 the acquisition of speech is one of the most important, 
 definite articles of use or play being named. Later on, 
 a further important step is taken by putting things into 
 special arrangements, thus introducing into the child's 
 mind the idea of order. 
 
 Compared with the aspect which the surrounding 
 world presents to the infant view, the new world of 
 order and arrangement must be called artificial. But 
 order and regularity between things and events is 
 one of the first steps through which the human mind 
 achieves its knowledge and mastery of these things 
 and events. The principles underlying order and regu- 
 larity in the artificial world are distinguished from 
 the order of nature by repetition. 
 
 Though we speak of the Order of Nature, such order
 
 OF ARRANGEMENT AND ORDER. 205 
 
 does not really postulate either regularity or uniformity. 
 But repetition, regularity, and uniformity, in arrange- 
 ment and sequence, that is, in space and time, are 
 certainly one of the first conditions of awakening and 
 developing human intelligence. Nor is it difficult to 
 find at least one reason why such is the case. Repe- 
 tition and regularity are the most powerful aids to 
 memory. 
 
 An event which occurs only once, or an arrangement 
 which presents no rule or order, has little chance of 
 impressing the mind and being retained by memory, 
 unless it is of exceptional vividness, so as to com- 
 mand serious or even exclusive attention. 
 
 Considering the important part which order and 
 regularity play in human affairs, in science, practical 
 knowledge, art, and society, it is remarkable that only 
 in quite recent times has attention been given by 
 leading thinkers to the science of order and to its 
 origin in the human mind. 
 
 A second important result of putting things into 
 order is this : it enables the mind to take in at a 
 glance a large number of things, features, or events ; 
 that is, it facilitates the synoptic view, enabling the 
 mind to retain a knowledge of many impressions 
 which otherwise would be lost in a vague or confused 
 image continued by memory. 
 
 The very first step which is taken in awakening the 
 child's attention, the presenting of small and definite 
 objects, leads to a concentration of the field of vision, 
 facilitating the synoptic aspect, not of the whole of 
 the surrounding world, but of parts of it which are 
 easily grasped.
 
 206 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 We must not, however, forget that neither the detach- 
 ment of definite things and events from their surround- 
 ings or succession in time, nor the putting of them into 
 definite order, alters the natural appearance of the 
 outer world, though it replaces it by a more or less 
 artificial order. For practical purposes, we must always, 
 in the end, come back again to the actual appearance 
 of things and events and view them in their natural 
 connections. By doing so, after the analytic process, 
 we enlarge the field of mental vision, and the grasp or 
 synoptic aspect of it. 
 
 Another peculiarity of orderly or regular arrangements 
 is this : that they are liable to become of diminishing 
 value, that their usefulness may become exhausted, and 
 that they must give way to other arrangements, sug- 
 gested by a renewed glance at actual existence which 
 invariably leads to new combinations and arrangements 
 previously unrecognised. A few examples will illustrate 
 this. 
 
 The ancient doctrine of the four elements in Nature 
 is now scientifically and practically of little use. Fire, 
 water, air. and earth do not for us " form and build " 
 the world, though they may still linger in the popular 
 mind and in that of the poet as a tradition. The 
 Ptolemaic system of the world had to give way to the 
 Copernican after it had led astronomers into the laby- 
 rinth of cycles and epicycles out of which no fruitful 
 way could be found ; but it nevertheless continued in 
 our daily habit of speech ; we still speak of the rising 
 and setting of the sun, moon, and stars. In more 
 recent times, the desire to find the natural order of 
 living things, in distinction from the Linnean System,
 
 OF ARRANGEMENT AND ORDER. 207 
 
 which was called artificial, occupied botanists for a 
 whole century, when the doctrine of Descent suddenly 
 altered the whole aspect of the living creation. In 
 Chemistry, the Binary Theory of Chemical Composition 
 was long in use, but after it had been replaced by the 
 theory of Radicals or that of Types, the doctrine of 
 Valency created a complete revolution in chemical 
 science. Electricians of the school of Weber in Germany 
 were seduced into what turned out a barren field of 
 research by trying to explain electrical phenomena by 
 assimilating electrical attraction and repulsion to the 
 phenomena of gravitation, whilst Faraday's notion of 
 the electric field opened out quite new vistas. And yet 
 the older corpuscular theory of electricity has been 
 revived for the study of electrolytic phenomena. The 
 division of Chemistry into Organic and Inorganic has 
 now lost its meaning, since the whole elaborate structure 
 of so-called organic chemistry can be understood without 
 any knowledge or reference to living, that is, organised 
 beings ; the chemical properties of which, forming the 
 original task of organic chemistry, are now relegated to 
 a special science, called Biochemistry. 
 
 Coming nearer home, that is, into the domain of 
 mental science, we find a succession of attempts to 
 put mental phenomena into some intelligible order so 
 as to promote a survey of the human mind. Of these, 
 the old faculty-theory and the later association-psy- 
 chology are schemes which enable the philosopher to 
 comprehend and grasp, to some extent, the great diver- 
 sity of mental phenomena. They are both, at the 
 present day, somewhat discredited. 
 
 But the most brilliant example of the Science of
 
 208 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Order is to be found in Modern Geometry, which under 
 the name of Project! ve Geometry, Synthetic Geometry, 
 or Geometry of Position, has revolutionised the science 
 to such an extent that it has been called the royal 
 road to geometrical knowledge. A wonderful simplifi- 
 cation of algebraical formularism has also been achieved 
 in recent times by the artifice of mathematical tactics, 
 known under the name of Determinants. 
 
 II. 
 
 The illustrations given in the last paragraph of the 
 arranging and ordering, endeavour and achievement, 
 of Science may suffice to show the importance of order 
 in the progress of human knowledge ; but they also 
 show how little any such systematic attempt has been 
 able to rise to the position of an expression of the 
 Universal order of Nature. Still less has that under- 
 lying design been made clear which we are continually 
 prompted to seek iii the inner life of the individual 
 or the collective human mind. And yet, without the 
 belief in such a design both in nature and in mind, no 
 scientific research, no mental philosophy, no art, and 
 no moral progress would be possible. 
 
 In fact, we are driven to the conclusion that order 
 or arrangement is a separate and definite property of 
 the World of Things, both physical and mental ; so 
 that we may add to the conventional classification 
 of the properties of things viz., into quantity and 
 quality a third property, which is position and order. 
 This latter property belongs only to complexes and
 
 OF ARRANGEMENT AND ORDER. 209 
 
 aggregates, and reveals itself only to the synoptic 
 view, or the vue d'ensemble. It is, in fact, as already 
 said, one of the principal aids towards the synoptic 
 aspect i.e., to seeing things together. 
 
 The importance of " grasp," that is, of seeing things 
 together, is seen not only in the acquisition and 
 increase of knowledge, but even more in the affairs of 
 practical life. Here, also, we may distinguish two 
 principal activities of the mind which rarely coexist, 
 but on the alternation and mutual influence of which 
 progress depends. Thus in all practical business we 
 have the two extremes of expert knowledge with 
 professional skill on the one side and of organising 
 ability on the other. 
 
 No one who has spent any great time of his life 
 in the pursuit of practical and public work will fail 
 to recognise how necessary these two different and 
 frequently opposed aspects are for the progress and 
 success of large as well as of smaller enterprises. 
 
 Innumerable instances could be given, not only in 
 the scholarly pursuit of knowledge, but likewise in 
 the application to practical ends, of the failure as well 
 as the success of these two directions of thought accord- 
 ing as they work independently and inharmoniously 
 or assist each other. Yet persons specially gifted with 
 either of these two endowments that of the expert 
 and that of the organiser very frequently fail to 
 understand how indispensable to success is the activity 
 of him who labours on the other side. 
 
 Experts with a knowledge of detail in some special 
 field, or with skill in some special profession, frequently 
 overlook and under- value the labour of those who 
 
 o
 
 210 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 collect, arrange, and organise. And on the other hand, 
 those who can grasp any large subject, who command an 
 extensive view and combine a great variety of interests, 
 not infrequently look with compassion, or even con- 
 tempt, upon the patient labourer who, in the secluded 
 study or workshop, spends his time in investigating, 
 discovering, or inventing some seemingly insignificant 
 fact or artifice. 
 
 Thus hundreds of valuable suggestions or contriv- 
 ances pass unnoticed, and the searcher or inventor is 
 disheartened because he has not found the organising 
 mind which can place his discovery or invention in 
 the right position in a body of knowledge, or in a 
 scheme of practical work. But equally the organising 
 master-minds are unable to do their best if they rely 
 too much on expert knowledge or skill which has 
 become antiquated, and neglect to look out on all 
 sides for new helpers.
 
 211 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 
 I. 
 
 IF we realise how great is the importance of regularity, 
 arrangement, and order in the theoretical and practical 
 pursuits of the human mind, we shall come to the con- 
 clusion that these various terms point to a principle of 
 thought and action which is quite different from what 
 we may call the material with which either thought 
 or action deals. We recognise the increasing import- 
 ance of this principle as we ascend from the lower 
 realities of sensual experience into the higher region 
 which contains our Emotions, Desires, Fancies, Imagin- 
 ations, and Ideals. 
 
 It will be of some interest to take note of the 
 different terms and conceptions in and through which 
 we define in language these different forms of Order. 
 Such a survey cannot in the present instance be more 
 than tentative and incomplete, as there seems to exist 
 no systematic attempt to deal exhaustively with the 
 problem. 
 
 If we begin with the simplest phenomena or com- 
 plexes of Sensations with which we are acquainted 
 viz., the arrangement of things in Space and Time we
 
 212 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 recognise order in two forms viz., Order as a fixed 
 arrangement, and Order in change or motion. The 
 principle of the first seems to reduce itself to repetition, 
 regularity, imitation or sameness of position, by what- 
 ever term we may prefer to express this simplest form 
 of order, which is the form that children are first made 
 acquainted with in play or in lessons. 
 
 A second form of Order meets us when we come to 
 change or motion, and here the new concept of Direc- 
 tion comes in. So long as we do not go beyond these 
 simple relations of position in space and time and of 
 motion, we seem to have the phenomena of the outer 
 world completely under our control so far as the 
 understanding of them is concerned ; and a great many 
 practical applications are entirely dependent on this 
 understanding. 
 
 If we are willing to take a purely mechanical view 
 of the actual world and reduce all phenomena to modes 
 of motion, whether cosmical, molar, molecular, atomic, 
 or corpuscular, we seem to possess a complete grasp 
 of the outer world ; for in this case we have the 
 mechanical principles of the conservation of Mass, the 
 conservation of Energy, and the conservation of 
 Momentum the latter principle being expressed in 
 one of the laws of motion : that every body if left to 
 itself and not influenced by any external force will 
 continue to move in a straight line with undiminished 
 velocity. In this rule there is contained a difficulty 
 viz., the difficulty of the definition of a straight line. 
 But as we have, for all practical purposes, arrived at 
 the means of measuring Mass, Time, and Direction, 
 there seems no hindrance in our way to completely
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 213 
 
 grasping, that is, imaging to ourselves, the mechanical 
 framework of the universe. This is shown conclusively 
 in astronomy, which has proved its command of the 
 cosmical phenomena of motion by prediction of 
 things distant in Space and Time to a degree which 
 marks one of the greatest triumphs of the human 
 intellect, and is to the popular mind one of the 
 marvels and the very ideal of scientific knowledge. 
 
 If we advance a step further in our view of natural 
 phenomena, taking in not only the data of Time, Space, 
 and Mass just mentioned, but in addition the physical 
 qualities, such as Colour, Sound, and Temperature, we 
 tread upon more uncertain and conjectural ground 
 in our endeavour to construe to ourselves natural 
 phenomena. For here we lose hold of the first law of 
 Motion just mentioned, that is, of the directing principle 
 in actual occurrences : we are reduced to the two prin- 
 ciples of the conservation of Mass and of Energy. In 
 all cases where such Energy disappears in the form of 
 Motion (becoming what is called potential instead of 
 kinetic Energy), its reappearance may take place in 
 directions which cannot with any accuracy be foretold. 
 
 The principles of the conservation of Mass and Energy 
 are not violated. They serve the purpose of verify- 
 ing the correctness of our observations in the same way 
 as the operations of a book-keeper serve to control the 
 transactions in a complicated business, though the book- 
 keeper's accounts do not disclose the nature of those 
 transactions. 
 
 This is especially evident in chemical changes of de- 
 composition or composition. The purely mechanical 
 view of Nature must therefore, according to some
 
 214 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 thinkers, be abandoned ; according to others it must 
 be supposed that Energy never disappears as kinetic, 
 that is to say, as a mode of Motion, but that its motions 
 are so immeasurably small in dimensions and so large 
 in number as to elude our observation. 
 
 Still more than in physical and chemical phenomena 
 does the guiding principle seem to be hidden from us in 
 the phenomena of Life ; and this explains why, for a very 
 long time, the biological sciences were limited to mere 
 classification as the only means of affording that grasp 
 of complex phenomena which the human mind is always 
 striving after. 
 
 It was, however, always felt that these systems of 
 classification followed an arbitrary rule, affording little 
 insight into the real nature and history of living things, 
 being based on mere external similarities, that is, on the 
 repetition of forms and processes. 
 
 A great step in advance was taken when living things 
 were studied in their individual growth, and when it was 
 recognised that the stages passed through in embryonic 
 development corresponded to a large extent with the 
 succession of species in the animated world. The recog- 
 nition of this remarkable fact, which is expressed in 
 the formula of the parallelism of Onto-genesis and 
 Phylo-genesis, led naturalists to the modern doctrine 
 of Evolution. 
 
 The old-fashioned arrangement of a museum, in 
 which natural things were classed according to super- 
 ficial similarities, was replaced by the genealogical tree 
 showing the descent of the complicated or higher 
 creation from lower and simpler forms. 
 
 It was at the same time realised that complication of
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 215 
 
 structure went hand in hand with complication of func- 
 tion, giving much greater variety to life and behaviour ; 
 and, as this increased the philosophical interest with 
 which the human mind contemplates natural things and 
 events, it was inevitable that the idea of design should 
 enter the field of scientific thought, thus bringing the 
 living creation nearer to that point of view which treats 
 Nature as following a definite plan in the same way as 
 man himself creates an artificial world of tools and 
 mechanisms in order to achieve definite purposes. 
 
 II. 
 
 We have already noted in a former chapter that 
 Images or Ideas in the human mind exert a definite con- 
 trol over the primordial but involuntary mobility and 
 restlessness of the human being. They act as a direct- 
 ing force. Among them the physical sensations, such as 
 hunger, thirst, and others, are the earliest, and remain 
 fundamental in spite of their relegation to a lower sphere 
 as the workings of the emotions and the intellect gain 
 more or less superiority in the course of life. In fact 
 they become, or should become, more and more auto- 
 matic, whereas the Images and Ideas of the intellect gain 
 in that attractive force which we call interest, and, beiDg 
 once established, acquire an influence over our move- 
 ments through which we become active and creative 
 in the world of Values. 
 
 Events in this world originating in individual and 
 collective interests prompt us to look for Design, Mean- 
 ing, and Purpose not only in the narrow sphere of
 
 216 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 human activity, but also in the larger region of the 
 physical world which surrounds us. 
 
 As the experience of subjective exertion, effort, and 
 force makes us search for something corresponding in 
 Nature, and leads to the conception of physical forces and 
 causes, so the existence of Meaning, Aim, and Purpose in 
 human actions makes us look for something correspond- 
 ing in external events. 
 
 This tendency to introduce into the consideration of 
 the physical Universe the idea of Design and Purpose is 
 just as indestructible and ineradicable in human thought 
 as is the search for hidden forces and causes. Prima 
 facie, therefore, what is called the teleological view of 
 events around and in us, is just as natural as the 
 mechanical aspect, and in the natural history of the 
 animated world, just as indispensable. 
 
 The fact that for scientific purposes the formula of 
 Causation is preferred to the formula of Aim and End 
 has a purely subjective origin, inasmuch as Definition 
 and Measurement on the largest scale, and increasingly 
 also in smaller dimensions, tend to remove that un- 
 certainty and absence of clear definition which attaches 
 to the higher conceptions of Meaning and Purpose. 
 
 These latter also, being less definable, vary greatly 
 in different persons and with each at different times. 
 They are therefore not easily communicated to others, 
 and rarely acquire that cumulative strength and im- 
 pressiveness which attaches to most of the active forces 
 and causes in the outer world, that is, in the region of 
 our physical sensations. At times, indeed, both in the 
 life of the individual and still more in that of the mass 
 of human beings, they rise to great distinctness, acquire
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 217 
 
 cumulative force and such invincible power, that they, 
 as it were, put to nought all physical resistance and 
 overcome the inertia which is a property of all masses, 
 creating revolutions and upheavals which change the 
 whole aspect of social and political life. 
 
 Thus Napoleon said correctly that there are two 
 forces in the world the sword and ideas : in the long- 
 run ideas always win the day. 
 
 III. 
 
 According to the point of view taken up in these our 
 discussions, we look upon all these abstract terms and 
 relations, through which we bring Rule and Order into 
 the primordial chaos of our Sensations, Emotions, and 
 Desires, as entirely subjective ; as acquiring objectivity 
 mainly through their permanence, and through the fact 
 that in some unexplained way we learn that other 
 persons share with us the same or similar experiences. 
 
 They are selections which the human mind is impelled 
 to make among the crowd of physical and other sensa- 
 tions which fill the changing firmament of conscious- 
 ness. The selection is merely a further step for every 
 individual mind in that process of clearance which 
 begins in infant life, starting with the recognition of 
 detached and repeated physical sensations, and ad- 
 vances to their connections in time and space. 
 
 We have no true knowledge of these abstractions 
 other than that which exists for every one of us in his 
 own individual experience. And so far as knowledge 
 gained from or through other persons is concerned, we
 
 218 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 cannot really say that we possess it unless it corre- 
 sponds to some experience of our own which is definitely 
 marked and to which we can refer it. 
 
 The use of words and terms which do not refer to 
 some personal experience in each of us is no better than 
 the repetition of such words by a parrot, or that of a 
 proposition in Euclid by a schoolboy who does not 
 understand it. 
 
 Nevertheless we continually use words and terms 
 of which we have only a confused image in our mind, 
 and a very large number of successful operations in 
 practical life are carried on with the help of words 
 and terms which the user only dimly apprehends. In 
 such cases the operation he performs is no better 
 and perhaps less perfect than that of a tool or a cal- 
 culating machine. But the fact that this is so, and 
 that operations based upon purely intellectual trains 
 of thought can to an apparently unlimited extent be 
 made mechanical, is one of the greatest achieve- 
 ments of the human mind, and that by which the 
 complicated structures of civilised society have been 
 founded and extended. 
 
 But it is well to remark that originally they started 
 from the creative or imaginative effort of some indi- 
 vidual mind. 
 
 Such individual minds possess the power of dis- 
 covering in the elaborate texture of their experiences 
 some lines of an inwoven cypher ; in the labyrinth of 
 their thoughts they find a thread which guides them 
 safely to a comprehensive outlook : they are able in 
 language, symbol, or model to show this to their fellow- 
 men. The manner in which they do this shows the
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 219 
 
 greatest variety, but the way in which they discover 
 these guiding lines of thought is a mystery, not only 
 to those who receive and use them, but probably also 
 to those who discover and invent them. 
 
 Examples of this mysterious process of abstraction, 
 imagination, and synoptic comprehension may be 
 found in the description which Mozart gives of his 
 art of musical composition, or in Kekule's description 
 of his discovery of the ring of atomic arrangements 
 which, under the name of the Benzol - ring, forms 
 a nucleus in the history and science of organic 
 chemistry. 
 
 The real object and purpose of all these simple or 
 elaborate geometrical, logical, or artistic figures and 
 models, is the understanding and command of the 
 whole world as it presents itself to each one of us in 
 the waking hours of his life. The first impulse to it 
 is probably curiosity, which the child of to-day shares 
 with the savage of remote times. 
 
 This curiosity or thirst for knowledge is in the 
 earliest stages of civilisation soon directed to and 
 absorbed in the gratification of physical needs, and it 
 is only in more advanced stages that the acquisition 
 of knowledge as such, and the satisfaction of the purely 
 intellectual and artistic interests, fill the life of the 
 years of childhood and adolescence, when the continual 
 reference to practical need is or should be, to a large 
 extent, kept in the background. 
 
 Through fortunate circumstances, and in the favoured 
 surroundings of the sapientum templa serena, which 
 are one of the latest creations of advanced civilisation, 
 the notion has arisen and is fostered that knowledge
 
 220 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 has a value for its own sake, that the search after 
 truth is sufficient in itself, and that art is to be 
 cultivated for art's sake. This seems an exaggerated 
 way of expressing a correct idea. 
 
 So far as the search for truth and truth alone is 
 concerned, the history of the sciences has sufficiently 
 shown that the advance of thought and knowledge 
 does not lead to the discovery of ultimate truths, but 
 has value only if it leads to the discovery of new facts, 
 that is, to a better grasp of complicated phenomena, or 
 to express it in the language of this dissertation 
 to the revelation within the range of our daily experi- 
 ence of data and features which the bluntness of our 
 untutored senses had hidden from us. 
 
 It is a process similar to that of the astronomer who, 
 with his telescope and spectroscope, dissolves the 
 nebula into a crowd of distinct objects with definite 
 physical properties. Such a process of dissection 
 reveals to us things and agencies which we may 
 eventually synthesise and use in our own way, creat- 
 ing a new and artificial world in which we put the 
 hidden forces of Nature to manifold uses and purposes. 
 But this process is endless, and though it took 
 thousands of years before a systematic and vigorous 
 start was made in scientific research, the progress is 
 now so rapid that few, if any, scientific formulae can 
 be considered to reveal as was once supposed the 
 real laws of Nature. The latter, if they exist at all in 
 that primitive fashion which was proclaimed not long 
 ago, are certainly hidden from us and will always 
 remain so. 
 
 Reverting to the definition of truth which we
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 221 
 
 reached before, that it means consistency and harmony 
 among our thoughts and ideas, we may say that the 
 impelling force which prompts the search for scientific 
 Truth and the increase of Knowledge is not only the 
 inborn curiosity which shows itself among the earliest 
 features of a waking intelligence, but is increas- 
 ingly the desire to remove contradictions, to solve 
 paradoxes, and to clear up mysteries which every pro- 
 gressive line of thought reveals to us. It is a search 
 for clarity, consistency, and completeness. 
 
 Yet this undying but never satisfied thirst for Know- 
 ledge would not be maintained were it not that on 
 its way it scatters abroad an abundant harvest of new 
 facts and relations which prove to be of practical value, 
 filling the field of our consciousness the firmament 
 of thought with an increasing number and variety of 
 objects, ministering to the practical wants of life which 
 it both creates and satisfies. 
 
 Were it not for this, the occupation with science 
 would be a pure luxury, the recreation of a few gifted 
 minds ; and it would remain unappreciated by the 
 multitude, who would look upon it as a sport or 
 pastime of these exceptional minds, without recognising 
 that such sport and recreation play a necessary part in 
 the economy of life ; recognition of their value comes 
 only when they lead to unexpected discoveries which 
 profoundly influence both knowledge and conduct. 
 
 The word truth, however, has a deeper meaning 
 than that of mere consistency and harmony of thought 
 and vision. The undying and never satisfied search 
 for Knowledge is accompanied by a tacit conviction 
 equally deep and indestructible that the way of
 
 222 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 pure thought and contemplation will lead to some 
 lasting result, to some abiding resting-place, and 
 establish some firm ground upon which we can build, 
 and which may become the property of all, affording 
 an anchorage in the troubled sea of doubt. 
 
 The existence of this desire in the human heart is 
 just as real and even more important than the 
 unalloyed thirst for knowledge. But if the history of 
 modern science has taught us any higher lesson at 
 all, it is this that this resting-place and firm ground 
 cannot be found by methods of science. Truth in this 
 sense cannot be the goal of science ; the latter twirls 
 on the spindle of logic its unending and innumerable 
 threads which it weaves into a texture of extraordinary 
 complexity and absorbing interest. Yet this process 
 has no end. The tapestry is never finished, is always 
 changing, and what one age designs and partially 
 carries out is thrown aside by a succeeding age as of 
 little lasting value. 
 
 The summit which methodical thought, combined 
 with observation, endeavours to reach, recedes further 
 and further as lesser summits and numberless valleys 
 present themselves on the way. 
 
 Amidst this comparative failure, except for the 
 practical results just mentioned, the hope of finding 
 truth in the deeper sense as the revelation of the truly 
 real, must be abandoned and some other way found for 
 satisfying our desire. Fortunately Art here steps in 
 and solves the problem at least for moments during 
 our journey through life. It does so by a process in 
 which it shares with Science but which it applies in 
 a different way.
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 223 
 
 IV. 
 
 The aims of Science and of Art were not distinguished 
 and kept rigidly apart in the earlier stages of civilisa- 
 tion, nor are they kept apart in the earlier stages of 
 the education and instruction of children in the present 
 day. Learning is made pleasant and even amusing, 
 and play is directed so as to contain instruction and 
 to stimulate the intellect. But in the course of the 
 development both of social and individual life, it has 
 been found necessary to differentiate more and more 
 the methods of gaining an increasing knowledge from 
 the ways and means of pleasing the senses and satisfy- 
 ing the higher emotions. 
 
 It is likely that the inborn habit of imitation and 
 repetition has played an equal part in the development 
 of science and of art. Both may also be said to 
 rely upon an ordering process, resorting to a rearrange- 
 ment of the material, that is, of the experiences which 
 present themselves in the stream of thought, and form 
 the various objects which fill the firmament of the 
 soul. But, whilst a primary object of this ordering 
 process in the case of science is to gain definition 
 and distinctness, the first higher step in art seems to 
 be to add some new impression to a given complex of 
 Sensations, Thoughts, or Emotions. 
 
 This new element which, consciously or unconsciously, 
 emerges in any artistic effort is the giving meaning, sig- 
 nificance, and value to the contemplated object. 
 
 Both Science and Art start from, and depend on, a 
 synoptic view of a smaller or larger complex of mental
 
 224 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 experiences. Both also depend upon close observation 
 and study of detail. But whilst science tries to intro- 
 duce into clearly defined elements, which it finds, a 
 logical order, the representative arts are more interested 
 in tracing the order in which detailed experiences 
 present themselves in Nature and actual life. 
 
 There is no doubt that science aims ultimately at 
 understanding and imaging the natural order of things, 
 and that the circuitous path of analysis and synthesis 
 is expected to lead ultimately to a comprehension of 
 the realities of Nature, Mind, and Life : it is nevertheless 
 actually the case that the rearrangement of the world 
 which science effects is highly artificial and abstract ; 
 whereas all the study and technical skill of the 
 representative arts serves to make the natural order of 
 things clearer and more transparent, and to give a grasp 
 of reality in what we call its true nature, meaning, and 
 value. Thus arises the paradox that art stands in 
 closer relation to Nature than science does ; the latter 
 creating, not an artistic, but an artificial world. 
 
 The representative arts, notably Painting, Sculpture, 
 and Poetry, seem to give us an interpretation of things 
 natural which is more satisfactory to the contemplating 
 mind than the increasingly complex and abstract view 
 which science affords. The need of the human mind 
 to find harmony and completeness is more easily 
 satisfied by single creations of art which move in a 
 limited area than by the abstract generalisations of 
 science which rove into wider and wider regions, and 
 at best afford a panoramic view of the universe. 
 
 In limiting itself to circumscribed regions or objects, 
 things or events, art is able in rare instances to
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 225 
 
 afford that impression of completeness joined to clarity 
 which, for a moment, arrests in the observer the rest- 
 less search of the longing mind, giving satisfaction and 
 repose. 
 
 Both Science and Art, in dealing with things and 
 events found by observation and experience, rely upon 
 a process of abstraction. Both destroy, in a sense, the 
 natural order of things. 
 
 Science puts in place of this natural order, a logical 
 order revealing, so to speak, the skeleton of the natural 
 texture around which the listless hand of Nature weaves 
 its picturesque variety of actual things and events. 
 
 On the other side, Art deals mainly with that com- 
 plicated web, which it tries to understand by disclosing 
 to the physical or mental vision the meaning which 
 it conveys and the unity which pervades it. In doing 
 so Art attains to a finality and completeness denied 
 to Science. Science, on its part, leads back to actual 
 life, stimulates the practical interests of the mind, 
 and creates the new world which is accessible to every 
 one in its achievements. 
 
 On its way Science certainly affords rare moments 
 of intellectual pleasure to those who are gifted with 
 the power of discovery and invention. Its onward 
 course is, however, never interrupted, and the greater 
 the number of discoveries and inventions, so much 
 the more rapid is the onward pace. 
 
 Art, on the other side, in its greatest and rarest 
 creations and performances does not lead immediately 
 to action in its beholders, though the rare genius who 
 is able to create these marvels may be continually 
 aiming at something more complete and perfect. 
 
 p
 
 226 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 These remarks on the work of Art refer more directly 
 to the representative or fine arts, including poetry. 
 But the artistic sense of the human mind leads from 
 these in two different directions the one more prac- 
 tical and connected with everyday life, the other more 
 sublime and imaginative, leading into what we may 
 term the spiritual world. 
 
 In the former direction lies the combination of the 
 fine and useful Arts in Architecture and the large field 
 of purely decorative Art. Here, usefulness and beauty 
 are combined. 
 
 In the other direction lies the Art of Musical Com- 
 position. This finds little of its material in actual 
 existence, but depends on the creation of the world of 
 musical sound, of harmonies and melodies which it 
 combines into purely imaginative creations appealing 
 directly to the emotions. Working, therefore, with 
 a material which it has had first to create, it is the 
 latest of the arts in historical appearance, and seems 
 to have been unknown and undreamt of in antiquity 
 so far as the possibilities are concerned which the 
 sublime creations of modern times have revealed. 
 
 V. 
 
 As we have seen, both Science and Art aim at import- 
 ing some kind of order into the original chaos of our 
 sensations, feelings, and endeavours. Both stimulate 
 and are dependent on a process of selection or abstrac- 
 tion ; both start from the natural order or disorder, if
 
 OF DIRECTION, DESIGN, AND PURPOSE. 227 
 
 we may say so, of our impressions with the object of 
 ultimately understanding the same. 
 
 In this endeavour Science is continually foiled and 
 led back again to the primitive enigmas and mysteries 
 of existence, whilst Art gives us momentary glimpses 
 of the meaning and unity of things. Science leads us 
 back to the real world and stimulates action, while 
 Art translates us into an ideal world and, except in 
 those who are creative, tends to repose and con- 
 templation and to the rare and transient moments of 
 complete satisfaction. 
 
 The fact that from our infancy we live in the society 
 and under the guidance of our fellow-men makes it 
 necessary that the inherent restlessness of the in- 
 dividual mind should be regulated so as to lead to 
 concerted action. This is the origin of social order, 
 without which early history as well as our childlike 
 behaviour show that no progress is possible. The 
 activity of individuals by themselves is frittered away 
 and the world of values checked in its growth. 
 
 What we term a moral order is required to put con- 
 certed action and successful co-operation in the place 
 of a mere fortuitous concourse of isolated individual 
 strivings. In civilised communities this social order 
 and rule of life exists and controls from the earliest 
 age the strivings of the individual. 
 
 In the dawn of civilisation among savage peoples 
 the process of ordering and regulating life seems to 
 have been slow and, in some cases, stagnant for long 
 periods. The beginnings as well as the great epochs 
 in advancing civilisation seem to be marked so far as 
 we can trace them by the sudden appearance of gifted
 
 228 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 and highly exceptional individual characters, and with 
 them alone history seems to start and advance. How 
 they were or are still able to perform the difficult task 
 with which they are entrusted remains a twofold 
 mystery : first, as to the definite design or scheme 
 according to which they successfully attempt to bring 
 order into chaos ; and secondly, as to the power which 
 they possess to impose this order upon the community 
 of human beings over which they preside. 
 
 And these two mysteries in the history of humanity 
 form still, at the present day, the two problems of 
 morality viz., the problem as to the content of the 
 moral law and the problem of moral obligation. But 
 when once a moral or social law is established, and the 
 obligation to follow it impressed upon the individual 
 mind, history and civilisation have always taken a 
 rapid stride in advance. 
 
 On the other side, whenever the spell which the 
 moral law exerts on the individual has been broken, 
 the whole fabric of civilisation has become endangered. 
 Science, Art, and practical achievements have suffered, 
 and have in notable cases, recorded in history, become 
 extinct : the whole world of values, the creation of the 
 human mind, has suffered irretrievable loss. 
 
 As the world of Values that is, Science, Art, and 
 Social Order is a creation of the human mind, this 
 creative faculty must have an inherent constitution and 
 the process of its activities must be subject to certain 
 inherent principles. To find and to apply these 
 principles, that is, to establish Moral Order, is the 
 highest problem set before human thought.
 
 229 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE WORLD OF FREEDOM OR OF VALUES. 
 I. 
 
 IN an earlier chapter of this treatise we showed how 
 the totality of existence which we have identified 
 with the field or firmament of consciousness so far as 
 every one of us is concerned, undergoes in the course 
 of life a change which consists in assigning to certain 
 experiences within this totality an additional form of 
 existence which we call Reality. 
 
 That selected portion which we call the real World 
 becomes distinguished from and frequently opposed to 
 the permanent background which, though it exists as 
 certainly as the other, is not considered by us to possess 
 Reality. We saw that there are various forms and 
 degrees of this Reality or more pregnant existence ; the 
 main criterion of all that we call Real being is the tacit 
 or overt conviction that it exists in a similar manner 
 for other persons besides ourselves. 
 
 The whole complex of such realities might be called 
 the World of Things, were it not that we are accustomed 
 to apply this term only to complexes of perceptions in 
 Space and Time. It is quite true that we use the word 
 Thing frequently also for experiences which do not
 
 230 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 belong to what we call the outer World, but retain a 
 purely personal existence. Thus we may in prose, and 
 still more in poetry, call Pleasure or Pain, Faith or 
 Doubt, Hope or Despair, Joy or Sorrow, Things, but 
 in general when we talk of the World of Things we 
 should not include such experiences. It would perhaps 
 be better to speak of the World of Objects were it not 
 that the word Object always calls up in our thoughts 
 an opposite signified by the term Subject. 
 
 Some languages, such as the German, have a word to 
 denote this objectivity without raising in the mind the 
 thought of subjectivity. The word Gegenstand has 
 been translated into English as Presentation, but as this 
 term is likewise used to denote what in German is called 
 Vorstellwig, it is not very helpful for our purpose. 
 
 We have also seen in the foregoing that the notion of 
 Reality as belonging to a certain portion of our individ- 
 ual experiences is capable of a further graduation, and 
 that we speak of the truly Real as a higher order of 
 some of the real things. The world which comprises the 
 truly real or the great Verities, has in modern philo- 
 sophical literature been termed the World of Values. 
 
 This World of Values, we have seen, is a creation of 
 the human mind. We might with some propriety call it 
 an invention or discovery of the human mind, as we are 
 tempted to think of it as something which has existence 
 independent of special individual minds, being a general 
 possession, if not of all certainly of many minds, ex- 
 hibiting thus one of the main characteristics of Reality. 
 According to our view, however, this World of Values 
 does not stand in opposition to the much larger World of 
 Things which are indifferent it occupies a scattered
 
 THE WORLD OF FREEDOM OR OF VALUES. 231 
 
 portion of the firmament of consciousness in the same 
 way as indifferent things, which also fill it in a dis- 
 persive manner. 
 
 And though we are inclined to identify Value with the 
 interest we take in anything, the interesting things 
 or experiences are continually being crowded out by 
 indifferent ones. 
 
 It is natural that in the course of civilisation the in- 
 different things in this world come to receive, as such, 
 less attention than those experiences which are more 
 intimately connected with the necessities of the physical 
 and, after that, of the emotional life of human beings. 
 This attention may be almost entirely limited to their 
 usefulness ; and it took long ages before a disinterested 
 study of natural phenomena made its beginning. 
 
 Probably one of the earliest inducements to embark 
 upon the course of pure observation and registration of 
 facts is to be found, as already stated, in Mensuration 
 and Star-gazing undertaken for the sake of wanderings 
 and settlements by sea or on land. 
 
 At this stage the fascination of Geometry and Astron- 
 omy, and the exultation afforded by some of the earliest 
 discoveries in these fields of research, created in partic- 
 ular minds a love of pure Science, endowing what was 
 indifferent to the multitude with a special charm and 
 interest of its own. This birth and early development 
 of what we now call Science, the pursuit of natural 
 Knowledge for its own sake, depended upon a process of 
 ordering, of selection and arrangement of observations 
 and inferences. 
 
 In the early life of the individual nowadays, and in 
 civilised societies, the earliest attention of the infant and
 
 232 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 child is directed towards acquiring practical habits in 
 the common performances of life in an ordered Society ; 
 then comes, first the playful and afterwards the more 
 serious process of acquiring Knowledge and creating 
 interests without immediate reference to the wants 
 and necessities of later life. But all through it will 
 be found that the world of interesting and valuable 
 things and thoughts is discovered, entered, and enlarged 
 by various processes of arrangement and ordering, be- 
 ginning with the simplest forms of spatial and temporal 
 order and rhythm, through a process of selection and 
 repetition up to the unfettered play of the imagination 
 and the stricter marshalling of facts and activities in 
 what we may term the applied logic of science and life. 
 
 Nowhere, however, do we find that either the order- 
 ing processes of Science, the fanciful creations of 
 Art, or the important regulation of social affairs adds 
 anything to the material which is, in various ways, 
 subjected to this order. 
 
 The World of Order or of Values seems thus to be 
 the product of a special tendency of the human mind 
 which is quite different from the processes of Nature. 
 These we have learnt to consider as depending on the 
 conservation of certain principles or elements of exist- 
 ence subject to a uniformity which we become accus- 
 tomed to call the Laws of Nature, affording no room for 
 freedom and creation. 
 
 But these latter are just the special prerogatives of 
 that world of Order which the human mind creates 
 and extends by its own activities. It is true, however, 
 that this ordering process in all the three departments 
 of Science, Art, and Moral, that is, Social Life, in-
 
 THE WORLD OF FREEDOM OR OF VALUES. 233 
 
 voluntarily and, as it appears, without premeditation, 
 not only results everywhere in creative efforts, but 
 adds to its world of invention and creation the won- 
 ders of Discovery. 
 
 Wherever the mind through its creative effort intro- 
 duces Light and Order, new facts reveal themselves 
 which are mostly unexpected : gifts of surprise which 
 Nature bestows upon the thinking mind of man as the 
 fruit and reward of his labours, increasing the material 
 with which he has to deal, and prompting to new efforts 
 and the invention and application of new methods. 
 
 II. 
 
 Examples of this inventive process in the regions of 
 Science, Art, and Practical Life are plentiful. I will 
 here dwell only on the inventive faculty as displayed 
 in industrial enterprises, such as constitute by far the 
 larger proportion of the occupation of human beings 
 in civilised communities. Here, Regularity, Arrange- 
 ment, and Statistical accuracy not only make the 
 conduct of affairs much easier and more effective, but 
 they set the mind free to look out for new departures 
 and new opportunities. Such a return from the dis- 
 cipline of a well-ordered system of routine work to 
 the free outlook on Nature and life rarely remains 
 unrewarded, and minds which are gifted with the 
 ability of keen observation get the chance of exercising 
 their ingenuity, whilst the routine of daily work falls to 
 the lot of those who are industrious and accurate but 
 lack the inventive faculty. Thus the inventive genius
 
 234 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 receives and gains more freedom, and the faithful 
 worker with less brilliant talents finds a sphere of 
 increased usefulness. 
 
 Many practical schemes fail indeed through the want 
 of originality, but probably an equal number of highly 
 suggestive ideas and inventions never come to fruition, 
 because the leading intellect does not possess those 
 more homely qualities of regularity and order which 
 are indispensable in every business of life. 
 
 For our present purposes it is more important to 
 realise how different the process of arranging and order- 
 ing is in the three great departments in which the 
 pure intellect, the imagination, and practical organising 
 power are respectively and more exclusively at work. 
 
 Within the region of the pure intellect, which works 
 through observation and logical inference, the mind 
 elaborates the new and artificial world or scheme of 
 things which it put originally in the place of the natural 
 order, making it possible to grasp firmly at least a small 
 portion of the manifold and tangled experiences of the 
 untutored mind. It is, however, always forced to 
 recognise that these clean-cut schemes and arrange- 
 ments are merely provisional, and do not reproduce 
 that natural order in which things and events present 
 themselves to us. Yet the aim always remains to come 
 nearer and nearer to this natural order though this goal 
 is never attained. 
 
 Art, on the other side, is more perfect and more 
 successful the closer it sticks to Nature the more 
 successfully it singles out definite natural situations 
 and events which it puts in a limiting framework, 
 arranging and ordering its material just so far that
 
 THE WORLD OF FREEDOM OR OF VALUES. 235 
 
 a glimpse is momentarily afforded of that harmony 
 and unity which the human mind desires to see 
 and believes to exist in the reality of the whole 
 universe. 
 
 Art thus gives satisfaction to the emotional side of 
 our nature. 
 
 In the practical affairs of life and human conduct the 
 case is quite different. Here, among human beings, the 
 further civilisation advances the plainer it becomes that 
 many of the natural promptings, habits, and desires of 
 the animal world which are there allowed an unfettered 
 sway, must be curbed, altered, and controlled. 
 
 This process demands the existence of an ideal 
 scheme and of a supreme principle which is not to be 
 found in the natural order of things, but is a creation 
 of the human intellect. 
 
 Thus we may say that in Science and Knowledge the 
 mind has to be directed, that in Art it requires a design, 
 and in practical life a highest principle. The direction 
 which the scientific investigator takes is indicated by 
 Nature and the work of his predecessors combined. 
 The design of the artist arises in his own mind through 
 a process which is spontaneous and cannot be under- 
 stood by analogy with anything that we can clearly 
 define, whilst the highest principle for the guidance 
 of human conduct remains the great problem of which 
 the solution must either be found or accepted from 
 others by every individual person. 
 
 Another distinction between the three principal 
 creations of the human mind follows from the fore- 
 going remarks. 
 
 We may say that pure Science does not concern itself
 
 236 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 with any ulterior problem lying outside of its own 
 region of thought. It is conceivable that the pursuit 
 of pure knowledge may be carried on for its own sake ; 
 though the discoveries of Science lend themselves to 
 
 O 
 
 practical application, and this on its part creates new 
 problems for scientific treatment. 
 
 Examples of scientific work carried on to satisfy 
 purely scientific interests may be found in such studies 
 as the Theory of Numbers or the higher branches of 
 Geometry. Discoveries in these regions are rare, and 
 few minds are content to live in this rarefied atmosphere 
 of thought. To them, however, the rare and precious 
 pearls they find afford a delight which almost approaches 
 that joyful surprise which artistic creation of the 
 highest order affords. 
 
 The guiding principle in scientific research and the 
 quest of new Knowledge is a strict method which 
 the pursuit of Science itself has slowly but firmly 
 established. What it will lead to cannot be foreseen ; 
 and many a field of natural knowledge has been 
 explored with quite other results than were expected 
 or looked for. 
 
 At the opposite extreme among these creations of the 
 human mind stands the regulation and organisation of 
 human conduct in human society. No clear method has 
 been found by which the problem can be solved, but 
 without some ideal and some more or less defined pur- 
 pose this work cannot be successfully carried on. Thus 
 practical life always leads back to some highest principle 
 or rule of life, and to the supreme problem of finding and 
 establishing this. If we compare Art with these neigh-
 
 THE WORLD OF FREEDOM OR OF VALUES. 237 
 
 bouring but opposite fields of mental activity, with 
 Science on the one side and practical life on the other, 
 we find that it is quite self-contained it has neither 
 the strict method of Science nor the ulterior purpose 
 of practical life. It creates its own method and has 
 its end in itself. 
 
 The creations of great artists are each of them in- 
 dependent self-contained and afford in consequence 
 not only a joyful surprise but that special satisfaction 
 and repose which the restless and weary soul is in 
 search of. 
 
 These reflections explain to us why students of 
 Nature as well as artists take little interest in the 
 history and the philosophy of their pursuits. For both 
 are self-contained, though Science knows no finality, 
 and is therefore not infrequently highly appreciative 
 of artistic creations which possess just that quality of 
 finality lacking to itself. In contradiction of this the 
 practical purposes of life, especially in highly civilised 
 communities, continually create new problems and set 
 the highest intellects thinking and seeking for a firm 
 foundation whereon to build and the right method 
 to be pursued in their labour of organisation. 
 
 This highest problem has been solved in the earlier 
 stages of civilisation by Keligion and in more advanced 
 societies by Philosophy. To these two the earliest 
 and the latest agencies of culture we must now 
 give our attention. 
 
 In addition to affording or trying to afford a rule 
 for practical conduct and the creation of social order, 
 both Religion and Philosophy have, consciously or
 
 238 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 unconsciously, dealt with another problem which we 
 may term the unification of thought. 
 
 As culture and civilisation have advanced, the 
 selective process which worked from the beginning 
 of history and which works more consciously in the 
 early years of individual life, has led to a disintegration 
 of the total and changing content of human thought 
 and interest. Both thought and interest were first 
 unconsciously, and in the sequel intentionally, guided 
 into separate courses. The impression of the whole 
 firmament of consciousness has yielded to divers aspects, 
 calling for divers methods of procedure. Everywhere 
 distinct achievements have only been secured by a 
 process of limitation, by the concentration of attention 
 on specific well-defined regions of experience. 
 
 But this disintegration and limitation cannot advance 
 very far before the distinct paths chosen in each case 
 decrease in fruitfulness and a return to the original 
 totality of interests and of life is felt to become neces- 
 sary. Both Religion and Philosophy have always in 
 their highest forms recognised this desire for a con- 
 nected or synoptic view of the totality of things, and 
 have accordingly set themselves to solve the special 
 problem which neither Science, nor Art, nor practical 
 life can solve by itself. The outcome of this conscious 
 or unconscious effort may be termed Wisdom. 
 
 Religion, wherever it has been a living power, has 
 claimed to contain and give this highest Wisdom : 
 Philosophy, rightly and modestly, has claimed to be 
 only the love of Wisdom, and in its first fully devel- 
 oped period of existence renounced the high pretensions 
 which an earlier period had audaciously set up.
 
 THE WORLD OF FREEDOM OR OF VALUES. 239 
 
 Thus, when treating in the following chapter of 
 Religion and Philosophy, we shall bear in mind that 
 both deal with a twofold problem : the practical 
 problem of affording a firm foundation and rule for 
 human conduct, and the further problem of affording 
 a view of the totality of things.
 
 240 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 
 I. 
 
 IT is likely that whatever existed among primitive 
 peoples of higher mental life was comprised in their 
 religion, and kept alive by some form of observance 
 or cult. In a more advanced stage of civilisation 
 philosophy may have tended to replace religion. Yet 
 both these products of human thought have in later 
 times, to a large extent, fallen into the background ; 
 in fact, in many highly civilised countries at the 
 present day religious worship moves in secluded 
 spheres, and Philosophy forms the privilege of a very 
 small number, even among thoughtful persons. 
 
 It is not our object to investigate the historical 
 appearance either of religious faith or of philosophic 
 thought. We are more definitely interested in the 
 beginnings and the growth of these mental activities in 
 the individual mind in civilised society of the present 
 day. Of these we have had occasion to treat in an 
 earlier chapter, where we traced the religious senti- 
 ment to some form of obedience, that is, of acceptance 
 of a leading authority, and the feeling of obligation 
 to follow its commands.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 241 
 
 This attitude of the child's mind has its origin 
 in the personal communion with parent or teacher, 
 showing itself first in the home and later in the 
 acknowledgment of a social rule and order. 
 
 Alongside of this moral development, the sanction 
 of which is to be found in a vague and as yet unde- 
 veloped religious sentiment, there proceeds the in- 
 tellectual development of the child's mind, which is 
 fostered by methodical instruction as well as by the 
 experiences and observations of daily life. 
 
 It has commonly been found necessary for purposes 
 of efficiency and to facilitate the training of larger 
 masses, to separate the two branches of education the 
 Religious from the Intellectual and Technical ; and in 
 some communities this separation has resulted in dis- 
 tinguishing mere instruction from education. 
 
 In consequence of this a question has been raised 
 which would have been impossible in communities 
 where science and learning had not attained to that 
 high and specialised development which in modern 
 society has made them seemingly independent. This 
 refers to Morality itself; for it is still generally recog- 
 nised that the rules for the conduct of life require, for 
 their preservation, a definite foundation in the belief 
 that some kind of order must be held supreme and 
 carry with it the obligation for every member of 
 society to follow it. 
 
 Is this foundation to be found through Science and 
 Learning, or is it dependent on the earlier undisputed 
 connection of Morality and Religion ? This question 
 has received much attention in recent times, and has 
 been differently answered by different authorities with- 
 
 Q
 
 242 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 out, as it seems, any likelihood of an agreement being 
 arrived at. 
 
 It has been maintained by some that Morality will 
 always hold its own ; others hold that some philosophic 
 or religious doctrine is required, the belief in which shall 
 be strong enough to prevent the breaking of the Moral 
 Law and a consequent disregard of the accepted rules of 
 conduct ; and others again, in their search for an accept- 
 able doctrine or reasoned creed, find it more and more 
 impossible to attain to the latter by scientific reasoning, 
 thus feeling themselves forced to fall back on some 
 religious conviction such as has come down to us from 
 earlier ages. 
 
 Not many years ago civilised societies, alike in this 
 country, on the Continent of Europe and in America, 
 would, in general, have agreed that the supreme rule of 
 life might be summed up in the doctrine of universal 
 brotherhood, be this expressed in the Christian doctrine 
 of Love or in the positivist doctrine of Altruism, and 
 that what is Right is a Life in conformity with this 
 doctrine of universal brotherhood ; but recent events 
 have tended to show that even in highly civilised 
 circles the idea of Right as expressive of a universal 
 Love or Brotherhood has been seriously shaken if not 
 openly challenged. 
 
 The question just mentioned has therefore been 
 more insistently asked. The demand for an answer is 
 no longer theoretical but has become eminently prac- 
 tical, and it has set an additional problem for philosophic 
 thought.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 243 
 
 II. 
 
 It appears from the foregoing that Philosophy has, in 
 the present day, a threefold task. It may be required 
 to afford a reasoned creed either by adopting the results 
 which have been gained through Science and Scholarship 
 or by special methods of its own. This creed should 
 afford such a view of the world and life as will support 
 the moral structure of society. 
 
 In the second instance, it has to unify thought as 
 displayed in the three independent regions of Science, 
 Art, and Morality. 
 
 And, thirdly, should Philosophy not be able to solve 
 satisfactorily the first problem, it will have at least to 
 show the possibility and plausibility of an independent 
 source in the human mind for the existence and growth 
 of the Moral Order. Philosophy would have to demon- 
 strate the possibility of Religion as an independent 
 mental activity with or without attempting a logical 
 construction of its contents. 
 
 For those who adopt the first of these three positions 
 Philosophy will have to take the place of Religion, and 
 will have to express its creed in such a manner that it 
 can be popularised in the noble sense of the word and 
 enter into the thoughts and life of the majority of 
 human beings. 
 
 On the other hand, for those who adopt the last of the 
 three positions defined, this task of popularising would 
 not exist it would be left to Religion to find for itself 
 an entry into the minds of men. Philosophy would
 
 244 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 interfere with Religion as little as it does with the con- 
 tents of any department of Science or Scholarship. 
 
 It is with this last of the three problems that we have 
 to do at the present moment. With the existence of 
 Science, including its exact methods of research and its 
 canons of criticism, we are not specially concerned. They 
 have in their way extended the field of human know- 
 ledge to such an extent, and left their mark on thought 
 and life so unmistakably, that they require no special 
 recommendation. The nature of scientific methods will 
 indeed always form a subject of supreme philosophic 
 interest, as will especially the question of the value and 
 limits of those methods. 
 
 So far, however, as Religion is concerned the attitude 
 of the modern mind is tending in the opposite direction. 
 Though originally a far more widespread and popular 
 concern than either science or criticism, it has latterly 
 lost its interest for many, both with the minority of 
 thinking and the large majority of less educated persons 
 in fact, in some circles of modern society it has 
 almost become tabooed. 
 
 For us, therefore, who emphasise the necessity of 
 finding some intuitive or reasoned yet in any case 
 clearly defined foundation on which to build the 
 structure of moral culture and society, the question of 
 the nature and possibility of Religion is of paramount 
 importance. 
 
 III. 
 
 In dealing with the problem mentioned in the last 
 paragraph, we must go back to the original conceptions
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 245 
 
 which we formed of the human mind. We accepted the 
 view established in British philosophy through the 
 labours of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, that the " stream 
 of thought " or the " Firmament of Consciousness " con- 
 tains nothing which cannot be traced back to some 
 definite experience. But we also adopted the addition 
 which Leibniz made to the well-known formula when 
 he stated that nothing is in our thoughts which cannot 
 be traced to some definite experience, except the mind 
 itself, and we interpreted the latter to mean the totality 
 or ensemble of all present and remembered experiences 
 that form the background or setting of any special 
 experience, thought, or feeling which may be at any 
 moment the object of our attention. 
 
 The mind or intellect itself is nothing more nor less 
 than this half-illuminated background which accompanies 
 us throughout the conscious moments of our life. 
 
 In this continuous flow of undefined and vague sensa- 
 tion, certain complexes stand out from the earliest days 
 of our infancy with more or less clearness, permanence, 
 and recurrence, and these form the beginning of our 
 cognisance of an outer world. They acquire an inde- 
 pendent existence over and above their purely subjec- 
 tive features in the stream of thought when we learn 
 that other persons share them with us. 
 
 This additional or higher form of existence we term 
 Reality or the Real, compared with which the fleeting 
 and less definite features of our primordial experience 
 appear to be less real or unreal. We have also learned 
 that this real world has many Orders and various 
 Degrees ; and in it again we distinguish a selected 
 number of Sensations, Thoughts, Ideas, and Feelings,
 
 246 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 which we consider to have a still higher degree of 
 Reality, variously termed Value or the truly Real. 
 
 We may thus say that the contents of our Conscious- 
 ness at any moment are made up of three classes or 
 regions of reality, the lowest and largest class con- 
 sisting of fleeting, undefined, and vague sensations ; 
 another class of more or less well-defined objects 
 which we share with other persons ; while a third 
 class possesses experiences to which we attach more 
 or less value, constituting the object of our special 
 interest. These regions are not clearly marked off, 
 but are apt to flow into each other ; their contents 
 wandering as it were from one class to another. On 
 this last property we must now dwell at somewhat 
 greater length. 
 
 We have already in the foregoing given examples of 
 the way in which purely subjective experiences may 
 become real objects in the field of consciousness. We 
 may now state more generally that this movement from 
 one form of experience to another constitutes one of 
 the principal features in the life of the mind. 
 
 Using the word Sensation or Thought in the widest 
 sense, we may say that thoughts are continually 
 rising out of the dim and half-illuminated background 
 of consciousness into the daylight of the region of 
 Reality, becoming definite, individualised, and com- 
 municable to others; acquiring frequently the higher 
 Reality of Interest and Value ; while other thoughts 
 recede into the lower regions of indifference and 
 vagueness, or fall altogether into oblivion. 
 
 A general tendency, however, may be noted, 
 inasmuch as both in the individual and collective
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 247 
 
 mind objects of Reality are continually on the 
 increase, and on their part supply the highest region 
 of value and interest with increasing content. Of 
 this latter process it will be well to give some 
 illustrations. 
 
 A most prominent example of how the real world 
 increases for us individually and collectively is to be 
 found in the discovery of scientific Knowledge, which 
 is promoted in manifold ways. What we at one time 
 have only seen dimly and confusedly, gains automatic- 
 ally as well as through well-established methods, clear- 
 ness and defined individuality. Thus the analytical 
 processes of Chemistry show us in a compound its 
 different ingredients, the telescope dissolves the nebula 
 into a cluster of stars, and the microscope reveals more 
 and more the endless intricacy of inorganic and still 
 more of organised structure. 
 
 By a reverse process the synthetical and ordering 
 methods of scientific research produce objects unknown 
 before, and help us to build up the artificial world 
 which surrounds and envelopes us in an increasingly 
 complicated network of relations. This latter process 
 is still more characteristic in the domain of artistic 
 production. 
 
 The creations of the sculptor, the painter, the 
 musical composer, or the poet, originate in the mind 
 in the form of vague, fleeting intuitions, images or 
 melodies, which gradually gain clearness and definition, 
 and may result in the production of some great work 
 of beauty in which external sensations or ideas are so 
 arranged and ordered as to appeal to our feelings, 
 gaining interest and value and raising the indifferent
 
 248 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Keality of the objective world into the region of the 
 truly and supremely Real, the world of Values. 
 
 But the most important instance of this growth and 
 advance of the purely subjective into the regions of 
 Reality and of Value, or as we may also term it, into 
 the regions of the physical and the spiritual world, 
 is to be found in the slow and hesitating emergence 
 of the moral sentiment out of its dim half-conscious 
 existence into the clearer conceptions of definite duty 
 and the higher form of righteousness and goodness. 
 In this latter region the moral or religious sentiments 
 become the guidance and support of our practical 
 conduct and our social life. 
 
 This growth and development of the moral sentiment 
 must have been a very slow one in the early stages of 
 civilisation. It was there probably the prerogative of 
 single great minds who as prophets, priests, or lawgivers 
 stood out among the rest of a tribe or nation and led 
 the way to a higher stage of culture through the 
 imitative propensity of human nature. This process 
 works more rapidly and effectually in modern societies 
 through the influence of education, which begins with 
 the parental care in home life, the surroundings in 
 the school, and the membership of an ordered society. 
 Yet it still remains the prerogative of the few not only 
 to maintain this moral influence but to make it more 
 durable, more impressive, and more spiritual. 
 
 No system of education, no conventional rules of 
 society, no code of laws, and no enactments of a 
 government or constitution, nor even the doctrines or 
 ritual of a church, suffice to maintain the moral and 
 the spiritual. Morality and Religion are eminently
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 249 
 
 personal attributes, and except we behold them active 
 in living examples of the highest order, they will soon 
 be lost and the level of true culture will sink lower 
 and lower. 
 
 This involves a curious paradox, as does the 
 origin of all important potencies. Without a society 
 of many members, morals would be impossible, but 
 again the enactments of morality are for the first 
 time framed by an individual mind which seems to 
 stand outside and above the members of a tribe, 
 society, or nation. 
 
 The inspiration seems to come to such a mind not 
 only from its communion with other minds, but also 
 from an independent spiritual source. It is, in fact, 
 what we may term a revelation. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A great deal has been written about the origin of 
 the moral and religious sentiment, as also about 
 the origin of life. Attempts have been made to co- 
 ordinate the phenomena of the living creation with 
 those of the physical world. These attempts have 
 led to no satisfactory conception, and biologists have, 
 in recent times, arrived at a point of view from 
 which the existence of life or the living principle is 
 considered to be a primordial fact, which has to be 
 accepted as unique and irreducible to purely mechanical 
 conditions. In a similar way the phenomena of con- 
 sciousness cannot be resolved into those of inanimate 
 nature, but must be studied in their own special
 
 250 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 sphere. And so it is lastly also with the phenomena 
 of the moral and religious consciousness : students 
 of ethical phenomena have done well to take these 
 as unique and irreducible to other mental experiences, 
 such as the purely intellectual. 1 
 
 These different and to a large extent independent 
 regions of events invite us nevertheless continually to 
 repeat the attempts at co-ordination and correlation, 
 because the transition from one region of facts and 
 events to another seems gradual and imperceptible. 
 
 Thus certain appearances of dead matter resemble 
 most closely those of the most primitive organisms ; 
 the lines which divide the inanimate from the animated 
 living creation seem difficult to draw with accuracy. 
 Still more difficult is it to trace the final signs of that 
 mental life which raises the living automaton to a 
 consciously active being. 
 
 Everywhere we gain the best and most impressive 
 information concerning any distinct class of existence 
 by starting from and keeping steadfastly in view the 
 full-grown reality. 
 
 With this truth in view we tried to show at the 
 beginning of our reflections that the outer world is 
 not revealed to the infant mind in a primordial fashion, 
 but that it is through the fully developed personality 
 of the parent that another existence is presented to 
 the infant consciousness. So also the true reality and 
 meaning of the Moral and Religious Life did not become 
 fully clear to our view until its totality and ruling 
 principle was revealed as Love. 
 
 And so in every individual instance, the greatest 
 
 1 See especially W. R. Sol-ley's ' Gifford Lectures.'
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 251 
 
 thing that can happen in the unfolding of the infant 
 soul is when on its entry into this world it meets with 
 the mother's love. 
 
 Yet here we must hesitate for a moment, for in thus 
 describing what we may term the genesis of moral 
 life in an individual soul, we are perhaps stating merely 
 a rare and only an ideal case. In the majority of 
 instances what should be the natural course of things 
 is marred or distorted in the actual world which 
 surrounds us. 
 
 In this way, what should be the normal and ruling 
 order is only too often spoilt. 
 
 V. 
 
 The last-named circumstance, that in actual life we 
 meet so rarely, if ever, what should be the normal 
 and true state of things, applies of course to every 
 instance where the principle of Freedom which we 
 have considered to be the principle of Order comes 
 into play. 
 
 In the physical and cosmical world, where rigid 
 mechanical rule seems to us to have undisputed sway, 
 we see nothing of mistakes, error, or failure. No 
 stunted beginnings, no lost chances are there to 
 be found. Everything is natural and perfect and 
 possesses the same reality. But with the entry of 
 the ordering process of life into the physical world, 
 there enters also the element of failure, of loss, of 
 misdirected and unsuccessful effort, and the lower 
 we go down into the first and primitive evolution
 
 252 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 of life, the greater the waste seems to be which accom- 
 
 ' O 
 
 panics the development of higher and more complex 
 forms and structures. 
 
 And even in the highest regions of organic and 
 mental life, the lost opportunities seem to be many 
 and the successes comparatively few. This has led 
 many thinkers to the view that excellence is only 
 achieved by the sacrifice of a vast number of existences, 
 so that the few may succeed and rise to a higher level. 
 But this is not the view which the higher Keligions 
 have taught us. Here we meet with the doctrine of 
 universal love and brotherhood, with the principles of 
 justice to all men, of Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity, 
 all of which are summed up in the ideal of Love. 
 
 This must be a paradox to those who believe that 
 the ways of organic evolution are the same as those 
 of moral and social evolution, and it is a difficulty 
 that has been pointed out by one of the strongest 
 supporters of the theory of evolution, which everywhere 
 points to a struggle for existence and the survival of 
 the fittest. 
 
 Huxley, probably the greatest scientific philosopher 
 of recent times, has not attempted to solve or to gloss 
 over and minimise this the greatest of all paradoxes : 
 he has declared on the one side that he believes that 
 morality will always hold its own without the support 
 of any religious dogma, thus adopting very much the 
 position expressed by Kant in that majestic passage 
 standing at the close of his Practical Philosophy, where 
 he exclaims "Two things impress me with ever renewed 
 admiration and awe, the aspect of the starry heavens 
 above me and of the moral law within me." On the
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 253 
 
 other side, Huxley urges more strongly than Kant the 
 seeming contradiction, for he tells us that the physical 
 world sanctions all those activities for which human 
 beings are liable to be punished. Nature thus does 
 not help us in our moral effort ; and yet we are not to 
 run away from the danger, but rather to combat it. 
 
 It is, however, clearly not possible for the thinking 
 mind to rest satisfied in this purely agnostic position, 
 although it may be expressed in less prosaic and more 
 poetic words : 
 
 " Over me the shades of night are falling, 
 
 I fain would join them if I knew the way, 
 In the dusk twilight I can hear men calling 
 This is the way and this hut who are they 1 
 
 There will I stand : perchance across the forest 
 The gleam of lamps may flash athwart the night : 
 
 It may be that this way the Bridegroom cometh, 
 And I shall follow in his own clear light." 
 
 VI. 
 
 The question then presents itself to us : How is 
 Morality possible? and closely connected with this ques- 
 tion the other question : How is Religion possible ? 
 
 We must find in the constitution of the human mind 
 the original data which in the course of individual and 
 social development have led to the moral order of 
 society and the religious convictions of mankind. The 
 view we have taken of the human mind must help us 
 to answer these questions. 
 
 We have shown in the foregoing how a certain
 
 254 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 number of purely personal experiences detach them- 
 selves in early life from the originally dim and confused 
 background which we have termed the " stream of 
 thought " with William James, or the " Firmament of 
 the Soul," which we have considered to be a more 
 appropriate metaphor. 
 
 We have also seen that this detached portion of our 
 experiences rises into greater clearness and definition, 
 and acquires the attribute of Keality, though originally 
 the elementary experiences which constitute the real 
 world have neither less nor more existence in the field 
 of consciousness than other experiences which we con- 
 sider to be less real or unreal. 
 
 We have also seen that many of these seemingly 
 unreal experiences rise out of the region of mere exist- 
 ence in the mind, and join the orderly system and 
 complex of real things. They do so by various features 
 which they exhibit or develop ; the most important 
 of these being distinctness, definition, and the fact 
 that we share them with other persons. We then 
 say that they gain external or objective reality in 
 addition to the lower form of reality, that is, mere 
 existence. 
 
 It does not, however, follow from this view that 
 of our personal experiences those are less important 
 or valuable which are not able to acquire the same 
 definiteness and communicable features as the sensa- 
 tions and perceptions which are endowed with spatial 
 location and attributes. In truth those experiences 
 which do not rise into the clear daylight of the outer 
 world remain, as it were, nearer to our innermost self, 
 forming, not the indifferent facts and events which
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 255 
 
 seem to surround us, but the most valuable and inter- 
 esting portion of our total experience. 
 
 It is also only by remaining or becoming associated 
 with these merely personal experiences that things of 
 the outer world acquire the still higher form of reality 
 which we term value. Through and in them consists 
 the individuality of different minds and persons, and 
 this would be destroyed if all our most valuable ex- 
 periences could be rendered objective and impersonal 
 in the same way as the facts and events of the outer 
 world seem to us to be. 
 
 The diversity of emotions and feelings is the main 
 feature in the region of Values and in the world of 
 Freedom. And yet while retaining this personal feature, 
 we are continually and irresistibly driven to communi- 
 cate this portion of our inner world to our fellow-men, 
 and to create an objective existence, or Reality, through 
 which this innermost possession can grow and become 
 active in social intercourse. 
 
 What has here been said refers mainly to the aesthetic 
 distinctions of beauty and its reverse, and to the moral 
 distinctions of Good and Bad, or of Right and Wrong. 
 
 In the latter case that is, in that of Morality the 
 desire to attain to definite convictions is much greater 
 than in the case of aesthetic opinions or matters of 
 taste, for the simple reason that we look upon the 
 moral character as belonging to all our actions and 
 the whole of our life, whereas the aesthetic attributes 
 are, for most men, mere matters of contemplation, 
 though for a few who are creative artists, the attain- 
 ment of beauty may be as great an obligation as the 
 moral rule of life should be for all men.
 
 256 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 The queries put above can now be more clearly 
 formulated as follows : Leaving out the sesthetical 
 problem with which we are not immediately concerned, 
 we may ask the question What means exist for the 
 individual or collective human mind to acquire clear- 
 ness in matters of Morality and in matters of Eeligion ? 
 that is, as to the content of the moral law and as to 
 matters of faith. 
 
 In order to answer this question we may consider 
 the means by which external objects acquire their 
 Reality in our estimation. 
 
 One of the principal attributes of external objects 
 is that they offer what we term resistance to our free 
 and unchecked bodily movements. Solidity and sub- 
 stantiality are attributes which we attach to such 
 clusters of bodily sensations as resist our unchecked 
 or free movements. The earliest of these checks to our 
 primordial restlessness are the presence and the action 
 of another person or persons. But after having learnt 
 that experience is checked in its immediate surround- 
 ings, the infant mind soon learns to attribute resistance 
 to lifeless things also, and gradually to all those clusters 
 of sensations which form the coherent system or order 
 of the outer world. But here arises a marked distinc- 
 tion : the encounter with lifeless things may result in 
 unpleasant or painful feelings, but the encounter with 
 persons may contain also feelings of a different kind, 
 which are not immediately traceable to bodily en- 
 counter, but arise in our minds by mere contemplation 
 or awareness of a personal presence. Thus the smile 
 or frown of a mother may give rise in us to feelings 
 of joy and pleasure or of disappointment and sorrow.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 257 
 
 Without going further into detail, we may say that 
 bodily checks may, by producing pain or discomfort, 
 lead to disappointment on our part, but that when 
 the personal element is introduced, we experience a 
 special sensation, a pain or discomfort which we term 
 Regret or Remorse, and inasmuch as we look upon 
 many of our actions as free, this feeling of remorse is 
 connected with that of self-reproach. 
 
 We may regret in both cases our past actions, but this 
 regret acquires a special feature of sorrow if it is con- 
 nected with the signs of displeasure in another person. 
 
 These elementary and quite simple experiences in 
 a child's life are developed and made use of in the 
 process of education, and become extended through 
 conversation and teaching into a code or rules of 
 conduct which may exhibit a great variety of precepts 
 and be based upon very different feelings, ranging 
 from mere physical pain or pleasure through the whole 
 gamut of sensations and emotions to the highest and 
 most spiritual affections which are summed up in the 
 word Love. 
 
 And thus, gradually there emerges out of all the 
 various experiences of disappointment and success, of 
 joy and sorrow, a feeling of what is the right thing 
 to do, and of such actions as are wrong. And here it 
 may be remarked that the nature of wrong is more 
 easily taught and recognised. This is shown by the 
 fact that most codes of Morality dilate at length upon 
 what is wrong and to be left undone ; whereas only at 
 a higher and later stage are we taught that Love sums 
 up the whole of Righteousness and Goodness in one 
 comprehensive guiding and unfailing sentiment. 
 
 R
 
 258 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 VII. 
 
 One of the objects of these remarks is to impress 
 upon the reader the importance of the personal element 
 in the growth and development of the moral senti- 
 ments. The earlier and later experiences of infancy and 
 childhood acquire a living force through the fact that 
 it is in a definite personality that they are gathered 
 up to a united whole, which no scientific or philo- 
 sophical analysis can dissect into its manifold and 
 varying constituents. 
 
 It is only the synoptic and comprehensive view 
 which gives reality and force to the combined influence 
 of these incidents of our earliest life. To this we must 
 add the not less important fact of example. Without 
 the conscious or unconscious observation that those 
 persons who surround us are under the same obligations 
 or constraint as they impose upon us and follow in 
 their action similar rules, the precepts and injunctions 
 of a parent or teacher will have little or no lasting 
 effect ; they will not create habit, but at best only a 
 sullen submission to rules which are disregarded as 
 soon as the physical constraint is removed. For habits 
 are formed only through repetition, and this ultimately 
 rests on imitation. 
 
 The restless and inquisitive mind of the child which 
 in modern systems of education is far more and earlier 
 stimulated than it used to be, soon manifests the 
 desire to know the reason of a great many rules of 
 conduct which are at first willingly or unwillingly, but 
 unquestioningly followed. To this must be added the
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 259 
 
 great preponderance which is now given to scientific 
 teaching, in which the cause and effect of events and 
 actions are largely dwelt upon. This promotes a 
 sceptical tendency in young people, and nurses a desire 
 to know the why and the wherefore of those moral 
 restraints which are imposed upon them. 
 
 In times not very far distant the teaching of 
 morality went hand in hand with religious teaching, 
 which met the demand of the young mind to know 
 the reason for the rules of conduct laid down in the 
 teaching of the home and school, and ranged them 
 into a general view of the physical and social order 
 of the world and life. 
 
 Notably Christian education always put into the 
 foreground of its moral and doctrinal teaching the 
 principle of Love ; enlarging the experience of the 
 loving care which the child received, or should have 
 received, on its entry into this world, into a universal 
 principle ; the love and care of a Divine Being who 
 occupies the same position to the whole of mankind 
 as a parent occupies to his offspring. 
 
 This view of the world and life has, however, been 
 undermined, and in many instances destroyed, by the 
 two great agencies through which the thought of 
 modern times has acquired independence and ways 
 of its own. These two agencies are the spirit and 
 methods of science, and those of criticism. The com- 
 bined effect which we may say proceeded from above, 
 that is, from the influence and teaching of the highest 
 intellects, has been met half-way by a not less powerful 
 movement which started so to say from below that 
 is, from the growing discontent which has spread
 
 260 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 among the lower ranks of the increasing population 
 in the civilised countries of the modern world. 
 
 Here again, the influence of distinguished thinkers 
 has given to this discontent a sort of sanction in 
 promoting a materialistic view of the world and life, 
 utilising cleverly and plausibly the results of higher 
 science and criticism to formulate and give expression 
 to the legitimate demands of the masses of human 
 beings as distinguished from the privileges usurped 
 or in any case possessed by a selected few. 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell at any greater length 
 on this condition of modern life and thought. It is 
 enough to point to the disintegration of both, and to 
 the necessity of finding the way back to a unity similar 
 to, though in some ways quite different from, that 
 which with all its deficiencies and drawbacks ruled 
 the Christian world in the Middle Ages. 
 
 No scientific thinker has realised this necessity more 
 than Auguste Comte, whose influence, by spreading 
 the Positive or scientific spirit, has been as great as 
 his failure to evolve out of the Positivist view of the 
 world a satisfactory moral system, or what he termed 
 a Religion of Humanity. 
 
 And, next to Comte, no thinker has made it clearer 
 than Huxley in his statement referred to above, that 
 the moral or spiritual view of life stands in apparent 
 opposition to what we may call the natural order of 
 things.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 261 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The foregoing remarks explain why, in quite recent 
 times, thinkers belonging to very different schools 
 have united in the endeavour to establish what may 
 be termed a reasoned creed which should support the 
 moral ideals of Humanity by a rational indication 
 of the position which Morality holds in a compre- 
 hensive view of the universe, and especially of human 
 life. But though this has been the endeavour of 
 many philosophers, they have failed to come to any 
 agreement, and have, consequently, not succeeded in 
 rendering any of their various schemes generally accept- 
 able to large numbers of reflecting persons in fact 
 their views have not gained Reality, lacking as they 
 do the first requisite of raising an ideal from a merely 
 personal to a real existence, viz., the consensus of our 
 fellow-men of all ranks. 
 
 Many causes have contributed to frustrate the success 
 of so noble and high-spirited an enterprise. And one 
 of these may be usefully considered in connection with 
 the special view of the human mind which we have 
 tried to establish in these pages. 
 
 A reasoned or a reasonable creed means a view or 
 doctrine of the world and life which carries conviction 
 to the mind of thinking persons. Such convincing 
 force may be gained in two ways. It may be gained 
 by the immediate experience of many persons, and in 
 this way become a habit of thought. Of this nature 
 is the evidence of our physical senses which picture 
 to us the order of the external world. This forms
 
 262 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 for the vast majority of men the fixed datum line 
 from which they start, both in thinking and doing, in 
 theory as well as in practice. 
 
 But it may also mean a view gained by distinct 
 methods of reasoning which carry us away from and 
 beyond what is immediately given by the evidence 
 of our senses, into a region of more or less abstract 
 thought. Of this nature are all the intricate reasonings 
 of science as well as of philosophy. They gain their 
 convincing force by a logical process which appeals 
 to thinking persons, and is by them considered to be 
 conclusive. 
 
 The further civilisation progresses, the more we have 
 to leave behind us the simple evidence of the senses 
 and of daily experience, and to move in that region 
 of abstract thought which is gained by logical and 
 scientific methods. Now it is well to note the great 
 difference in the features which characterise the two 
 ways of gaining and affording conviction. This differ- 
 ence can be shortly described by saying that the first, 
 the simpler and the original method, is that of Sight, 
 using this word in the larger sense of giving immediate 
 evidence. 
 
 Things we see are, as it were, spread out before our 
 mind's eye ; they form a consistent and more or less 
 permanent order. The mind is through them impressed 
 by a totality, by an orderly arrangement through which 
 it can at the same moment grasp the Whole and the 
 various parts in their position in the Whole. The 
 greater this grasp, or, as we called it before, the 
 Synoptic View, the stronger is the conviction of the 
 reality of the whole display. Breadth and clearness
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 263 
 
 combined with marked order are the commanding 
 features of any aspect which in contemplating we 
 consider to be real. 
 
 The marked feature of the second way of arriving 
 at conviction is the strict logical connection in which 
 single experiences, thoughts, or ideas stand to each 
 other. It is not the broad expanse of view but the 
 compelling train of thought which forces conviction 
 upon us ; the careful steps which are taken, the 
 closely knitted chain of reasoning leading from one 
 simple position to another, obliges us, willingly or 
 unwillingly, to give assent. It is not the synoptic 
 view and the large grasp but the analytic and care- 
 fully dissecting process, followed by an equally careful 
 synthesis of single ideas, by which we are led on to 
 the results. These not. infrequently startle us by their 
 strangeness, so that we hardly feel convinced, though 
 we can find no fault in the process which has led us 
 up to them. 
 
 The further civilisation advances, and with it know- 
 ledge and learning, the more complicated becomes the 
 network of the many trains of reasoning which fill 
 the mind. And, notably in the Sciences, these trains 
 of reasoning have become so elaborate that they form 
 as it were a world by themselves ; one of those inven- 
 tions of the human mind which testify to its freedom 
 and creative power, and form one of the great features 
 in the World of Values. 
 
 The prototype of such a network of close reasoning 
 as we find in many of the separate sciences and in 
 the region of historical criticism has always been the 
 science of Mathematics. Out of a few simple data called
 
 264 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Axioms and Definitions, a stupendous edifice of purely 
 abstract thought has been raised, and this construction 
 has been successfully employed in ordering and en- 
 larging natural knowledge. 
 
 The consequence of this wonderful creation of the 
 human mind has been the prominence which scientific 
 methods have acquired in popular estimation, even 
 among many persons who are quite unable to follow 
 in detail and practise these methods. 
 
 On all sides we now hear that problems in the most 
 various departments of knowledge must be scientifically 
 treated. And yet amid this frequently exaggerated 
 cry for scientific method and higher criticism, one 
 important fact has been often overlooked. No process 
 of scientific or logical reasoning has proved lastingly 
 convincing unless it has led to results which are in 
 some form verifiable through the immediate evidence 
 of our senses, including under this term not only the 
 so-called physical senses, but also the emotions, desires, 
 hopes, and, in general, the satisfaction of the higher 
 as well as of the lower demands of human nature. 
 
 Thus, ever so ingenious a scientific theory, however 
 plausible or enticing it may be made by its literary 
 setting, will lose, in the long-run, its seductive charm 
 if it does not lead to the discovery of facts which 
 we can immediately experience, observe, and arrange 
 within the existing order of knowledge. 
 
 Sight is everywhere not only the beginning, but 
 also the consummation of every process of convincing 
 thought. Only very rare minds occupying exceptional 
 positions among ordinary men are capable of resting 
 satisfied with purely abstract reasonings : the mul-
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 265 
 
 titude, even of highly intellectual and cultured persons, 
 will never rest satisfied with pure abstractions, and 
 certainly the great mass of mankind will always refuse 
 to lose its foothold in the facts of everyday life and 
 common experience. 
 
 Viewed in the light of these simple considerations, 
 it seems unlikely that a purely reasoned creed will 
 lead to visible results and practical efficacy. Neither 
 the goddess of Reason, nor the grand etre of Humanity, 
 nor yet the Absolute of the metaphysician, will lead 
 the masses to a living faith and a spiritual morality.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 REVELATION. 
 I. 
 
 POPULAR thought and the most abstract of refined 
 systems of Philosophy have agreed in their varied 
 and ever - repeated attempts to find some central 
 conception or Idea in which to gather up their 
 manifold trains of reasoning into a comprehensive 
 view of the World and Life. Such a central Idea 
 has always either avowedly or surreptitiously been 
 endowed with the attributes of Personality. This 
 circumstance testifies to and confirms the funda- 
 mental observation with which we introduced our whole 
 discussion. We there stated that the first entry of 
 the infant's mind into the world of Reality is to be 
 found in its recognition of a personal existence. 
 
 Rising slowly out of the dimness and confused 
 medley of purely subjective sensations, the well- 
 defined image of a person started into clear relief on 
 the background of the hazy and fluctuating horizon 
 which we termed the firmament of consciousness. 
 
 This latter formed in contrast to the first clear 
 object the accompanying surroundings, which, gathered 
 up into an ever-present Something, figured in the
 
 REVELATION. 267 
 
 course of further mental development as the Self 
 or I ; a comprehensive though ever - changing and 
 shadowy Whole in opposition to an outer Reality of 
 defined and clearly - cut complexes of sensations 
 which we term objects. 
 
 With this first and fundamental experience the 
 veil was, as it were, lifted, and a clear glimpse afforded 
 into what we learned to call the real world. We 
 may, therefore, appropriately call this first stage of 
 our entry into self-conscious life a Revelation. 
 
 In the course of further mental development many 
 dim and confused sensations and experiences rise 
 into similar clearness, and arrange themselves into 
 groups joining the various orders of existence which 
 either surround our limited physical Personality or 
 exist in our mind as distinct systems to which we 
 attach more or less Reality. None of these various 
 experiences has striven so persistently to rise into 
 clear vision and been so frequently checked as the 
 moral sentiment. 
 
 Leaving out of consideration the origin and 
 development of earlier civilisations as well as those 
 of the Far East, and limiting ourselves to the 
 history of our Western culture, it seems fairly 
 certain that some form of social order under some 
 moral Law preceded the growth and development 
 of the other creations of the human mind which 
 constitute what we have termed the World of 
 Values. On the other side, we find that the whole of 
 these creations has been imperilled or temporarily lost 
 where such social and moral Order has been lost or 
 rudely shaken.
 
 268 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 It also appears that all beginnings of social and 
 moral Order, as likewise its restoration, when seriously 
 endangered, can be traced to the rise and influence 
 of great Personalities. Notably that world of Ideas 
 which is comprised under the name of the Christian 
 religion, confirms on a large scale, and more than any 
 other preceding or subsequent event, the two con- 
 clusions which we drew from the observation of 
 the individual mind. 
 
 A sudden and unexpected appearance of a new 
 social order, based on the simplest of moral pre- 
 cepts, and connected with a personal influence of a 
 unique character, is seen to be the characteristic 
 of the genesis and early growth of Christian life 
 and thought so much so that they have been 
 thought to deserve, par excellence, the name of 
 Eevelation. 
 
 More than any other event in history have the 
 simple yet mysterious beginnings of the Christian 
 dispensation succeeded in raising to the high level 
 of a great Reality those ideals of a moral and 
 spiritual life which in many varied forms appeared 
 in the pre-Christian civilisations without being able 
 to establish themselves as a great world-power. 
 
 The whole of modern History has been influenced 
 by the dominating force of this great structure of 
 Christian thought and Christian life. It was sub- 
 jected to the most virulent attacks in the earlier 
 centuries of our era, and to relentless criticism 
 in more recent times ; it has not fallen, but steadily 
 gained ground. It has been misused and perverted 
 as an instrument for gaining and extending purely
 
 REVELATION. 269 
 
 worldly interests ; it has not lost its inherent and 
 fundamental spirituality. It has found room within 
 its precincts for the development of the other creations 
 of the human mind, such as Learning, Science, Art, 
 and Society. After being nursed into full life, these 
 have emerged from control and acquired seemingly 
 independent existence : they have not exhausted that 
 original fund of spiritual life which, in spite of this 
 independent growth, still finds its home and centre 
 in the primitive events and records of the Christian 
 Church. It has been denounced as antiquated and 
 superseded : it has always reasserted itself again. 
 
 The contemplating mind stands before it as before 
 a great Reality which can be judged fairly only in its 
 wholeness, but which like all great things threatens 
 to crumble into pieces if we look only at single data, 
 facts, and events, and try laboriously to put them 
 together into the totality of a logical structure. It 
 can, therefore, not be the task of a philosophical 
 tract to describe or analyse in a few sentences the 
 characteristics of this view of the World and Life. 
 It is sufficient to say that intellects of the first order 
 and large masses of unlearned persons have equally 
 found in the Christian dispensation both the simplest 
 expression for the Moral Law and the simplest con- 
 firmation of its imposing force as the Will and 
 Command of a Highest Spiritual Power whom we 
 call God. The human mind can only accept or reject 
 it. The task of deciding falls upon every individual 
 for himself whenever desire or doubt enters the soul. 
 Scientific or logical proof is impossible. 
 
 A reasoned paraphrase of detailed Christian doctrine
 
 270 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 will appeal only to those who possess their faith 
 already. Such an attempt reminds us of the philo- 
 sopher in the land of Laputa who grew sunbeams out 
 of cucumbers, and succeeded in lighting the King's 
 gardens during the daytime. 
 
 It may through the faultiness of all human reasoning 
 wherever facts are in question, have a destructive 
 rather than a supporting effect. 
 
 It is not from outside that a detailed exposition of 
 the Christian view of the world and life can be 
 attempted ; it must come from inside, from those who 
 have fully embraced the great subject and can speak 
 out of the fulness of their heart and belief. 
 
 II. 
 
 The great body of Christian thought, together with 
 the facts and events of personal and social Christian 
 life, form a comprehensive subject, the exposition of 
 which constitutes a special task the task of Theology. 
 This, like every other great subject, rests upon certain 
 fundamental experiences of the human mind. Con- 
 cisely put, these experiences are, the existence of a 
 Moral Law and its supreme sanction. In the Christian 
 view of the World this Moral Law has received a 
 definite expression, not only formal as a mere command, 
 but also substantial as the Law of Universal Brother- 
 hood ; and its supreme sanction is traced to the Will 
 of a Highest Being or Spirit with whom the individ- 
 ual human soul stands in personal relation. 
 
 How these simple truths have been impressed upon
 
 REVELATION. 271 
 
 the human mind is a question of history equally im- 
 portant with the doctrine itself. What, then, is the 
 task of the philosopher who is confronted with this 
 great body of Thought and fact of Experience ? None 
 other than that which he is called on to perform when 
 confronted with other departments of science or 
 scholarship. His task cannot be to meddle with the 
 internal work of the scientist or the scholar, both 
 of whom have to find their own methods and ex- 
 pound their own results. Interference from outside, 
 be it speculative or critical, does not avail ; but the 
 axioms upon which the comprehensive study of any 
 subject is based are not only to be defined but also 
 to be traced to definite experiences within the firma- 
 ment of consciousness. 
 
 Beneath the existence of such experiences no human 
 thought can penetrate. They form the ultimate data 
 of consciousness. 
 
 Every separate region of Thought, such as Mathe- 
 matics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, or 
 Psychology, is based upon definite facts of experience 
 which can never be lost sight of. No one science or 
 special way of approach has a right to assail or 
 meddle with the foundations and presuppositions of 
 any other, though it is possible that certain domains 
 of thought may, in the course of their development, 
 join hands and be merged into one more compre- 
 hensive region : this, for instance, has been the case 
 with Biology, which now comprises the formerly sepa- 
 rate departments of Botany, Zoology, and Physiology. 
 Many thinkers believe that a similar coalition will 
 eventually take place between Physics and Chemistry.
 
 272 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 The reason for this change is to be found in the 
 increase of Knowledge in these different departments 
 of research, new facts being discovered to which 
 methods and axioms have to be adapted. 
 
 Now here it may be noted that this change and 
 development does not seem to apply in the same 
 way to moral and religious questions. Notably the 
 Christian doctrine has not changed in the course of 
 its life from the simple statements and injunctions 
 contained in its original records. Its history shows 
 a repeated return to these original doctrinal and 
 historical statements, and it is only in their applica- 
 tion to practical purposes that a greater realisation is 
 demanded and possible. 
 
 In this way the study of moral and religious phe- 
 nomena in the light of the Christian view differs from 
 that of other subjects. The data of consciousness, 
 viz., a sense of right and a sense of obligation, have 
 always existed so far as we can trace historically 
 what we now call culture or civilisation. Nothing 
 better has been said on this subject of the supreme 
 rule of life than has been said in the gospel of Love. 
 And even those modern systems which profess to 
 disregard or discard the Christian Revelation have 
 not been able to evolve any other or higher ideal 
 than that of Universal Brotherhood. 
 
 A proof of this on an immense, not to say over- 
 whelming, scale has been furnished in these days 
 by the concerted appeal of allied peoples to the 
 universally acknowledged dictates of humanity in 
 opposition to the appalling disregard with which 
 they have been treated by a large section of
 
 REVELATION. 273 
 
 statesmen and thinkers in the central countries of 
 Europe. 
 
 Differing therefore from other sciences which present 
 ever new problems and changing methods, the science 
 of Ethics and the study of Eeligion are concerned 
 with the same everlasting and unchanging problem. 
 In this sense the work of the philosopher who studies 
 the fundamental axioms and presuppositions of the 
 different departments of human knowledge and prac- 
 tice would appear to be less varied and interesting 
 when dealing with moral and religious phenomena than 
 with those of Nature, History, and Society. 
 
 Yet, on the other side, a special problem arises 
 whenever we approach the region which comprises 
 these subjects. And this peculiarity leads to and 
 justifies what we may call the Philosophy of 
 Eeligion. To this we must now devote some 
 attention. 
 
 III. 
 
 The relation of the Sciences of Religion and Ethics 
 to Philosophy is more difficult to define than that of 
 the other abstract, historical, or applied Sciences, and 
 this for several reasons, of which the following are the 
 most important. 
 
 To begin with, the relation of Religion to Morality is 
 itself a problem which has not yet been solved in a 
 way that is generally accepted. Further, the origins 
 of the moral and religious sentiment, both in the in- 
 dividual human mind and in history, are more obscure 
 and debateable than is the case in other regions of
 
 274 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 mental life. More than in any other comprehensive 
 doctrine are the philosophical and historical interests 
 mixed up whenever we deal with moral or religious 
 phenomena. 
 
 The exact or mathematical Sciences have in recent 
 times almost entirely broken loose from historical tradi- 
 tion ; so much so that text-books of Science become 
 speedily antiquated ; and a historical knowledge of the 
 rapid changes in the fundamental axioms of any special 
 science is almost entirely of philosophical interest, 
 as is shown by the fact that great epochs in scientific 
 research have usually started in opposition to tradi- 
 tional ideas, and have frequently been marked by the 
 necessity of meeting determined attacks. 
 
 When we look at philosophy itself, we find just the 
 opposite. Instead of its breaking loose from the past, the 
 interest in older philosophy has enormously increased. 
 After the end of that succession of original philosophical 
 systems which in modern times began with Descartes 
 and culminated in Hegel and Schopenhauer, we meet 
 with a growing interest in the history of philosophy. 
 Some renowned disciples of Hegel have almost ex- 
 hausted their speculative powers in composing elaborate 
 histories of ancient or modern philosophy. 
 
 Constructive efforts hardly exist, or are at best frag- 
 mentary, hesitating, or inconclusive. But if lastly we 
 look at Religion, we find that it is wholly bound up with 
 one great historical fact, that of the foundation of 
 Christianity and the teaching of Jesus. 
 
 In fact, to many of us it would seem impossible to 
 construct any religious view of the world and of life 
 without an historical background. It seems impossible
 
 REVELATION. 275 
 
 to create that reverence which is inseparable from 
 matters of Faith, if this is to be an active force, by any 
 new construction, be this scientific, logical, poetical, or 
 artistic. 
 
 The consequence of this is that the teacher of any 
 spiritual morality or the student of Religion is forced 
 to go back to the historical record of the birth of 
 Christianity, and that no criticism be it historical or 
 speculative has, in spite of its negative effectiveness, 
 been able to point to any other fact or event as the 
 possible centre of a living Faith. 
 
 Considering the great importance which the historical 
 beginning of the Christian Religion possesses not only 
 for the student and scholar, but also for all believers, 
 it is imperative to define the attitude which the 
 philosopher must take up in dealing with this side of 
 the problem of morality and religion. 
 
 Is the unique character of the Christian Dispensation 
 to be admitted, and if so, is it possible to approach the 
 historical fact by the same methods as are used in 
 historical criticism of other facts and events ? 
 
 There can clearly be no valid reason for denying the 
 right, or even the duty, to exhaust all means of criticism 
 and investigation in dealing with the history of moral 
 and religious phenomena. But the question arises, Are 
 these methods adequate to grasp the phenomena in 
 question ? 
 
 Here we may look to the analogy with other regions 
 of scientific and historical research. Let us take, for 
 instance, Biology or the Science of Life. 
 
 In recent times a school of Natural Philosophers has 
 arisen which proffers an attempt to limit the research
 
 276 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 into the phenomena of life to a description and analysis 
 of purely physical and chemical phenomena, and as 
 these are supposed to be reducible to purely mechanical 
 processes, Biology would, according to this programme, 
 become a purely mechanical Science. It has, however, 
 become evident to many acute thinkers that, though the 
 discoveries on this line of research may be unlimited, 
 they will nevertheless fail to exhaust or to reach the 
 real essence of life. This is usually expressed by saying 
 that the purely mechanical category must be supple- 
 mented by a vital category, which consists mainly in 
 the study of the phenomena of life, not in isolation, but 
 in their totality as represented in living organisms. 
 
 This was perhaps most clearly, and for the first time, 
 stated by Auguste Comte, who insisted on the neces- 
 sity of taking the vue d'ensemble in entering upon 
 biological research. 
 
 This vue d'ensemble we have characterised in the 
 foregoing as the Synoptic View, and maintained that it is 
 a general aspect which applies to all phenomena whether 
 they belong to lifeless, living, or conscious beings. 
 
 And when we proceed further in the upward scale, and 
 reach the realm of animated and conscious beings, we 
 have to add to the category of life that of personality, 
 which in its turn superadds something to the cate- 
 gory of life. And still further on, when we deal with 
 personal existences, not only from the external but 
 especially from the internal point of view, we again 
 come to a graduated scale of mental categories, such as 
 sensation, memory, attention, intelligence, and above 
 these and other categories, we come to the moral and 
 religious sentiment.
 
 REVELATION. 277 
 
 It is evident that the student of these highest powers 
 which dominate the human mind has, whilst recog- 
 nising the importance of all the lower categories, to 
 start with the highest and most important, and place 
 himself, as it were, in this centre of the Firmament of 
 Consciousness. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We have in the preceding discussion repeatedly 
 pointed to the fact that none of the mental categories or 
 spheres of mental life are purely individual. We find 
 everywhere that it is only through the intersubjective 
 communion with other minds that the mental categories 
 are developed and applied. 
 
 Nowhere is this communion with others of greater 
 importance than in the moral and religious sphere. 
 Though reason and even pure observation can be 
 effectively exercised by secluded thinkers, it is never- 
 theless true that such seclusion is purely artificial and 
 cannot avail to any great extent without a return into 
 collective work and interests. But moral and religious 
 interests cannot exist at all except in and through our 
 communion with fellow-men ; they are unthinkable and 
 undefinable if taken by themselves and in isolation. 
 
 If this be so, it is clear that the centre of the moral 
 and religious interest lies as much in the experience of 
 the human race during past times, as it does in the 
 individual itself. 
 
 Thus the student of Ethics and Religion must regard 
 his subject from two equally important points of view : 
 the awakening and growth in the individual mind of
 
 278 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 the moral consciousness and the religious sentiment, 
 and the awakening of mankind in the course of history 
 to that full conception of the moral rule of life which 
 was given in the Christian idea of love, not only as the 
 Spirit which comprises all moral distinctions, but as 
 also the essence of the Highest Reality. 
 
 In every truly Christian home the child is led up to 
 the conception of what is right and wrong, and to the 
 recognition of an Highest Authority which is above 
 and beyond human persons, through many and diverse 
 examples, through fable, stories, and true narrative, 
 through example, encouragement, and rebuke. Similarly 
 it seems to us that the pre-Christian era contains in its 
 history many avenues, many lines of reasoning, many 
 successful and many frustrated attempts to gain that 
 clear definition of right and wrong and that view of the 
 government of the Universe which are so simply and 
 impressively taught in the Scriptures. 
 
 Both these developments the individual and the 
 historical must be taken in conjunction, mutually 
 supplementing each other. 
 
 Neither psychology and introspection, nor historical 
 criticism and research will suffice, if taken by them- 
 selves alone. Together they form the method of a 
 special body of research, which we may term Theology. 
 
 And there is another parallel between the life of the 
 individual person and that of the Christian Society. 
 
 We expect from all persons whom we consider to be 
 fully responsible that they shall have arrived during the 
 years of adolescence at certain fixed principles of right 
 and wrong which shall guide them in the further 
 course of their active lives. This means a development
 
 REVELATION. 279 
 
 of character ; and without the possession of some reliable 
 character and of firm convictions, we do not consider 
 any individual person to have attained full maturity. 
 The moral character is not supposed to change as do 
 scientific knowledge or principles of taste ; it should 
 serve as a firm foundation whereupon implicit reliance 
 can be placed. 
 
 Similarly, we look upon the Christian view of the 
 world and life as something settled, and so far as we 
 can see incapable of further improvement. The appli- 
 cations of this view are endless, and at the present 
 moment only very imperfectly achieved ; but so far as 
 the doctrine of love itself is concerned, nothing higher 
 has been suggested or is even conceivable to the human 
 mind. 
 
 This finality in the Christian conception of love is 
 shared also by the Christian conception of truth. In 
 fact truth and love are identified. We are shown in 
 this identity not only the realised ideal of morality or 
 the good, but also the realised ideal of knowledge. 
 For according to this view, truth and love are not only 
 the highest attributes, but also the very essence of the 
 supreme Keality which we call God. 
 
 The pre-Christian world and profane philosophy ever 
 since, and down to the present day, continually ask the 
 question " What is truth ? " For the Christian believer 
 the answer is love ; and this answer was given, not by 
 any intellectual exposition, but by the life and death of 
 Jesus.
 
 280 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 V. 
 
 It cannot be the object of a philosophical treatise like 
 the present to enter any further into the inside of the 
 region of Christian or religious thought. This, as has 
 been said before, constitutes a self-contained province 
 of human life and interest, and is as little intelligible 
 to outsiders as any other province of knowledge. Our 
 object can only be to assign, as it were, to this region 
 its location in the firmament of human consciousness. 
 
 What has been said here may however suffice to 
 indicate the uniqueness of religion as conceived by 
 Christianity, and the impossibility of understanding it 
 by purely logical forms of thought. 
 
 This latter fact is usually described as the mystical 
 or miraculous character of religious belief. 
 
 On these two points, the uniqueness and the mirac- 
 ulous character of the Christian Faith, we may make a 
 few remarks from the purely philosophical point of 
 view. 
 
 Conflicts between Science and Philosophy, between 
 Philosophy and Religion, and between Science and 
 Religion, have nearly always existed, ever since each 
 of these regions of interest gained independence 
 and strove to establish distinct orders of reality for 
 itself. From the point of view which we have tried 
 to establish we have encountered no difficulty in con- 
 ceiving of different degrees and orders of reality. 
 
 We have seen that they are reached by the en- 
 deavours of the human mind to raise the various kinds 
 of experience out of the purely subjective state of
 
 REVELATION. 281 
 
 existence to greater clearness and to make them com- 
 municable to our fellow-men. We have tried to assign 
 independent sources for this process of development in 
 various clusters of our primary experiences. Thus we 
 found the material for scientific thought in those ex- 
 periences which are possessed of the spatial character. 
 
 The primary material for mathematical and logical 
 thought is in the relations of number and abstract con- 
 ceptions ; the material for art is in the various forms of 
 order, both in space and time ; and lastly, the material 
 for ethical and religious thought is in the sphere of 
 emotions and desires. As these different classes of 
 experience are tolerably distinct within our primary 
 individual experience, there should be no difficulty in 
 safeguarding their relative independence when raised to 
 the level of Eeality and at the same time showing their 
 mutual interdependence. This latter is really the 
 special task of philosophy, which has to establish some 
 order or arrangement between the different spheres of 
 human interest, such as each of these has to establish 
 between the different data with which it deals. Thus 
 the philosopher must possess in the highest degree that 
 synoptic faculty which Plato described as the sine qua 
 non of the dialectician. 
 
 In more recent times the conflict which formerly 
 existed between the exact and the philosophical sciences 
 seems on the point of being amicably settled, it being 
 recognised that the former have to choose their own 
 methods and point of view, whilst the latter have to 
 make these methods themselves a special subject of 
 study. 
 
 But the conflict between the exact and the natural
 
 282 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 Sciences on the one side and Ethics and Eeligion on 
 the other has not grown less in the course of the 
 development of modern thought, and it forms in conse- 
 quence a special subject for independent philosophical 
 examination. 
 
 The causes which have led to a better understanding, 
 and so to say, to a clearer division of labour between 
 Philosophy and Science are not difficult to find, and in 
 stating them, we shall at the same time be able to see 
 why the conflict between Science and Religion is harder 
 to settle. 
 
 To show this we must revert to the part which words 
 and language play wherever human interests become or 
 strive to become common property and cease to be 
 purely individual. 
 
 The ambiguity of words makes an understanding 
 between different persons difficult, and the beginning 
 of exact knowledge may be traced to the process of 
 substituting for words things i.e., those definite 
 thoughts which we call sensations, and which have a 
 fixed location assignable in the outer world of space and 
 time. Where things with definite names do not suffice, 
 we resort to figures, models, or signs and symbols. The 
 reason why the mathematical Sciences are the most 
 exact, and in consequence the most convincing, is 
 because they have gradually emancipated themselves 
 from the ambiguity of speech and the tyranny of words 
 and have invented a language of their own. 
 
 In this language, be it that of number, measure- 
 ment, or spatial arrangement, the exact sciences are 
 able to posit their fundamental data and their funda- 
 mental axioms. This process of definition leads to two
 
 REVELATION. 283 
 
 separate lines of research : the application of these 
 axioms, which forms the content of the various 
 sciences, and on the other side the examination and 
 criticism of these data and axioms with special 
 regard for their completeness and the limits of their 
 use, which form the study of philosophy. 
 
 Now morals and religion have not been able simi- 
 larly to invent a language of their own, or have 
 done so only in a very imperfect manner; though 
 there are a limited number of words in every civilised 
 language which refer specially to moral and religious 
 things, they are not capable of the same clear 
 definition. 
 
 In order to communicate to others our feelings, 
 convictions, or desires, we have to borrow words and 
 terms from those more definite regions of thought 
 which have invented them for their own purposes. 
 
 On examination it will be found that nearly all 
 the words we employ have their origin in definite 
 sensations with a spatial definition. There is only 
 one exception to the general correctness of this 
 remark, and this is to be found in the special 
 language which is based upon sound : musical sounds 
 in their harmony and melody have no reference to 
 the outer world of space, but in and through them 
 we are able to communicate to others and enjoy 
 with them our feelings and emotions ; and this is 
 the reason why they are peculiarly adapted to form 
 the language of the emotions. 
 
 Nor is it the least noteworthy of facts that as the 
 world has grown tired of the attempt to intellectualise 
 and put into philosophical language spiritual things,
 
 284 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 the art of musical composition has been increasingly 
 cultivated and has more and more appealed to large 
 numbers of persons of all ranks of society. 
 
 There are indeed, as just said, a few words in all 
 languages which have become the means of intercourse 
 between cultured persons and which point to something 
 higher than, and outside of, the material world, but 
 their definition is extremely difficult, if not impossible ; 
 and in using them we always appeal to an inward 
 and unconscious response which cannot be otherwise 
 awakened except, perhaps, in that silent worship 
 which is being more and more recognised as the means 
 of bringing together the thoughts of an assembled 
 congregation and directing them towards that Higher 
 Spiritual Eeality which we in vain seek fully and 
 adequately to express in words. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The unique character of the Christian view of the 
 World and of Life, as distinguished from other creeds 
 and systems of morality, both religious and philoso- 
 phical, is nowhere more evident than in the way in 
 which it treats the contradictions and difficulties of 
 the common-sense view of life. 
 
 Neither science nor philosophy has been able to 
 remove these difficulties. Knowledge of whatever 
 kind still bristles with paradoxes. In fact these have 
 become rather more evident through scientific and 
 philosophical criticism. 
 
 It would be an interesting task to collect all these
 
 REVELATION. 285 
 
 paradoxes, beginning with the simplest and most 
 abstract, and ending with the most complicated 
 provinces of thought. Here it may suffice to mark 
 only a few of them. 
 
 Our entry into self-conscious life brings us face to 
 face, as we have already shown, with one of the greatest 
 of paradoxes, the existence of other persons and what 
 we philosophically term the category of personality. 
 
 Personality, as we have seen, has two sides, 
 popularly termed the outer and the inner, or the 
 world of things, and the world of thought. 
 
 The world of Thought in its most primitive as 
 well as in its most highly developed form contains 
 everything that exists for any one of us individually. 
 There is really no way of getting out of this circle. 
 But on the other side, the outer world contains 
 every individual person within its totality as a 
 definite but almost infinitesimally small and seem- 
 ingly negligible thing. 
 
 This paradox, which is characteristic of personality, 
 but which cannot be logically construed, finds a 
 place in the Christian Doctrine of the essence 
 of the Highest Being. God is represented both as 
 in and above the World. This is the Doctrine of 
 the Immanence and Transcendence of the Divine 
 Being. This view is indeed not peculiar to Christian 
 Doctrine, but it is contained in the Scriptures as 
 a truth without any attempt being made to explain 
 it logically. 
 
 The only proof is the fact of the Incarnation 
 itself; the twofold nature the Divine and human, 
 of the Founder of Christianity.
 
 286 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 But there is a yet greater difficulty and a more 
 perplexing paradox in human nature, and this is not 
 so much in the intellectual as in the moral world. 
 This is the problem of evil, and still more the 
 contrast of Determinism and Freedom. Looking at 
 life from one point of view, we are more and more 
 forced to see a necessity in all events, and the 
 scientific view of nature which includes human 
 individuals in its purview leads us to seek for every 
 event or action a determining cause, leaving as it 
 were no room for freedom of choice. Thus also, in 
 dealing with the conduct of other persons, or our- 
 selves, it seems nearly always possible to show that 
 in antecedent and surrounding circumstances a com- 
 pelling reason may be found for just that which has 
 been done or happened. On the other side, as soon 
 as we individually attain to the idea of Right we are 
 forced to admit the possibility of Wrong. This comes 
 home to us in the early experience of self-reproach 
 and remorse which follows upon certain of our 
 thoughts and deeds if we review them after they 
 have been entertained or committed. This experience 
 necessitates us to conclude that we might have 
 thought or acted differently, and the reproach which 
 we cannot get rid of involves the idea of freedom 
 or liberty of action. The wrong then appears not 
 only as a failure in doing what was right, but as 
 guilt or sin ; and further, as something in our 
 nature which we must strive to get rid of. Evil in 
 this form of sin strikes us thus as being both inherent 
 in our nature, and on the other side also as some- 
 thing essentially foreign to it, the power of which we
 
 REVELATION. 287 
 
 desire to conquer. This paradox in human nature 
 is fully admitted in the Christian view of life. The 
 passages in the Scriptures where evil and sinfulness 
 are treated as something inherent in human nature, 
 are probably about as numerous as those in which sin 
 is looked upon as a sinister power which enters into 
 and corrupts the human soul, but which ought to 
 be and can be expelled and conquered : in fact 
 the prominent, practical character of the Christian 
 Religion is this that it shows how this conquest 
 of evil has been actually carried out and how it 
 is possible. 
 
 Christianity is thus one of the Religions or Schemes 
 of Redemption, but it is the highest among these, 
 as it contains the record of the supreme and only 
 instance where this has been fully accomplished. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The view that the Highest Being is both in and 
 outside of the world, and the equally important 
 doctrine of evil and sin, as something which is both 
 inherent in and foreign to human nature, mark the two 
 great paradoxes which cannot be explained or solved by 
 the intellectual process of human thought. Nor does 
 the Christian view attempt this solution by an intel- 
 lectual process ; the solution is given in a fact or an 
 event, the greatest event in history. As Goethe said, 
 " The insufficiency of this world leads up to an 
 event." 
 
 It is therefore quite natural that the Christian view of
 
 288 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 the world and life should be looked upon as irrational, 
 and that many attempts have been made to rationalise it. 
 
 These attempts have signally failed, because no actual 
 fact or event can be fully comprehended or even de- 
 scribed by the categories or forms of thought which 
 the human mind is capable of. It can only be seen 
 or experienced. This irrational character is the main 
 characteristic of the mystical, mysterious, or miraculous 
 nature of Christian history and Christian thought. 
 
 It may be useful to examine more closely what is 
 really meant by these terms, and wherein consists the 
 repugnance with which many thinking persons view 
 them. 
 
 The miraculous can mean one of two things or both : 
 it may mean that which is unique in its occurrence, 
 which has no parallel in present or past experience ; or 
 it may mean that which is contrary to human reason, 
 inasmuch as we cannot think of it consistently. 
 
 Now so far as the first point is concerned, the 
 argument of Hume is unanswerable ; this argument 
 says that if any unusual event is reported to us, it is 
 always more likely that the reporter should be mistaken 
 than that something should have happened, the like of 
 which is not known ever to have happened before. Of 
 course the unusual, and still more the unique, event 
 stands by itself, and as we judge of the probability of 
 events by their fitting into the order of other events 
 which we have experienced, we have every reason to 
 doubt the correctness of the report. 
 
 It is only through repetition that we become aware of 
 things at all, and that which is unique stands outside 
 our ordinary means of judging. But this does not in
 
 REVELATION. 289 
 
 the least mean that unique events cannot happen ; 
 indeed it will be found that no fact either in history 
 or in the range of individual experience, if examined 
 closely, is ever exactly like other facts. And if this 
 be true of individual occurrences, it is still more true 
 when we consider complexes and combinations of many 
 facts and events. 
 
 Now the Christian dispensation taken as a whole is 
 so complex and contains so many features that it 
 cannot be judged by any single occurrence or testi- 
 mony, but must more than any other event be considered 
 as a whole ; not only in its history, but also in its 
 importance for us at the present time, and more than 
 all, in relation to the fact that it is the only compre- 
 hensive view dealing with all the difficulties which we 
 encounter whether we accept the answers and solutions 
 it gives or reject them. 
 
 As to the second feature which characterises the 
 miraculous, namely, that it is unthinkable ; this can arise 
 from different sources. It may be similar to the idea 
 which a man born blind forms of sight and colour ; such 
 a sense must be to him quite unintelligible, and were it 
 not for the overwhelming testimony of his fellow-men, it 
 would be miraculous. This form of the miraculous is 
 connected with the limits of our positive experience. 
 
 Another form of the unintelligible is this that we 
 have to think of two things together which we cannot 
 unite in one thought. Thus we cannot think of 
 anything being square and round at the same time. 
 Still another form of the unintelligible is that an event 
 contradicts what we term the "laws of nature." It 
 arises from the fact that certain regularities or uni- 
 
 T
 
 290 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 formities in the outer world have become so habitual to 
 us that we cannot think them away. But it is quite 
 evident that this is only a matter of habit, and that we 
 have really no ground for believing that we know what 
 we term the "laws of nature," or that any such laws 
 exist at all which can be expressed in human thought. 
 Against all these objections to what is called the 
 miraculous or inconceivable, it cannot be too often 
 urged that many quite inconceivable things happen 
 daily which we nevertheless do not call miraculous, but 
 which receive this epithet as soon as we seriously try to 
 understand them. Thus to the mechanical philosopher, 
 to the determinist and necessitarian, Free Will is a 
 miracle, that is, unthinkable. But equally miraculous 
 though continually occurring are many natural phe- 
 nomena. A whole list of these could easily be written 
 down. It may suffice to point only to such facts as the 
 beginning of a separate individual life or the inheritance 
 of mental characteristics. Yet these things happen 
 every day and are not considered miraculous. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 In the case before us the two attributes of the 
 miraculous viz., uniqueness and logical inconceiv- 
 ability are united as in no other event in the whole 
 history of mankind. 
 
 If we look more closely not at the history of mankind 
 but at that of every one of us individually, we meet 
 with an event which is equally unique and logically 
 inconceivable from whatever point of view we may
 
 REVELATION. 291 
 
 regard it. There is certainly no occurrence in the 
 whole of our remembered or unremembered existence 
 which is like that of our gradual awakening to a con- 
 sciousness of not-self and self, nor is it possible even 
 to describe the different stages of the process by which 
 this entry into conscious life occurred. It remains a 
 fact which is shrouded in darkness and vanishes in the 
 chiaroscuro of our earliest remembrances. If it were 
 not for the fact that we see around us numberless other 
 instances which we by an analogy with ourselves 
 interpret as similar to what has happened to us, the 
 beginning of our conscious life would remain a unique 
 event to which there is no parallel. In fact it is, as 
 stated above, truly a revelation, a lifting of the veil. 
 Now we have seen in the course of our reflections 
 that the development of consciousness depends on our 
 relation not only with one or two other persons but in 
 its further stages with a society of human beings which 
 
 O / 
 
 surrounds us. Not only have we received from another 
 or from others the first impressions of conscious ex- 
 istence, but it is only owing to our appropriating the 
 accumulated experience of others present and past that 
 our mind has grown and developed into full life. 
 
 The most of that which we call Ourselves is a col- 
 lection of thoughts, aspirations, and desires, which we 
 have in various degrees assimilated from and in common 
 with human beings who surround us or preceded us, 
 most of whom are not even known to us. The collective 
 life thus becomes the true life of every one of us, even if 
 we live a secluded existence and fancy that we can live 
 alone. 
 
 The life of mankind or Humanity thus becomes in
 
 292 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 our thoughts the most important occurrence in the 
 whole world, both physical and spiritual. 
 
 This life of the human race develops, as we 
 learn from history, in a way not dissimilar to that of 
 our individual minds. Its beginnings are similarly 
 involved in darkness ; no definite records exist in the 
 memory of mankind regarding the origin of Society 
 and its various stages of progress. Only after long 
 ages of existence, passing through changes and events 
 of which there is no record, has mankind in different 
 ways and at different places gradually awakened to 
 self-consciousness, to feelings of responsibility, and the 
 seriousness of life. 
 
 As the moral character of the individual man grows 
 imperceptibly to himself and others from small and 
 tender beginnings, frequently through uncertainties, 
 failures, and doubts, into fuller existence during adoles- 
 cence, so also the moral and intellectual life of mankind 
 shows many fluctuations, failures, tentative beginnings, 
 and gleams of higher light which we term inspiration. 
 
 Is it likely that the fuller awakening to the meaning 
 of life, the highest rule of conduct and the essence of 
 Reality, should in the course of history be recorded in 
 clearer terms than those of our individual lives ? Is it 
 not to be expected that this final awakening or reve- 
 lation should be shrouded in similar mysteries, and 
 contain events of a unique character which refuse com- 
 parison with ordinary events of daily life in the past 
 or present, and are inexhaustible by the categories of 
 purely logical thought and construction? The fact that 
 Humanity has received what professes to be a highest 
 and unalterable rule of life and a name for the highest
 
 REVELATION. 293 
 
 Reality, both being identified in the Christian con- 
 ception of Love, is a fact which must be contemplated 
 as a whole, and, as such, accepted in faith or rejected. 
 Neither logical nor historical proofs as they may exist 
 for the ordinary recurrent events of life are here of 
 any avail. 
 
 There is for those who accept this Revelation only 
 one other proof possible, and that is their own experi- 
 ence of the workings of this faith in their own lives 
 and in those of their fellow-men. 
 
 No philosophical reasonings, no historical criticisms 
 avail either to generate or to destroy this faith it 
 stands and remains as a fact by itself with no parallel 
 in the whole range of other experience.
 
 294 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 
 I. 
 
 IN dealing with Eeligion and Revelation, we have 
 approached the highest philosophical problem the 
 problem also which is of the greatest importance in 
 the present day. 
 
 As stated already, it is not the special teachings of 
 Religion nor the things revealed to us which we desire 
 to discuss in Philosophy. It is only the position of 
 these spiritual realities within the circle of human 
 interests, their location, as it were, on the chart of 
 the mental firmament, that we desire to mark out 
 clearly ; leaving it to every individual mind to work 
 out the details for itself, and for a special body of 
 doctrine, appropriately called Theology, to try to bring 
 some unity and order into the totality of these spiritual 
 verities. 
 
 The points of view from which we started should 
 enable us to direct our reflections upon many other 
 topics and throw some light upon other interesting 
 problems of the world and life. But, having touched 
 on the highest problem, I feel that I must not accom- 
 pany my readers into further possible lines of thought.
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 295 
 
 It remains, therefore, only to bring to a close what 
 has been said by a few remarks which may furnish a 
 short summary of the results we have arrived at. We 
 started with the position in which Hume had left the 
 study of the human mind or human nature, and adopted 
 a line of thought which professes to be not a refuta- 
 tion of Hume's position but a further development of 
 the course of inquiry initiated by Descartes and Locke, 
 and carried forward by Berkeley and Hume himself. 
 With him a certain point was reached where his inevi- 
 table scepticism led to an attitude which proved both in 
 theory and in practice to require refutation or correction. 
 
 It does not seem to have occurred to any one to push 
 Hume's method which was nothing but the plain 
 historical method of his forerunners further on, and 
 apply it to other ideas, tracing their genesis in the 
 human mind in the same way as they did with the 
 two fundamental notions of Substance and Causality. 
 
 But this is exactly what we have attempted tenta- 
 tively and imperfectly in the foregoing chapters. 
 
 With this intention we dwelt notably on two points 
 where we seemed to discover the possibility for this 
 further development. There may be other fruitful 
 ways of overcoming Hume's scepticism without de- 
 parting from the main course of British philosophy, but 
 we have limited ourselves mainly to two, the discussion 
 of which does not seem to involve that break of con- 
 tinuity of thought which is usually considered to mark 
 subsequent philosophj^ both in this country and abroad.
 
 296 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 II. 
 
 The first remark which we had to make about Hume's 
 treatment was this : that Hume dealt with single per- 
 ceptions or ideas and not with their actual connection 
 as presented in our experience. It seemed necessary 
 for us to note the recurrent connections and groups 
 in which sensations or perceptions appeared in the 
 primordial experience of the mind. These recurrent 
 clusters or complexes of sensations stand out clearly 
 on the background of the changing firmament of con- 
 sciousness. Among these we noted as probably the 
 earliest appearance of this kind the figure of a person 
 or persons, and further on of lifeless things. 
 
 The infant's mind becomes in this way familiar with 
 a detached world consisting of separate things which 
 stand out and force themselves on attention and 
 memory. This experience leads, in the further course 
 of our early life, to fixed clusters or arrangements of 
 sensations and perceptions possessing both totality and 
 individuality. The mind learns to look at things as 
 coherent groups forming an ensemble or " Together," 
 each with its own individuality or separateness. 
 
 There still remains the background of our total ex- 
 perience at any moment, and this we learn to distin- 
 guish by the term Self, in contrast to the definite things 
 which, as it were, stand out both within and against it. 
 
 In the second place, we noted that though this 
 process would lead to the notion of the contrast of 
 Object and Subject, it would not be sufficient to gen- 
 erate the idea of reality and unreality ; both the things
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 297 
 
 which stand out on the background of our total experi- 
 ence, and this background itself, being equally existent. 
 This led us to the investigation of the possible processes 
 through which the mind may arrive at the distinction 
 of the real and the unreal. The principal difference be- 
 tween the real and the unreal we found in the fact that 
 sensations or perceptions which we call real are those 
 which we have in common with other persons. This 
 led us to recognise the importance of communion with 
 others, which communion and communication became 
 most impressive and efficient through language and 
 speech. The child's mind gradually settled down to 
 the recognition of a world which it had in common with 
 others in contrast to that which it possessed for itself 
 alone. 
 
 The attribute of reality is, however, not attached 
 by us exclusively to what we call the outer world, 
 though prima facie this figures as the most obtrusive 
 reality of which we have any knowledge. 
 
 These two points led us on to a further development 
 in our course of reasoning. 
 
 We dealt first with the second point the problem 
 of Reality. We tried to fix the attributes which mark 
 for us the difference of the real from the unreal, and 
 were, in the further course of this attempt, led to 
 distinguish different orders and degrees of reality. 
 Further on we were led to enlarge the conception 
 suggested by the first point just mentioned, and re- 
 cognised that what we termed the Synoptic view is 
 a general aspect which stands in opposition to the 
 combined analytic and synthetic processes with which 
 we become familiar in the earlier years of mental
 
 298 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 instruction, and still more exclusively in the schools 
 of science and criticism. 
 
 We were led to the study of Arrangement and 
 generally of Order, and discovered that the Synoptic 
 view and ordering process of the human mind created 
 or revealed a new and higher form of reality which 
 we termed Value. 
 
 Through special processes of Arrangement or Order, 
 Nature, as well as the human mind, endows real things 
 and real experiences with that higher reality which 
 not only appeals to the analytic and synthetic ten- 
 dencies of scientific and practical thought, but satisfies 
 also the emotional aesthetic, ethical, and religious 
 claims of the human soul. 
 
 This being in outline the course of our discussions, 
 we may now conclude with some further reflections 
 which will bring our results into connection with some 
 prevailing tendencies in modern and in recent philo- 
 sophical thought. 
 
 III. 
 
 The view which we have tried to gain is distinguished 
 not only from the common-sense view of the world, but 
 also from that aspect which has formed the basis of 
 many philosophical systems both in ancient and in 
 recent times. This aspect starts with an axiomatic 
 belief in the contrast of the outer and the inner world. 
 The axiom has found expression in such antitheses as 
 Nature and Mind, Body and Soul, Object and Subject, 
 the two substances called Matter and Spirit, <fec. This 
 contrast has entirely disappeared for us : we recognised
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 299 
 
 only one Reality for each and every human mind, this 
 being the total changing content of its consciousness. 
 This we termed the field or firmament of Thought. It 
 is the only Reality of which every one of us is really 
 aware, and beyond which his knowledge cannot take a 
 step. We have not called it real but only existent, as 
 it has no negative and cannot be thought away. We 
 reserved the terms Real and Reality for a portion only 
 of this total existent, for that portion which has an 
 opposite or a negative, and which we can dismiss from 
 our thoughts. In consequence of this view, the ordinary 
 difficulties of explaining the relation between Outer and 
 Inner, Body and Soul, the extended and the thinking 
 substance, and many affiliated problems, have entirely 
 disappeared for us. 
 
 If we adopted the terms Outer and Inner, we found 
 the Outer lying entirely within the Inner World, and 
 we found it improper to look for the Inner World 
 within the precincts of the Outer, though we were able 
 to explain how this persistent attempt is suggested by 
 the fact that for the purposes of practical life we early 
 accustom ourselves to look at everything as spread 
 out in a surrounding space in which other persons aa 
 well as ourselves figure only through their outer or 
 physical appearance, and in which there is no room 
 or location to be found for the large expanse of the 
 Inner World of Sensations, Thoughts, Feelings, &c. 
 
 The term Substance is replaced in our view by the 
 term Together : all single sensations or mental experi- 
 ences of any kind which appear coherent and repeat 
 themselves in groups acquire some degree of Reality, 
 the most obtrusive but not the truest Reality being
 
 300 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 that of outer things which we term Material. From 
 these we distinguish likewise only through their 
 coherence and partial continuity the things which 
 we call Mental or Spiritual, and then we speak of a 
 spiritual substance variously expressed as Self, Mind, 
 Soul, Spirit or Ego. 
 
 From our point of view as just stated, this Together 
 or Ensemble of conscious experiences or if we like to 
 call it so Spiritual Substance contains the Totality of 
 all seemingly external or real things, and hence also 
 their illusive substantial or separate existence. 
 
 We have seen that a large amount of useful scientific 
 and practical thought can be carried on whilst limiting 
 ourselves to that portion of existent things, that is, 
 of subjective experience, which we have termed the 
 Outer World. In fact, in proportion as we can remove 
 from this the background of what we may term senti- 
 ment or the fringe of emotion, we learn more of the 
 Real and penetrate into the secrets of Nature with a 
 corresponding increase of knowledge and useful applica- 
 tion. And yet we find that this detachment cannot 
 be completely carried out. Even to the purely external 
 view, the phenomena of this detached world of things 
 reveals occurrences and instances where the principles 
 which have been established and successfully applied 
 in our research appear wanting. This is most striking 
 when we deal with living and, beyond these, with con- 
 scious things, that is, with organisms and human beings. 
 
 And even the lifeless world in its totality forces us 
 to recognise some hidden principle which has been 
 variously expressed in the natural sciences. We found 
 this to consist in some form of order or arrangement.
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 301 
 
 The conception of order introduced us into quite a 
 new world of ideas : for not only did we find this order 
 in the existing world, but we recognised that the mind 
 itself possesses the faculty of creating or rather of 
 adding to the existing order of physical and mental 
 things, facts and events, a new order which may be 
 that of art or morality or of both. Thence we saw 
 that the mind creates a new world which we term the 
 world of Values, and which we recognise as a higher 
 degree of Reality than what is usually termed the 
 Outer World and is studied by scientific methods. 
 
 In this way we came to recognise three degrees of 
 Reality ; the lowest degree being that of mere existence 
 in consciousness, the next that of external or objective 
 Reality, and the highest degree that of valuable or 
 interesting Realities and experiences. 
 
 This highest region of Reality, the truly Real, is a 
 creation or discovery of the human mind in which the 
 latter shows its freedom. We may therefore term it 
 also the world of Freedom. In it the mind rises from 
 mere awareness or simple consciousness to an intel- 
 lectual contemplation, and further to a spiritual enjoy- 
 ment of its original and primitive endowments. 
 
 All this may be expressed in other terms, which 
 will bring our reflections nearer to a view that has 
 frequently presented itself in past and recent philo- 
 sophic thought. We may say that the first stage of 
 conscious experience of the human mind, both in the 
 individual and the race, is a " going out of itself," the 
 recognising of other persons and things. Though more 
 and more absorbed in them so as to become partially 
 or even at times wholly forgetful of itself, the mind
 
 302 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 recognises at the same time in or behind the objective 
 world which stands out on the background of conscious- 
 ness something corresponding to or identical with its 
 own primordial nature. This is the world of other 
 minds. 
 
 For the purposes of this life this absorption in outer 
 things is indispensable, and constitutes for every one a 
 large portion, and for some the whole of their occupa- 
 tion. Only a few specially gifted minds moved by 
 their own irrepressible promptings can be enabled con- 
 sistently with some social order to cultivate what we 
 may call an inner life. Into this they may succeed by 
 personal influence in introducing their fellow - men, 
 founding or enlarging the sense of that higher Reality 
 in which the external and objective world returns again 
 into the surroundings of an emotional existence. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The partial or total absorption in the objective world, 
 its things and events, is, however, itself not entirely 
 without that spirituality which we are erroneously 
 tempted to identify with things of the inner life. 
 For, according to our view, the objective world does 
 not cease to be at the same time subjective. If not 
 immediately present to the senses, it lives on in 
 memory and the workings of imagination ; and it is 
 only through these inner processes that an intellectual 
 view of the outer world can be gained. 
 
 The scientific view of nature, including the physical 
 phenomena of the human person, is itself a creation of
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 303 
 
 the mind. It is only possible where a purely subjective 
 or personal interest exists, and this interest has itself 
 various degrees, ranging from the lower demands of our 
 sensual instincts through the promptings of material in- 
 terests, such as wealth and position, to the higher level 
 of curiosity and love of knowledge and truth for their 
 own sakes. Or, we may find the higher spiritual 
 interests working in the application of knowledge for 
 the benefit of others in the relief of pain and suffer- 
 ing, and in conquering, through the diffusion of 
 knowledge, the carnal and selfish tendencies of our 
 lower nature, which are always ready to drag us down 
 if higher powers are not on the watch. 
 
 But the highest form of mental activity is reached 
 only if we start instinctively from the moral including 
 the sesthetical demands of the mind, and if we can 
 rise to that eminence from which these alone appear to 
 have the fullest reality, giving through their growth 
 and increasing sway all that is of real and abiding value 
 to the other higher or lower pursuits of humanity. 
 
 In this region of thought, the True, the Beautiful, and 
 the Good are immediately revealed by Sight, bearing 
 testimony that these verities are real essences, and not, 
 as it were, mere fragrant effluvia of the material or 
 even the intellectual worlds, compared with which they 
 have no truly real existence. 
 
 This triadic movement of thought from the lower 
 through an intermediate to the highest stage has 
 received expression in various forms both in ancient 
 and in modern thought. The form which has become 
 
 o 
 
 best known in recent times is that elaborated in the 
 idealistic systems of German philosophy, which cul-
 
 304 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 minated in Hegel. In these systems neither Thought 
 nor Reality is conceived to be ever at rest, but each 
 phase leads on to something different from or other 
 than it appears to be, and the other or higher phase of 
 existence which is reached leads, as it were, back again 
 to the original content which then presents a higher 
 aspect. 
 
 In Hegel's words, the subjective mind leads on to 
 the objective, and this by a union with the subjective 
 rises to the Absolute mind. 
 
 This formula has been used by Hegel and his 
 followers with signal success to explain and interpret 
 many developments in the various regions of human 
 life and interest. 
 
 From what we have learnt in the foregoing, it is 
 not difficult to see that this triadic movement has 
 its foundation in the original constitution of the 
 human mind which starts from a chaotic state of 
 experience through definition, differentiation, and 
 selection, to a clear view of single things and events 
 which it recognises as a real world ; and that in the 
 further course of its development this real world is 
 again taken back into the region of the Emotions 
 and Feelings where it gains interest and value, reveal- 
 ing the existing order of nature and mind as well as 
 creating a new and higher order which culminates in 
 the Spiritual view of the world and life. 
 
 This being, according to our view, the real meaning 
 and truth which is contained in Hegel's " Inherent 
 Dialectic of Thought," it may be of interest to 
 inquire how it came about that Hegel himself has 
 been so frequently misunderstood, and that his doctrine
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 305 
 
 has led to so many different and even opposite 
 interpretations, being on the one side extolled beyond 
 measure as the highest and last possible step in the 
 evolutionary process of Thought, and on the other side 
 virulently attacked, and represented as a delusive and 
 dangerous doctrine. 
 
 V. 
 
 Many influences worked together in the development 
 of Hegel's mind, which, more perhaps than that of 
 any other philosopher, passed through various stages, 
 repeating those that are marked in the history of 
 German Idealism by a succession of brilliant and 
 independent thinkers. 
 
 One of the most important of these influences was 
 that of the Kantian philosophy, which had allied 
 itself with the exclusively rationalising process which 
 governed the eighteenth century, with the desire of 
 leading thought out of the dangerous and subjective 
 regions of the sentimental and the mystical into the 
 clear daylight of logical definition. Hegel repeated 
 in a more elaborate manner the process which Socrates 
 in ancient times employed in the refutation of the 
 Sophists and Rhetoricians of his age. In fact, he 
 attempted to fix the meaning of those abstract terms 
 which we employ in dealing with the elusive pheno- 
 mena of the inner world. 
 
 He followed Kant in establishing an indepen- 
 dent philosophical science which in recent times 
 was by one of Hegel's own pupils termed Erkennt- 
 
 u
 
 306 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 nisstheorie, in English " Theory of Knowledge " 
 (Epistemology). 
 
 This separate treatment of the phenomena of 
 human thought has its ultimate origin in the fact 
 that in the course of ages a distinct and unique 
 structure of thought has been built up which defies 
 criticism, is based on self- evidence, and excludes 
 almost entirely that admixture of error and ambiguity 
 which appears to be common to all other regions 
 of human inquiry. 
 
 This structure is the language of mathematics, 
 which deals only with definite quantities in Space, 
 Time, and Number, and is originally based upon 
 spatial relations, without which neither numbers nor 
 intervals of time could be clearly fixed, on which 
 probably also all logical and abstract distinctions are 
 ultimately dependent. This explains why all the great 
 thinkers who have employed the dialectical method 
 have in one form or other betrayed a great liking 
 for the mathematical sciences, and have frequently 
 introduced mathematical methods into their discussions. 
 Kant maintained that true science exists only so far 
 as mathematics can be introduced. 
 
 Hegel himself was not a mathematician, but he 
 desired to introduce into philosophy the same strict- 
 ness as had been obtained in mathematical doctrine 
 by the use of simple definitions, self-evident axioms, 
 and the processes of formal logic. Kecognising that 
 formal logic could not deal with the higher content 
 of abstract thought, he attempted to create a higher 
 logic which would be capable of doing this. Had 
 he joined to his purely logical distinctions likewise
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 307 
 
 the plain historical method of the British School of 
 Thinkers, he would have been able to put the great 
 truth which is contained in his Philosophy into 
 plainer and less ambiguous language. 
 
 This great Truth is the assertion that all Reality 
 is ultimately Thought, using the word in its widest 
 sense, including every mental experience, beyond 
 which nothing can be known to any individual 
 human mind, though through the co-operation of 
 many minds Thought can not only be fixed and 
 generalised but also indefinitely extended so as to 
 present to the individual human mind a Reality 
 which transcends enormously the small fragment 
 accessible to any single mind. 
 
 This creation of the collective human mind is 
 duly recognised by Hegel. It is only in the histori- 
 cal development of Thought, i.e., in a living process, 
 that the true life and contents of the mind can be 
 discovered. Hence the importance which the History 
 of Philosophy acquired in Hegel's system and has 
 never lost in subsequent philosophy, whether that 
 of followers or opponents of his special doctrine. 
 
 The Hegelian philosophy presents both historically 
 and philosophically many aspects, and much can be 
 said about it according to the special aspect we 
 choose. After having beneficially influenced some 
 of the best German scholarship, though not of the 
 best philosophy, during the second third of the 
 nineteenth century, it was in turn taken up by 
 French, Italian, British, and quite recently by 
 American speculation. 
 
 Its most prominent effect on German speculation
 
 308 A FRAGMENT ON THE HUMAN MIND. 
 
 was a reaction. This sprang up from various sides, 
 but that which supervened and gradually attained 
 the foremost place in German thought and certainly 
 reached the widest circle, was that of the exact and 
 natural sciences. They joined hands with the 
 rationalising tendency of Hegelian thought. 
 
 For those who, like the author of this " Fragment," 
 became acquainted with German philosophy shortly 
 after the middle of the century, three schools of 
 thought claimed special attention, and all three could 
 be traced back to Hegel. These three schools may 
 be identified with the names of Feuerbach, David 
 Strauss, and Karl Marx. They represented severally 
 or jointly materialism, destructive criticism, and purely 
 economic Socialism, and agreed in their anti-religi- 
 ous bias. 
 
 These most prominent results of Hegelian rationalism 
 created in the minds of those who strongly disapproved 
 of the doctrines a marked prejudice, amounting almost 
 to an aversion towards Hegelianism; 1 and this in the 
 case of the author led to a study and appreciation of 
 the only two original philosophies which could at the 
 time be said to possess a living force. These were 
 the philosophy of Schleiermacher, a rival of Hegel, 
 and that of Lotze. 
 
 The current popular philosophy of materialism had 
 the advantage of being put forward in a clear and 
 simple style which contrasted favourably with that 
 of Hegel. 
 
 1 This attitude was further encouraged by the impression which, rightly 
 or wrongly, existed in many minds that Hegel had identified himself with 
 the detested police system of Prussian Government, which earned for the 
 latter the name of Polizei-Staat.
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 309 
 
 In the several foreign countries where Hegel was 
 studied, the defects just mentioned were less noticed. 
 Notably in this country, scholars, trained in the 
 severe study of Aristotle, were not deterred by 
 stylistic difficulties. They were attracted not by 
 the formalities but by the spirit and ideal of Hegel's 
 speculation ; but they also recognised that his work 
 would have to be done over again in order to reach 
 the end and aims which he and they had in view. 
 
 Unfortunately, as it seems to us, their labours 
 took the form of a hostile criticism of their own native 
 philosophy as represented by Hume. Against this 
 we have tried to show that progress on the lines of 
 British thought must necessarily lead to a discussion 
 of those highest problems which Hegel had placed 
 in the forefront of his discussion : the problem of 
 Reality, and of the truly Real. Inasmuch as this 
 has been attempted in the foregoing chapters, they 
 may claim to offer a contribution to the solution 
 of the problem which at the present moment occupies 
 many minds in many countries, and has through 
 recent events attained not only a speculative but 
 an equally great practical importance.
 
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