color-sensations remembered or imagined, and by similar materials drawn from the province of the other senses, yet all the elements that are actually in my consciousness do not exhaust the sum total of the experiences which the words "my table" may be made to cover. I distinguish between all that is in my thought, and all that belongs to the thing. I regard the thing as more complex than my representation of it. And when I have to do, not with a single real thing like a table, but with the system of real things as a whole — when I talk about the external world—I am quite ready to admit, if the matter be brought to my attention, that what is in my consciousness is a very inadequate representation of the external world. The external world I conceive to be something indefinitely richer and more complex.

I have said that this distinction between our experiences and the external things for which they are conceived to stand is by no means peculiar to the metaphysician. He merely tries to make clear what the distinction is, and to avoid the inconsistency into which others seem to fall. The plain man and the psychologist regard the real things for which our experiences stand as existing wholly outside of consciousness and as separated by an impassable gulf from our experiences as a whole. At the same time they tacitly assume that we directly perceive these same real things and are not cut off from them at all. The impossibility of accepting their doctrine as final has been pointed out, and it is not necessary to repeat what has been said. The metaphysician must retain the distinction which they have recognized, but he must so define it as to avoid self-contradiction.

It is not possible at this stage in my discussion to exhibit the full significance of such expressions as "my consciousness" and "the consciousness of another man "; but it is at least possible to recognize that the distinction between a thing as it is actually found in my experience and a thing as it is conceived to be in its own nature, becomes a comprehensible and by no means an absurd distinction when it is perceived to be a distinction between symbol and that which is symbolized. In the one case we are concerned with a given content in consciousness in itself considered, and in the other with a content in consciousness regarded as representative of some other complex of consciousness-elements. It is perfectly just to draw a distinction between symbol and thing symbolized, but in drawing this distinction we must not grow incoherent or

unintelligible. We must remember what is meant by a symbol, and what is the true nature of symbolic knowledge. Within the limits of experience within consciousness, in other words—one complex may symbolize or represent another; but it is inconceivable that any experience should symbolize a something wholly beyond experience, a something so completely cut off from experience as the external world is sometimes conceived to be.

The external world of real things is, thus, a construct in consciousness. It is a system of elements related to each other in certain fixed ways. When we speak of this or that man as being conscious of this or that aspect of it, we are distinguishing between a more or less satisfactory representative of the system, and the system itself. That we can make this distinction does not imply that we have in mind an intuitive consciousness of both the representative in question and the system represented by it, and that we place them in thought side by side. Our procedure is just what it is in other cases in which we distinguish between the symbol and that which it stands for.

We may regard one man as having a very inadequate notion of what is meant by a million units, and another as having a truer conception of that number, but we never dream of the latter as being intuitively conscious of a million as he may be of two or three individuals, nor do we arrogate to ourselves the power of thus knowing so large a number. And yet we can distinguish between the million, in itself considered, and the representative of it which is actually present in the consciousness of any individual at any moment. The latter is just this particular experience, definitely limited, and containing no overwhelming number of constituent elements; the former is to us rather a way of looking at certain things than an individual thing, rather a formula than a fact, rather a rule for dealing with experiences than a given experience. It is an ideal, a construction which obtains its significance ultimately from that intuitive consciousness which we have of small numbers, and its justification from the fact that by means of it and other similar conceptions we take our departure from and return to such intuitive experiences in an orderly way, predicting and verifying our experiences as we could not without the aid of these conceptions.

When we are concerned, not with the elements we actually have in mind when we speak of a million, but with the conception

of a million in itself considered, we abstract from the fact that the units of which it is assumed to be composed are not present in consciousness as are the units which compose the number two, and we treat our million as though it were composed of the same materials. For the purposes of an arithmetical calculation, it is of no consequence whether our consciousness of the group of units with which we are dealing be intuitive or symbolic. If we reason well, the results at which we ultimately arrive are the same. And it is not nonsense for us to say that it is conceivable that to a consciousness of a different nature from our own a million units might be intuitively present, might be recognized clearly and distinctly, as small groups of two or three units present themselves to us. We cannot picture such a state of affairs, but we can think it; that is, we can make a mental construction which will fairly represent it; we can represent it to ourselves symbolically. We mean something when we say it, and our conviction that we do so cannot be shaken even by the lack of clearness in the metaphysician's attempt at an exposition of what we mean.

We may

So it is with our conception of the external world. admit that some frame a better notion of it than others, and that we all have something actually in mind, when we speak of it, which but very imperfectly represents its indefinite complexity. Nevertheless, even in thus speaking, we distinguish in some sort between the external world as it is and the ideas of it which this or that man may happen to cherish. We distinguish between the representatives of it in individual minds, and the ideal system of which they are supposed to be representative. As in the former instance, there is nothing to prevent us from conceiving of a consciousness in which vastly more of the real world is intuitively present than is the case with us.

It is thus quite possible for the metaphysician to hold to the common psychological distinction between the conception of an external world which is built up in this mind or in that, and the original which this conception is supposed imperfectly to represent. But it is necessary to bear in mind that it is quite impossible for the psychologist to recognize that his conception of the external world is but an indifferent representative of the external world itself, if this world be a something quite outside of consciousness. No man can compare two things, one of which in no way enters into his experience. He who is wholly shut up to his copy of

a world cannot even know that it is a copy, and of course he cannot know that it is an imperfect copy. He must, in some sense of the word be conscious of both, if he is to mark the distinction between copy and original. But in what sense? For it seems pertinent, if he be conscious of both, to ask, of what use is the copy? and why if it exist at all, need it be imperfect? The difficulty disappears when we realize that we are not dealing with original and copy in the sense in which the psychologist is tempted to believe that we are; but that we are dealing with the distinction between symbol and thing symbolized. Evidently there is a sense in which both must exist in consciousness, for were there not, it would be impossible for the symbol to be recognized as a symbol. It is only when we are representing the distinction to ourselves diagrammatically that we have the right to place the two side by side as though they were numerically distinct in all their elements. Original and copy are here distinguishably different; nevertheless, we find that the one experience may have its place in the copy, and at the same time may form a part of that system of things which we call the real world.

CHAPTER VII

SENSATIONS AND "THINGS"

WE may sum up the conclusions so far arrived at as follows: (1) the real external world is a complex of consciousness-elements; (2) when we speak of our consciousness of it, we recognize that what we actually have in mind is a compound of sensational and of imaginary elements, the latter largely predominating; (3) but we do not think of imaginary elements, as such, as actually entering into the composition of the real world-we see that the only elements which really fit into the system are the sensational elements; (4) it seems to follow that the real world which we are discussing is a complex of sensational elements and of none other.

Here there appears to stare us in the face something very like a contradiction, an antinomy. Have we not concluded that the external world cannot be external in such a sense as to be wholly beyond consciousness, since in that case it could mean to us nothing at all? On the other hand, has it not been pointed out that the actual experiences we have of things, our sensations, are something very scrappy and chaotic until they are supplemented by imaginary elements and built, together with them, into a single system? If this system is not the real world, where is this world? It cannot be out of consciousness; and it does not seem to be in consciousness, for our consciousness of it is just this combination of sensory and imaginary elements which we have discovered that the real world cannot be. It appears, thus, that the sensational elements which are found in consciousness will not suffice to make a world, and that the only things we have at hand, with which to supplement them, are incapable of entering into its composition.

But the reader has probably seen at once that this antinomy is only an apparent one, and that what has been said, in the last chapter, of the distinction between symbol and thing symbolized, representative and that for which it stands, is sufficient to conjure it away. When we consider our consciousness of the external