the muscles; nay, when the play of imagination is very lively, this external movement is actually determined.'-(Metaphysics, ii., 169, 274.) I quote farther a few sentences from Mr. Spencer's theory of Memory. To remember the colour red, is to have, in a weak degree, that psychical state which the presentation of the colour red produces; to remember a motion just made by the arm, is to feel a repetition, in a faint form, of those internal states which accompanied the motion-is an incipient excitement of all those nerves whose stronger excitement was experienced during the motion.'-(Psychology, p. 359.) E.-Perception of the Material World.-p. 384. I shall here advert to the mode of solving this great problem agreed on by some of the most distinguished philosophers of the present day. Sir W. Hamilton has examined the subject at great length, recurring to it in many parts of his writings. I select the following quotation as sufficiently expressing his views :—' In the act of sensible perception, I am conscious of two things-of myself as the perceiving subject, and of an external reality, in relation with my sense, as the object perceived. Of the existence of both these things I am convinced; because I am conscious of knowing each of them, not mediately in something else, as represented, but immediately in itself, as existing. Of their mutual dependence I am no less convinced; because each is apprehended equally and at once, in the same indivisible energy, the one not preceding or determining, the other not following or determined; and because each is apprehended out of, and in direct contrast to, the other.'-(Reid, p. 747.) Mr. Samuel Bailey, in his Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, has exposed, with great clearness and force, the equivocations of language and confusion of ideas that have clouded the question of external perception. His own view is expressed in the following sentence-'It seems to have been only after a thousand struggles that the simple truth was arrived at, which is not by any means yet universally received the truth that the perception of external things through the organs of STATEMENTS OF REALISM. 679 sense is a direct mental act or phenomenon of consciousness, not susceptible of being resolved into anthing else.'-p. 111. Mr. Herbert Spencer, after reviewing the whole question at length (Principles of Psychology, Part I.), arrives at the following conclusion- These positions being granted, it inevitably results, as we have found, that the current belief in objects as external independent entities, has a higher guarantee than any other belief whatever-that our cognition of existence considered as noumenal, has a certainty which no cognition of existence, considered as phenomenal, can ever approach; or in other words -that, judged logically as well as instinctively, Realism is the only rational creed; and that all adverse creeds are self-destructive.'-p. 59. Now, with regard to this theory of Realism, so emphatically vindicated by these three great speculative thinkers, I must still take leave to demand the meaning of an external and independent reality. If the answer be, that this also is given to us in consciousness, as a simple, ultimate, unanalyzable, inexplicable notion, like colour or heat, I dispute the assertion. I deny the ultimate nature of all three notions-external,' 'independent,' and reality.' Every one of them admits of being explained, analyzed, or resolved into other notions. The idea of 'externality,' as applied to the object world, is a figurative employment of the notion that we obtain in our experience of extended things. We see an extended object-as a field, with some cattle grazing within its enclosure, and others grazing without-and by comparing all such experiences, we obtain the idea of externality, which we apply to the object-world as compared with the subjectworld. The application is, at best, but figurative; the cases are not parallel. The parallelism applies properly to our bodies as compared with surrounding objects; it applies to mind only by the questionable mode of representing the mind as a something enclosed in the body. Again, how do we come by our notion of 'independent?' Is it not by a study of the complicated arrangements of the world about us? This is far from an elementary idea. Children do not understand it at first. It is an abstraction from a certain class of facts gradually disclosed in our experience. Moreover, it is applied to the relation of subject and object with still less of relevance than the foregoing. Indeed, this is the word that has insinuated into men's minds that erroneous opinion, which Berkeley criticised, and which has had to be abandoned-the theory of a world existing apart from mind, but, coming into contact with mind, so as to impress thereon images or ideas of itself. Not only is the word inapplicable, as it seems to me, but the application of it is opposed to the facts of the case. 'In dependence' is neither an ultimate conception or notion, nor a suitable derived conception, in the present instance. Lastly, I would appeal to any candid person to say, if 'reality' is a simple, unanalyzable, notion, fit to enter into an axiomatic or ultimate truth of consciousness. It is an exceedingly subtle and complex notion, obtained from the examination of a wide range of facts. The term is very vaguely understood by the generality of persons. As applied to the theory of perception, it is obscure in an especial degree. Thus, then, I object to the Realistic creed, as presenting to us a statement involving terms of complex and derived signification, of doubtful meaning, and of unsuitable application. I cannot call the theory altogether false, any more than I can call it true. It is simply irrelevant. It is a crude figurative mode of expressing the greatest distinction that we can draw within our conscious life; it suits the commoner purposes of mankind; but it is, in my opinion, altogether unworthy of the name of philosophy. I have made an attempt, in the text, to arrive at an analysis of the great and radical contrast of the Object and the Subject. I consider that, before invoking consciousness to attest a fact, the fact itself should be reduced to its primitive and indivisible elements. Such doctrines as an External world, the Freedom of the Will, a Moral Sense, are not in a shape to be submitted to the test of our consciousness, as I have endeavoured to point out elsewhere (Emotions and the Will,' Liberty and Necessity, § 9). The truths of consciousness ought to be axiomatic in the strict sense of the word; they should involve only ultimate notions. I am well aware that this analysis has not given universal satisfaction. The following is an example of the kind of criticism it has met with. According to this, to see the sun in the heavens is to believe that, if we could only keep on walking long enough, we might burn our fingers; to descry the lark aloft, is to recite, by muscular sympathy, the beating of its wings since it left its nest; THE IMPORT OF AN EXTERNAL WORLD. 681 to think of any distant space, is to run over our locomotive sensations in reaching it, and the opportunity of thrusting out our own arm, when we have got there. Emptiness means simply scope for muscular exercise; and the infinitude of space imports only potential gymnastics for us under all conceivable circumstances. This kind of analysis of our ideas, seems to us, we must confess, a cruel operation-a cold-blooded dissection of them to death. The disjecta membra, given as their equivalents, and strung together in succession to replace the original whole, defy all identification. Look down an avenue of trees, and consider whether, in appreciating its perspective, you are engaged on the mere imagination of touches, or the computation of fatigue ?' I must leave the reader to judge whether a philosophical analysis is to be refuted by the epithets' cruel' and 'cold-blooded,' even if truly applied. Scientific explanations have often a repulsive and disenchanting effect; and the scientific man is not made answerable for this. To the reasons given against the adequacy of the analysis, I am bound to furnish a reply. When I walk down an avenue of trees, the import of what happens to me is contained in these four particulars :-I am putting forth muscular energy; my sensations of sight are changed in accordance with my muscular energies; the sensations of my other senses arise in the same uniform connexion with my energies; and, lastly, all other beings are affected in the same way as myself. When I look down the avenue, without walking down, the sight alone reveals all those facts, owing to frequent associa tion, and reveals no other facts. It tells me what would happen to me, and to any other beings constituted like me, if we were to walk down. It recalls the actual experiences of conjoint energies and sensations, in the past, and anticipates the like in the future. This I take to be the simple revelation of consciousness, and all that consciousness can reveal, or that it concerns us to know. If an external and independent reality means anything besides those muscular feelings and sensations, and their mutual dependence, it is something that I am unable to imagine, and that would serve no end. People, no doubt, will ask, is the external universe merely an appendage of the collection of minds, vanishing when they are gone? Are we to believe that if all minds were to become extinct, the annihilation of matter, space, and time would result? I reply, this is not a fair statement of the case. I may, if I please, still speculate upon the certainty of an extended universe, although death may have overtaken all its inhabitants. But my conception, even then, would not be an independent reality, I should merely take on the object-consciousness of a supposed mind then present. I should conceive nothing but states of muscular energy, conjoined with sensation. Of the four particulars contained in the analysis, the last is what has most contributed to suggest the externality and independence of our object consciousness. When other beings are found to be affected by the same sensations, on performing the same movements, there appears to be an elimination of personality, or of all special or individual characteristics. We think we cannot mark the contrast strongly enough, by any process short of cutting each one's being into two parts, and depriving it of the part held by us in common, because it is in common. But I still contend, that the separation is only a figure of speech, which, like many other figures, has a rhetorical use while involving a contradiction in logic. The past existence and future persistence of the object-universe can mean to us only that if minds existed in the past, and are to exist in the future, they would be affected in a certain way. My object consciousness is as much a part of my being as my subject consciousness is. Only, when I am gone, other beings will sustain and keep alive the object part of my consciousness, while the subject part is in abeyance. The object is the perennial, the common to all; the subject is the fluctuating, the special to each. But there is nothing in the fact of community of experience (the object) that justifies us in separating the experience from the alliance with mind in the strict sense (the subject). The new Realism is little better than the old popular notion, with Berkeley gagged. F.-Contiguous Association in the ideas of Natural Objects.—p. 417. A critic in the National Review' has represented' this order of derivation, making our objective knowledge begin with plurality and arrive at unity,' as a complete inversion of our Psychological history.' He considers, in opposition to the explanations in the text, that each state of consciousness, whether |